Chapter 22 | Preston
TWENTY-TWO | PRESTON
“Are there any ex-boyfriends buried in that research somewhere?”
Brody turns in his computer chair, lifting a dark brow over the rim of his black-framed glasses.
One of his five monitors has tens of tabs open.
A timeline of Kate’s life is sprawled out before us, my fingers clenched into balls at my side to keep from reaching over him and digging through it all like the bloodthirsty killer I am.
One name. That’s all I fucking need.
“Not that I know of,” he drawls.
I cross my arms. “Then you didn’t do enough digging.”
He shoves his tongue into his cheek, a habit he resorts to when he’s annoyed.
“Kate pretty much fell off the map entirely a year ago. No bank records. No digital trails from a credit card. No housing records. No social media. Nothing, Boss. She was thorough.” He rocks back and forth in the chair, the hinges whining beneath his weight.
I dig my nails into my biceps, so I don’t cave into my urge to punch him off it.
I’m in a bad mood. His constant rocking, combined with the slight squeak, is irritating my nerves.
“You want to tell me what this is fucking about?” A cynical expression pulls at his features. “Because at first you thought she was involved with Luciano, and now you’re asking me about her love life.” I don’t like the way he glares at me knowingly, like he’s in on one of my secrets.
“What’s that?” I point at a picture on the screen.
“Oh. When I did a facial recognition search, that’s the only thing that’s popped up with her face in the last year.”
I study the dark image, the focal point a blonde teenage girl popping a piece of pink gum with her hair twirled around her finger, wearing a pair of the haunted mine ride overalls.
Kate is in the background, near the loading platform, looking completely oblivious as the image is being taken, her gaze fixed off toward the line of guests waiting to get on the ride.
The background of the social media image is blurry, but there’s no denying it’s Kate.
“It was posted on Instagram a few months ago,” he clarifies.
The door opening has the hairs on my neck raising at attention, and with the way Brody’s spine shoots upward, I don’t need to look to know who walked into the room.
I lower my voice to a low growl only he can hear. “Dig more. I suggest starting the year before she fell completely off the map. Get your hands on any deleted data that hasn’t been overwritten. There’s a reason we hired you.”
“Yes, Boss,” he acknowledges, pulling himself back to his desk, typing away like I asked.
A rough hand clasps my shoulder, but I refrain from letting it jolt me out of my skin like it usually does. Arden may be my father, but he elicits the same reaction from everyone when he’s in boss mode.
His deep, interrogative voice accelerates my pulse. “What’s going on here?”
From this angle, only I can see the way Brody’s eyes are blown wide. My father has a view of the back of his head.
Brody doesn’t say anything.
Good.
He knows the real reason I brought Kate here and is aware that under no circumstances can Arden discover the truth.
Rubbing the back of my neck, I muster up a lie. “I’m having Brody pull up all communication records transferred between us and the Virginia location, trying to see if there’s any digital footprints from someone who might have hacked the system.”
Brody’s shoulders stiffen further. To an outsider, his typing might seem like the kind of speed that suits a hacker and security expert. But I hear the inconsistencies. Namely, that backspace button he keeps jamming with his finger. I just hope my father doesn’t.
When my father drops his hand from my shoulder, I turn to see him nodding. My gut twists at the cynical look pulling at his features. “Conference room, now. There’s been a new development.”
My heart hammers in my chest. “About the ambush in Virginia?”
His golden-brown eyes study mine, the dim sconces on the wall in the nearly black room casting shadows across his face.
His stoic expression causes me to shift uncomfortably on my feet.
I’ve never lied to him. At least not when it comes to the Megalley Syndicate.
It would be foolish to underestimate him and believe I wouldn’t find myself subjected to his wrath.
“Brody, won't you join us?” My father isn’t requesting his presence; he’s ordering it.
Arden struts back out of the tech and security room.
I follow him down the dark concrete hallway under Lachlan Park, with Brody hot on my heels.
My father slips a hand into his gray suit pocket and pushes the door to the conference room open.
A massive television is mounted on the wall, positioned in front of a long mahogany table, with chairs and a scarlet carpet beneath.
Even the amount of red dye coloring the threads wouldn’t amount to the blood we have on our hands. It would drown this room.
Carter is already here, lounging back in one of the chairs with his arms knitted across his chest. I take a seat across the table from him as Brody sits in the chair next to mine.
My father takes the head of the table. He doesn’t sit; he stands, like he always does, since I started coming to these meetings long before I was thrust into my role.
But at that time, I was a young boy watching my father command attention and lead with respect.
The tendons in Arden’s jaw flex under the fluorescent lights, his eyes shifting to Brody, then cutting to Carter.
“What?” I demand harsher than I intend to. Why am I the only fucking one out of the loop?
Arden braces his hands on the table. “If you weren’t so distracted lately, you’d remember that, yesterday, I told you that I had Brody go through records on all our communication channels.
All messages back and forth between every location from the time we discovered our first shipment of missing product three months ago up until the attack in Virginia. ”
Brody’s frame hardening shifts the air in the room.
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!
Somehow, I manage to keep my face straight as my father’s untrusting eyes bore into mine.
There’s no pushing past the transparent lie that fell from my mouth, but for now, I avoid it. “And? Did you find a digital footprint someone left behind?”
“Yes.” Arden blinks, something darker injecting into his glare. “Someone hacked into the communication channels between the New York and Virginia locations.” My brows furrow. “From Lachlan Estate.”
Shit.
My dad gestures across the table. “Want to elaborate, Brody?”
I turn to glare at him. He doesn’t look at me. Can’t say I blame him, not when he knows that my father is the one he fully reports to.
Does that mean he knows about Kate?
She flashes across my mind, flooding me with images of her from around the estate over the last few days.
We have fallen into a state of comfortable coexistence when we cross paths.
The electric snap in my fingers always wants to reach for her when I’m not working, and she’s not at the medical center.
It’s taking all my sanity not to give my cock and soul what is craving since I didn’t indulge the other night.
I left her and went straight to my room, settling for my hand that was still covered in cum from her climax, imagining my fist was her tight pussy.
I’ve been so busy dealing with this fucking Luciano mess and this war on our hands that I’ve barely spent five minutes with her. So, I have no excuse for ignoring my father yesterday when he told me Brody was checking all of our communication data.
I’ve been working a lot; I’ve just been...distracted.
I briefly replay the moment now—sitting in his office with a glass of scotch, the way we always end the night. But instead of focusing on him, I was too busy plotting my first move for when I finally get my revengeful hands on whoever gave Kate those scars.
It’s knifework. It’s only fair that’s how they suffer. Let them watch me with one eye while I gouge out the other with the blunt end of my blade.
Guilt rushes through me, remembering when I ghosted my knife over the scar on Kate’s neck. No wonder she was in hysterics seeing me with that blade.
Which gives me an idea.
I make a mental note to go shopping later today.
“For fucks sake, Preston,” my dad grits out. He taps a stern pointer finger on the table enough that I think he’ll put a dent in the furnished wood. “I need your head here.”
Carter gives me a sympathetic look before instructing, “Keep going, Brody.”
“Yeah,” Brody clears his throat. “It looks like whoever it was hit at just the right moment. Our estate’s IP address was recorded in a series of secure messages that happened three months ago between Arden and the Virginia location.
That was when you two were in New York for a week,” he gestures to my father and me.
“The same week that shipment came in with missing product for the first time.” All three of us peer at Brody, listening intently.
“Whoever hacked into those messages from the estate knew the exact date that we would be transferring the biggest shipment of the year to Virginia. They knew how many men we were taking, and then the ambush happened, which we all know was expertly planned and not impulsive. You get the idea.”
The vein in my forehead throbs and pulses in time with my chaotic heartbeat as I focus on the details.
Our biggest shipment of the year, lost to the Calco Cartel in Virginia, arrived at the harbor the same morning I found Kate.
But the messages between Arden and the Virginia location had been hacked months earlier from inside the estate—the same week the first shipment went missing, back when we were in New York.
It couldn’t have been Kate, unless she is working with someone on the inside.
I squash that thought. Maybe it’s reckless and will come back to bite me in the ass or kill me, but I’m starting to believe she isn’t involved.
My father pinches the bridge of his nose. “You were here the week Preston and I were in New York, Carter. Do you have a recollection of any suspicious activity or anyone who was in the estate at that time that may be worth interrogating?”
Carter pulls his fingers through his dark hair.
“I’d have to think about it. I was only at the estate for a few days.
I was supposed to go to New York with you, but you had me stay back to collect the shipment that arrived early.
And then my mom was in that car accident, and I had to rush back to Chicago. ”
Arden nods, sighing defeatedly. “That’s right.”
“But if I remember correctly,” Carter adds, “We had a fresh wave of recruits training the week you were in New York. The estate was crawling with them.”
I fold and brace my arms on the table. “Brody, we are going to need a list of all recruits who were initiated that week.” This time, he meets my eye.
“If that was when that first shipment went missing, this is a good place to start. Specifically, ones that were granted access to any computers with the estate’s IP address. ”
Brody sharply nods. “Done.”
When I glance back at Arden, his eyes are narrowed on me. He blinks, whatever was swirling there dissipating just as quickly before I can catch it.
He slams his fist against the table, the vibration solidifying our spines.
“I want to take this fucker out and have his organs in a chum bucket by the end of the month. He’s taken enough from us.
I don’t care if it's a fucking bloodbath, this Italian pussy is going to get everything he deserves.” He scrubs a hand over his jaw.
“Now get to work. It’s not a war if we’re sitting here on our asses willingly taking the punishment for something that wasn’t our fault to begin with. ”
Five years ago, it was the 90th-anniversary party at Lachlan Park.
The party we threw at the park had the biggest attendance we’ve ever had.
After closing, my family ended the night, as we usually do on anniversaries, by taking the Ferris wheel around a few times.
I’m not sure when that tradition began for the boss and his family, but Arden remembered doing it every year on the anniversary as a child and kept it going.
My father and I never made it on the Ferris wheel that night, but Mom and Tayla did.
They got in their car first. By the time my father and I were ready to board, gunshots pierced the night air from inside the park. Pops that still ring in my ears today as a reminder of how easily it can be to create a distraction.
A diversion that we fell for.
My father left his right-hand man and three other guys with my mom and sister, ordering them to keep them on the Ferris wheel through whatever atrocity was about to take place.
We thought they were safe up there.
We rushed to the edge of the park with a few of our men and Carter, where the old rollercoaster used to be. We encountered Luciano, his son Nico, and six of his soldiers. I’ll never rid his smoke-stained, malicious grin from my mind.
Once upon a time, the Megalley Syndicate was looking to form a business deal with the Calco Cartel when it was in the hands of the late Don, Marco Giovanni, Luciano’s older brother.
We found him respectable. Smart. Well, as decent as a man in our world can be.
A deal that would’ve left us, together, dominating most of the East Coast and southern states.
A business deal that ended with Marco foaming at the mouth and face down in a pile of his own vomit on the conference room table at their sex club in Miami.
Luciano placed the blame on us for plotting and murdering his brother. They believed we had schemed to create chaos, allowing us to expand our borders into their territory while the mob operated without a Don.
Without order.
We ran. Left a trail of Calco bodies through the hallways of the club and in the alley.
The murder of Marco Giovanni wasn’t our doing, but that night started a war, and his brother came to collect.
And what’s the point of seeking revenge if you don’t hit back harder?