Chapter Twenty-Six
“Does she still have it?” Ava asked her father.
Liam shrugged. “As far as I know,” he said. “I’ve never actually seen it. It was just what your mother told me when we were children. Your great-grandmother gave it to her upon her birth.”
My wife was silent for a moment, and I recognized that the gears in her head were working out a puzzle. I hadn’t missed the look in her eyes when she saw the box. Like she recognized it, and the minute she remembered where, her eyes lit up like fire.
“We need to go back to my old house.” She snapped her fingers and smiled. “That’s where I’ve seen this before.”
“Where in the house?” I asked, because if one of her mother’s enemies had seen it, they might have taken it.
“In one of my hiding places in the kitchen,” she told me excitedly. “I always thought it was a recipe box.”
I nodded my assent.
“Vas.” We both called for him at the same time. This could get awkward. My wife looked at me askance as Vas stepped forward with a broad grin.
“Yes, bosses.” He gave a dramatic pause before adding the extra -es on the end. Fucking asshole.
“You and Maxim follow us to the house,” Ava ordered before I could get a word in edgewise. It was fine. This was her mission, and I’d let her have that.
For now.
I wasn’t sure how I planned to take back over the Bratva when I came back, but I knew I didn’t want Ava near it if I could help it. I did, however, want her to become the face and full-time CEO of Arctic Security. She’d proven several times over that she was intelligent enough to be able to run it.
Even if she had learned about the company less than a week ago.
“Sully, you’re welcome to join if you wish,” she told him. Sully nodded and leaned over to whisper to one of his men. “Matthias, my father, and I will take another car.”
“Does that mean I’m not fired?” Vas joked, but I could see the seriousness behind his eyes. Vas was the closest thing Ava had ever had to a best friend that wasn’t one of her sisters, and for the last month or so, he had been lying to her. Withholding information. Keeping secrets.
“Still on my shitlist,” she muttered darkly as she brushed past him. Vas’s shoulders slumped.
“She just needs time,” I told him, handing him the key fob to Liam’s Ferrari. “See you there.”
Vas nodded, looking like someone had kicked his puppy.
Ava would forgive him a lot easier than she’d forgive me. That I was sure of. It would just take time for her heart to heal.
* * *
The drive to Ava’s childhood home was quiet. No one was sure what to say. My wife gripped the small box tightly, as if she was afraid someone would take it from her. I understood her reticence to let it go. This was her smoking gun. It was going to be whether her father believed her that mattered.
I stared up at the two-story family home, and for a moment, I wondered what Ava’s childhood here was like. She never really spoke of her time with her mother, and that was my fault. I’d never taken an interest in her past as she had in mine.
Over our time together, she had revealed snippets every now and then, but I got the feeling that most of her memories from this time were repressed. I just wasn’t sure if it was purposeful on my wife’s part, or if someone had forced her to do it.
She wasted no time throwing open the rickety front door and barging inside like a woman on a mission. Ava passed directly through the living room and into the large, homey kitchen. This was where Ava’s love for baking had come from. On several occasions, I had caught her and Mia baking up a batch of cookies or brownies. Sometimes even cakes.
Mia told me it helped her feel safe and secure.
Now I knew why.
It reminded her of a time when she was safe and secure. A time before Elias and Christian. A time before me. If I could change my Little Red’s history, I would do it in a heartbeat. Even if it meant we had never met.
“Here it is.” Her voice was calm, barely above a whisper as she opened the door to the small closet hidden at the side of one of the pantries. If she hadn’t pointed it out, I would never have known it was there.
She passed the first box off to me, and my heart swelled instantly that she trusted me enough to keep it safe for her. At least I hadn’t lost that completely. Ava may not have fully trusted me in some areas, but she knew all I wanted to do was keep her safe.
The box she held in her hand now was different.
Newer.
Carved from a tree called Rowan that was native to Ireland. On the top was the same symbol as the one I held. The Celtic love knot.
Gingerly, she opened the lid and peered inside.
“That’s the promise ring I gave her when we were fifteen.” Liam’s throat bobbed with emotion as he looked at it. Respecting my wife by not simply grabbing the ring, he waited for her to hand it to him. “We always knew we were going to get married. She made me promise her after she got dumped by Mason Walsh in the second grade.”
Ava snorted a laugh as she picked up the next thing.
It was a lock of her hair and a baby tooth.
“Your mother said it was tradition to put a lock of your first-born daughter’s hair into the box and her first baby tooth. It is said to promote a healthy relationship between the mother and daughter as they move forward in life.”
My wife pulled a face, but she gently set the two baggies down on the counter with care.
“My baby photo,” Ava whispered as she took the small thumbnail out and handed it to her father. “Mom said I was born with a head of hair and the brightest emerald eyes. Used to tell me it was like looking at one of the fairies.”
“It’s genetic.” Liam smiled down at her. “The only person not to be born with green eyes was your grandmother. Hers were brown.”
Ava nodded absently before taking a few more trinkets out of the box that Liam explained were gifts he’d given her over the years. Many from when they were small children. The last thing in the box was a folded-up sheet of paper with Ava’s name on it.
She pursed her lips, her hand shaking as she lifted it from the confines of the box. A photo slipped out, but she didn’t pay it any mind. Her entire focus was on the letter. Slowly, she started to peel back the pages when a sudden noise caught our attention.
“We need to go,” Sully yelled from the front of the house. “Now.”
Gunshots echoed around us, windows exploding as bullets surged through them. Ava gasped and tucked the note away in her jean pocket before throwing her mother’s trinkets in the box and snatching it up from the counter, along with the one in my hand.
“Head down, baby,” I reminded her as we dashed out of the kitchen to the front door, where Sully’s men fired off round after round from their ARs at the bypassing cars. I recognized the make and model.
Platinum Security.
Fucking idiots. They made themselves easily identifiable, and that was a mistake.
“Get us to the helipad,” I ordered our driver as we slid into the SUV.
“My stuff,” Ava said.
“The men will grab it,” I told her. “We need to get back to Seattle. I don’t have the manpower here to take on Cartwright and O’Neill.”
Ava spun her head to look at me. “How did you know about Cartwright?”
“You think I didn’t keep track of everything while I was gone?” I asked her incredulously as I picked up my phone to make a call. “I was in constant contact with Vas and my other men. So was Dima.”
“Dima was with you.” It wasn’t a question. She knew he was. It was all starting to come together for her. How much we had all kept from her. “Motherfuckers.”
“Dima,” I barked into the phone. “Grab my father and get to the airstrip. We’ve been compromised.”
“Father?” Shock spread itself across her face. There might have been anger there too, but I was ignoring that.
“We’ll take the helicopter with Liam,” I told him. “Grab Kenzi, too.” Then I hung up.
“You wanna fill me in on what the hell is going on?” My wife huffed. Liam chuckled beside her. I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Don’t pretend like you are innocent in all this, Kavanaugh,” I snarled. “This was, after all, your idea.”
“What?” Liam grimaced at her sudden shriek. That one broke the sound barrier for sure.
“Matthias told me about his umm…other father?” He shot me a questioning look before continuing. “When we got word about the hit put out on him by that very man, we came up with a plan to make it look like Kenzi succeeded to draw him out.”
“Other father?” She looked over at me.
“It’s a long story, Krasnyy,” I told her. Ava’s response to that was to stare up at me expectantly, arms crossed, and snarl. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
There wouldn’t be any moving forward if I couldn’t be honest with her. I knew that.
“Okay,” I began. “Let me start from the beginning.”