Chapter Thirty-Four - Rachel
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Rachel
Present
“I’ve printed out phone records, bank statements, and the base activity log for you to look through. If anything looks out of the ordinary, you call right away, okay?” Kade drops the box of documents on my kitchen table in front of Elli and me with a loud thud.
“Where is everyone else going?” I ask.
While Moreno and the capos were putting the plan together, I was picking up Lyla from my parents. It’s a good thing I did because otherwise, I might not have remembered that it’s my day to watch Dominic. I stopped to pick him up when I got Lyla.
Luckily, Meredith isn’t privy to the chaos going on.
I’d told her about my fight with Ryder, but all she knows is that he suddenly went on a business trip that cost me my promotion.
I can tell she wanted to say something along the lines of, I told you so, but luckily for me, she held her tongue.
We haven’t talked about it since he left, and I’m glad.
I’m not sure I could get through that kind of conversation right now.
Harris steps forward, gesturing between himself and Knox. “We’re heading to San Francisco. The base there has the most advanced security system with eyes all over the state, so we’re going to see if they have anything that can help us or if they’ve heard anything.”
Moreno points to himself, Donovan, and Kade. “We’re going to Redding to meet with some capos from the Marsollo family. If there’s talk of Ryder’s whereabouts within criminal family circles, they’ll know about it.”
“The kid and I are going back to our respective bases. Someone needs to be running the place in case things get out of hand,” Briggs grunts.
The kid in question is Alec, who’s currently ignoring everyone in favor of talking to Lyla—who eagerly tells him about the martial arts teacher who looks just like him.
I don’t see much of a resemblance between Jacob and Alec, but in Lyla’s three-year-old mind, I’m not surprised she made a connection between their somewhat similar features.
I’m only surprised it took me this long to realize that’s why she felt so comfortable going into the classroom with Mr. Torres after just meeting him.
Elli walks the boys to the door, locking it behind them and turning on the fancy new security system Kade installed.
She stops in the kitchen, grabbing two mugs of tea before sitting next to me at the table.
“I thought you were a capo, too. Why aren’t you going with them?” I ask as she settles in and hands me a mug.
She takes a long sip from hers. “I am, but Joshua doesn’t want me in the field unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Does that bother you?”
“I thought it might, but no. My being there won’t do any good if it’s distracting Joshua from doing his job. Besides, I’m still pretty new to all of this.”
I nod and take the stack of files from the box, plopping them down in front of each of us.
Elli picks up a paper and shakes her head. “I’m not sure how this is going to do much good. I have no idea what normal is.”
I don’t either, but looking through these papers is better than doing nothing at all—which is the only reason I agreed to do it.
“You take the phone records, and I’ll take the bank statements,” I say, switching our stacks. “Just make sure we recognize all the numbers coming through.”
Elli doesn’t answer, and I follow her line of sight to where Dominic is slowly scooting closer and closer to Lyla.
“Watch,” I whisper. “He’ll get close enough to lay his head on her shoulder. She’ll pretend to be annoyed by it, and then she’ll rest her head on his.”
We watch the kids as my exact words come true—as I knew they would. I’ve seen them do this a million times.
Elli laughs softly. “They’re absolutely adorable. That’s your friend’s son?”
I nod. “She’s a single mom, too, so we take turns watching the kids. They spend most of their time together.”
She nods, processing the information with a focused eye. I have no idea what she sees there, but after a moment, she shakes her head and picks up a paper with a smile.
“Shall we?”
Two hours later, the job I hoped would give me a sense of purpose leaves me feeling even more powerless.
“Would you consider ordering Chipotle three times in one day suspicious?” Elli asks.
“The worst part is that he got the same exact meal each time,” I mutter, and despite the heaviness of our situation, we laugh at that. “Ryder could eat a burrito bowl for every meal for the rest of his life and be perfectly fine with that.”
I expect her to laugh again, but when I look up, she’s studying me with an expression I know all too well. It’s the same one Meredith and my mother give me when I talk about Ryder. She’s worried about me—or rather, my heart.
“You seem to know Ryder really well,” she says, and I know she’s only pretending to read over the invoice in her hands.
“Well, he is Lyla’s father.”
It’s a long moment before she finally asks, “Is that all he is?”
It would be so easy to deny it the same way I always do. It would be so easy to tell her we’re only co-parents—nothing more, nothing less. It would be so easy to brush off the relationship like it’s nothing.
But it isn’t nothing.
He isn’t just Lyla’s father, an ex-fling, a former underboss, and a mafia capo.
He’s Ryder—my Ryder.
I set the paper down, dropping any remaining defenses because I’m too tired to keep up the act.
“I love him,” I admit, relishing the words but hating the emptiness that comes from the fact that I’m telling the wrong person. “I have loved him for years.”
“I knew it,” Elli says, but there’s not a hint of smugness on her face. “Why haven’t you told him?”
“I was going to,” I tell her, thinking back to the single best and worst day of my life. “I planned to tell him the day Lyla was born. I actually met your brother that day when he first came to the LA base.”
“Wait, you knew Mason?”
I shrug. “We met briefly. Anyway, Ryder was mad that I talked to Mason, and we fought. I went into labor mid-argument, and he took me to my delivery room within the base.”
I think back to how we’d picked Lyla’s name just before everything went to hell.
“I was in labor when the base was attacked. The power went out, and alarms blared from everywhere.”
Elli’s eyes widen, but I don’t stop my explanation. If I stop now, I might not be able to get through it.
“I begged him to stay with me, but in the end, he left. He thought he could protect me by eliminating the threat, but all he really did was show me that when it comes down to it, he’s not going to pick me.”
Elli opens her mouth like she wants to find the bright side, but no words come out. After a moment, she simply rests her hand over mine. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”
I place my hand over hers in thanks.
“You were right,” I tell her, and she lifts a questioning brow. “After my date with Jacob, Ryder and I started… well, we got back together, I guess.”
“You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because of exactly what happened last week. When it came down to it, Ryder chose his work over me again.”
“Except he didn’t,” she counters. “He did choose you. He just never got the chance to tell you that.”
Those words sink in, and though I know in all logic they’re true, the idea of Ryder putting me before his work is too dream-like for me to simply believe.
Elli’s phone buzzes with an incoming call, and Kade’s name flashes on the screen.
“Hey, Kade. Do you have an update?”
I can’t hear his answer, but Elli responds, “Yeah, she’s right here. Give me a second.”
She holds out the phone, and I take it, hoping I’ll be able to hear him over the nervous pulse pounding in my ears as a million different scenarios come to mind of what he could have to tell me.
“Hey,” I say, breathless in my worry.
“I just ran over a dozen tests to figure out who was trying to frame Ryder for embezzling,” he says, voice emotionless, as usual.
Excitement—real excitement—buzzes through me for the first time in days.
“And?”
“Rachel, this wasn’t a hack,” he says slowly like I should understand the significance of that statement.
I don’t.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, someone wasn’t using your IP address as a cover-up. The embezzling was done from your home.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I thought so, too, but I keep getting the same results.”
“Then something is wrong with your software,” I snap, stomach curling in on itself in my panic.
“That’s not all,” he says.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“According to these records, it started around the time Lyla was born. A few months after you moved home from the base.”
I feel like the world is spinning around me, and if I weren’t sitting, I’d probably collapse on the spot.
“You’re not actually suggesting this was me, are you?” I never considered that I could be framed for this, but if Kade is right, the evidence isn’t looking good. I would’ve had the means to access the database from my time in LA and motive with how things ended with Ryder and me.
“No one is suggesting anything, but I need you to think very carefully. Is there anyone who has access to your home? Anyone who could’ve possibly done this?”
“No. No one. Absolutely—”
No. No. No.
Pulling air into my lungs feels torturous, and I have to grip the table to keep myself grounded.
“Rachel? What’s going on?”
This can’t be possible. There has to be some other explanation. Any other explanation.
“Rachel?” Elli asks from behind me, but I can’t focus on anything.
Anything except the brown-haired boy currently curled up next to my daughter.
A hand grips my shoulder, pulling me back to reality. I turn to Elli, and judging by the terror in her expression, my face must be as ashen as it feels.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, taking the phone from my death grip and holding it high enough that Kade can hear us.
“I think I know where Ryder is,” I tell her, not wanting to believe the words to be real but knowing, somehow, that they are.
“Where?”
But I’m already walking past her to get my shoes on. I hear her scrambling behind me, saying something to Kade—or maybe it’s Moreno now, judging by the growl-like tone.
I block them out.
“Rachel!” she shouts, grabbing my upper arm as I step out the front door. “Where are you going?”
“Promise me you’ll stay with the kids?” I ask, ignoring her questions completely. “I need you to swear to me that you’ll stay with them and protect them no matter what.”
The fear shining back at me shoots down to my core, but there’s so much pain and dread there that it’s barely a drop in the bucket.
“I would never let something happen to these kids,” she promises me. “But you need to tell me what’s going on. You’re scaring me.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course I do, but—”
“I promise to call as soon as I know for sure,” I tell her, pulling my arm out of her grasp.
“Rachel!”
I stop halfway to my car and find her face as grave as mine.
“Don’t you dare leave this child orphaned, do you understand me?”
“Next time I come home, she’ll have both her parents.”
And with that, I climb into my car and drive away.