Chapter 28
LIAM
There’s a reason I keep certain things to myself. Why I’ve never shared all pertinent information even with my team members, the closest thing to a family I’ve had for much too long.
I knew there might come a day when one of them betrayed me.
That day has come.
Maggie is shaking well after the gunfire ended when I go back to retrieve her.
“It’s over now,” I explain as gently as possible to the obviously traumatized woman.
I managed to take out two of the armed intruders who poured in not even a minute after the power was cut before I grabbed her and pulled her along with me into the safe room hidden behind one of the bookcases in my office.
I couldn’t let her get caught in the crossfire.
Then I stupidly went back out there, because there was someone else I thought I needed to save. Someone else who was already gone without a trace.
Now, the apartment reeks of gunpowder and the tangy, coppery smell of blood. For the second time in a week, there’s blood to be cleaned up, only much more this time. Four of my guards are dead. Six of Donovan’s.
And the panel leading to the secret staircase is still standing wide open. It can only be opened from inside the closet, telling me Aurora must have been the one to let them in. Somehow, Donovan found a way to get to her.
He also found a way to get to Selina. Only she could have cut the power to the penthouse while leaving the rest of the building untouched.
It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.
Even if it makes no sense at all.
Now that the power has been restored, Ethan escorts Maggie down to the garage in the elevator. I arranged for a car to take her home and plan on giving her a week off, at least. Hell, it will take that long to clean the place up, to get rid of the blood and patch the bullet holes in the walls.
That leaves me with Nick, who put the situation together as quickly as I did once I described what happened. “It could only be Selina,” I insist. “Who else could’ve cut the power?”
“Why?” Standing in the center of the living room, where members of my team move bodies in preparation for getting them out of here, he throws his hands into the air. “Why would she do it? After all this time?”
I know why. “I should’ve seen it coming,” I admit. “I didn’t want to believe she was capable of it, but this is on me.”
“How can you say that? You didn’t—”
“She attacked Aurora. Not the other way around. I suspected,” I mutter, disgusted with myself. “I should’ve done something then and there, but I didn’t want to believe it, either. Somehow, he got in her head.”
Ethan rejoins us, looking concerned. “She’s going to be shaky for a while.”
“Who could blame her?” I point out. This is hardly an everyday occurrence.
“Have you tried calling Selina again?” he asks.
“I’m already way ahead of you.” Nick holds his phone to his ear, staring at the floor while he waits. He’s wasting his time. I’ve already tried to call her, but her phone is off. Convenient.
“She didn’t only cut the power,” I remind them on my way to the bedroom to change into something less blood-covered. “She tipped Donovan off about the stairway. That’s the only way they could’ve known about it.” And it makes me sick. How could she? After everything we went through together.
“What could he offer her that she would turn her back on us?”
“Vengeance, I’m guessing.”
“Vengeance for what?” Ethan calls out from the other room. Nick’s muffled voice tells me he’s explaining things. Good. I don’t feel like going through it again.
She betrayed me. She betrayed everything—the years we spent relying on each other, working together, us against the world.
In the end, none of it mattered. I always knew she had an unreasonable amount of animosity toward Aurora.
I never imagined she would take it this far. Maybe I just didn’t want to.
He might not know it yet, but he’s a dead man living on borrowed time. I’ll rip out his beating heart with my bare hands after what he’s done. I’ll hold it up in front of his face and force him to watch it beat its last. Nobody does this to me and lives to tell about it.
“Hey. Whose phone is this?” Nick’s question makes me step out of the bedroom, halfway through buttoning up a fresh black shirt.
“Where did you find it?” I ask as he comes down the hall, holding the phone in his hand.
“In the closet, just inside the panel.”
I take it and open it—there are no security measures, no PIN or Face ID needed. Only one string of texts exists, the last message being sent almost immediately before the lights went out.
“Fucking Christ.” The truth hits me like a wrecking ball as I skim the messages from today, detailing what he needed from her. “How the fuck did he get her a phone?”
The three of us watch the video clip together. My pulse pounds harder with every second that passes.
“Selina must have recorded the meeting,” Ethan murmurs.
And she sent it to Aurora. Aurora, who had this phone for days and kept it from me. The first message came through the day of the meeting, in fact. Earlier that morning, according to the timestamp. But how?
I can think about that later. The content of the messages Donovan sent her is more than enough to occupy my brain. He manipulated her like the sick bastard he is. “Her mother?” I whisper. “Do we know anything about her?”
“Dominique? Died in childbirth,” Ethan confirms.
“Or so everyone was supposed to think,” Nick muses, skimming the messages along with me.
The big picture is taking shape, and it’s ugly.
But it’s nothing beyond what I’ve always known Donovan was capable of.
“It doesn’t matter whether she’s alive or not,” I point out.
“He made Aurora believe she is, and that’s enough.
That, plus the video clip?” His own daughter. There’s no low he won’t sink to.
“And he has her now,” Nick murmurs. We exchange a look that tells me he is as troubled by all of this as I am.
“He has to,” I agree with a sick feeling in my stomach. “He took her, or his men did. He’s fucking dead.” What is he doing to her as we speak?
“How far did we get with the real estate records?” Ethan asks Nick.
“Forget the records.” Handing the phone to Nick, I pull out my own phone.
The adrenaline pumping through my veins makes it a challenge to stand still, much less think clearly, but that’s what I need to do now.
I have to think clearly. She thought she was doing the only thing she could.
Helping him if it meant finding her mom.
There’s nothing more fundamental than that, and he fucking knew it.
“You’re going to take this the wrong way,” Ethan sighs. “But is it worth it? Maybe we let this go. She brought this on herself.”
One look from me snaps his mouth shut in a hurry. “Do yourself a favor and never let me hear you say anything like that again, Pretty Boy, or we’ll have to change your nickname. He used her the way he always has. Dangled her mom in front of her. He made sure she knew about the deal with Gabriel.”
I see her in my head as a puppet, with Donovan holding the strings. She only thought she was in control of the moves she made. Just like I’m sure Selina believed she was making her own decision to betray me and the rest of the team and everything we stood for.
It hits me as I pull up the app. I’m willing to forgive one of them, but not the other. She fucking knew better. Every time Selina betrayed me, she made the choice to do it.
“Here.” It takes countless, teeth-grinding moments, but finally a blue light blinks on the map. “Where the fuck is this location?”
Ethan checks it out, comparing the app’s information to the GPS map on his phone. “Industrial complex. Looks like an office building.”
He then looks at satellite images. “Last time there were cars in the parking lot was three years ago. Most recent images make it look abandoned.”
“We’re going in. Get your guys together,” I tell Nick before retreating to the bedroom to arm myself.
“This is what he expects us to do!” Nick points out. “He wants us to rush in without thinking first.”
He’s right. But dammit, she’s there, and I want her back. I need her back.
Get it together. She needs you to get your shit together and not rush in blind.
I close my eyes, taking a few deep breaths with a gun in each hand.
“Get together all the information you can about the location,” I reply.
“Blueprints, preferably, along with information on all access points. Alert the team. Have them gather here—I want them by the end of the hour.”
“I go after Aurora,” I announce over my earpiece as we pull into the wide-open gates of the industrial park. Like he’s waiting for us. I have no doubt he is. Waiting and plotting and smiling to himself.
“What if she’s there?” There’s a heaviness in Ethan’s question. I’m not the only one Selina betrayed.
“Keep her alive,” I decide. If only so I can hear her excuses.
Do I have it in me to end the life of someone I used to rely on that heavily?
She was like the sister I lost, almost a replacement for Laura in so many ways.
I see that now. It’s something that insists on repeating in my head no matter how I try to quiet it.
There’s no room for it. Later, once it’s all over, I can look back and make sense of everything.
We pull up the way we did outside of Donovan’s mansion.
It might as well have been a lifetime ago.
I’m not as sure of myself as I was that night, but I’m just as thirsty for his blood.
This time, I want him to suffer, and I’m not making the mistake of walking away until I know for sure he is dead and gone.
Because he’ll be here. He’ll be here, because he knows I’ll come for the daughter he cares nothing about.
The rest of them rush into the building while I walk at a steady, determined pace, following the flashing blue dot. It doesn’t move, still tucked in one corner of the single-story structure.