Chapter Thirty-Eight
COOPER
Iopened my front door to darkness, the only source of light a single bulb over the breakfast counter, illuminating Griffen. He sat there alone, drinking from one of my oversize mugs, scrolling through something on his phone.
Without looking up he asked, “Everything okay?”
“Not even close. Alice and Petra?”
“Asleep. They’re fine.”
I swung through the kitchen to get myself a beer from the fridge. “Want one?”
“Nah. Doesn’t go with half a pot of coffee,” Griffen said, saluting me with his mug.
“I appreciate you staying with Alice. And getting here so fast.”
He waved off my thanks. “Did you figure out how Lacey got in? Were the cameras on?”
I twisted open my beer, delaying the moment I had to admit the truth. They’d played me. Both of them. Leaning against the kitchen island, I drank from my beer before I answered.
“Maxwell had a back door programmed into the system way back when. It’s a good thing he didn’t know about the cameras I put in up here or he might have turned them off.
He let Lacey in—” After what she’d done to Alice, I couldn’t bring myself to refer to her as my mother.
“—after she gave him a phone. While she headed up here, he deactivated the cameras on the back entrance and took off.”
“Shit.” Griffen took a long sip of coffee. “Lucas pissed?”
“I hope for Agent Holley’s sake he finds Maxwell first because Lucas is ready to strangle him. He does not like the idea that there are holes in his system.”
“Internal security was in place long before he got here,” Griffen pointed out.
“He doesn’t care. Thinks he should have caught it. He’s going through every line of code until he finds it.”
Griffen nodded, unsurprised. “I made Alice take one of those pain pills from when she had that bump on the head. She wanted to wait up for you, but she was hurting and freaked out. Thinks you hate her for killing Lacey.”
I froze with the beer bottle halfway to my mouth. Alice thinks I hate her?
I’d reviewed the security footage, watching over and over as Lacey raised the lamp over her head ready to crack open Alice’s skull.
She’d tried to kill Alice. How could I make up for that? There were no words I could say, no recompense big enough to fix this.
Alice was supposed to be safe with me.
Instead, I’d practically served her up to be murdered by my own family.
Me hate Alice? I couldn’t imagine how Alice didn’t hate me. At the very least she had to be having serious second thoughts about staying with me. First, I’d put her in the middle of an explosion, then decided we should take on a toddler, and if that weren’t enough, I’d let Lacey try to kill her.
All these years wanting Alice, and now it seemed like all I could do was fuck up the whole thing.
I set the bottle of beer down on the counter. I had to talk to her, to tell her how wrong she was. I could never hate Alice. Not in this lifetime or any other.
I started out of the kitchen when Griffen said something that halted me in my tracks.
“You didn’t call.”
I turned to see his eyes narrowed in something that looked like accusation.
“What?”
“You didn’t call. She sat here all afternoon and half the night brooding, afraid you were going to come back and end things, kick her out, and you never even called.”
“I— We— We were with Lacey, and then trying to find Maxwell—”
And I was hiding out because I couldn’t face Alice. Wasn’t ready for her to walk away.
“I’ve never known you to hide from your problems, Cooper.” His eyes steady on mine, Griffen took a slow sip of coffee.
I wanted to deck him. I picked up my beer instead. He was right. I was being a coward. I should have pushed Griffen out of the way when Alice had been crying on his shoulder, should have let my brothers follow Lacey to the hospital.
I could have argued my case, told Griffen it was touch and go there for a while with Lacey, the high levels of alcohol in her blood causing problems with bleeding, the doctors worried about blood on her brain.
I could have told him that Alice wouldn’t be safe until we caught Maxwell and used him to get Tsepov off the street. All of that was true. True, but still excuses.
I’d been jealous at the way Alice had cried in Griffen’s arms. Guilty and heartbroken that I’d let Lacey hurt her.
I should have stayed with her. Instead, I’d done what I did best. I focused on solving the problems right in front of me. Lacey. Maxwell. And the disaster my parents had caused between them.
Griffen was right. I should have called. I should have been here, should have let my brothers deal with the rest of it.
“I love her,” I said.
“I’m not the one you need to tell.”
“No shit. But she’s doped up on pain meds and sleeping. You want me to wake her up?” If I sounded surly it’s because I felt surly. Surly and frustrated and sick with love for Alice.
“No. Let them both sleep. It’s been a hell of a day.”
“Thanks for staying with her and Petra. I was an ass for being gone all day, but I wouldn’t have been able to focus for shit if you hadn’t been here with them.”
“Anything for Alice, man. You know that.”
I gave a wry laugh that was a touch too raw, remembering the way he’d held Alice as she’d sobbed. “What is it with you and Alice? Do I need to kick your ass? Because I'm not giving her up. Not for you, not for anyone.”
Griffen was one of my best friends, one of the few people I trusted completely. He was as close as a brother, but I’d level him if he thought he was going to go after Alice.
“Fuck, no, Coop. Jesus. You’re like a brother,” he said, echoing my own thoughts. “I don't poach.”
His eyes went dark as he said the last. Griffen would never go after another man’s woman. He’d learned about betrayal the hard way.
“I know. So, what then? You've always been a little protective. Axel bitched about you when he was trying to get Emma back, but with Alice, you’re—different.”
A grin spread across Griffen's face. “Axel deserved it. He was an ass and Emma was in a tight spot. I did them a favor. She needed to know she had a way out. She needed to choose Axel, not end up backed into a corner because he was a dick and a dumbass.”
“Agreed. But that doesn't answer my question.”
Griffen stared into his coffee mug for a long moment before turning his eyes on me and saying quietly, “She reminds me of someone, okay? Someone I haven't seen in a long time.”
An uneasy feeling spiraled through me. “Your ex-fiancée?”
Griffen's face twisted into a bitter smirk. “You mean my sister-in-law? That viper? Fuck, no. She's nothing like Alice.”
His eyes drifted to the mug again. I waited, wishing I hadn’t brought up the fiancée who’d dropped him for his brother the day the ink was dry on yet another new copy of his father's will, this one transferring a fortune from Griffen's future to his brother’s.
I only knew about the ex-fiancée courtesy of a bottle of tequila nearly ten years before. Griffen never talked about her. Or his brother. About any of the Sawyers. He’d walked away and never looked back. I couldn't say I blamed him. It sounded like the ex-fiancée wasn’t the only viper in that nest.
The corner of his mouth quirked in a wry smile and he gave a single shake of his head before he said, “Not someone I was with. Not a girlfriend. A friend. One of my best friends. Until she wasn’t.”
“What was her name?” I asked, ready for him to shut me down.
“Hope. Her name was Hope.” He shook his head as if trying to shake off a clinging memory.
“Hope is nothing like Alice. She doesn't have her spunk, for one. But the spine of steel? That determination? Yeah. Hope is quiet, unlike Alice. But Hope has a quirky sense of style. Not the same as Alice’s, but it still reminds me of her.
The way she'd always dress in her boring school uniform, but there'd be something—ladybug earrings or socks with melting clocks on them.
Something that was quirky and offbeat and so exactly her.
"She was taller than Alice—I mean, everyone is taller than Alice—but slender. She looked so breakable I used to worry for her, but she was like a reed. She’d bend, but she never broke.” He trailed off, his tone wistful, eyes staring at nothing.
“You never dated her?” I had a number of platonic female friends, but I don't think I've ever described one the way Griffen described his Hope.
His eyes came back to mine, dark with remembered pain. “No. I was too caught up with the Viper back then, and she was too young. Never occurred to me, to be honest. And then she fucking stabbed me in the back along with the rest of them, so I guess it's a good thing I didn't.”
I didn't know what to say to that.
“Anyway, Alice is a friend. I swear, that's it. I've never once thought of her as anything more. But I’ll look out for her. Even if that means I have to go head-to-head with you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Anyway, I’m bunking on the cot in the holding room tonight. With Maxwell out there and Lacey saying she was going to give Petra to Andrei—”
“What?” What the fuck was wrong with her? Give a child to Tsepov? I buried the instinctive swell of rage. There was no point. Not now. Petra was safe and she was going to stay that way.
Griffen set down his coffee cup and gave me a curious look. “You didn’t know? I thought you saw the feeds?”
“I didn’t have them wired for sound, just video. I was only trying to keep an eye on Alice when she was injured. You know how she is, she won’t sit still.”
“Shit. I didn’t realize. Lacey didn’t say anything?”
“She refused to speak to any of us.” She’d laid in that bed, covered in bandages, her head turned resolutely to the wall, lips pressed firmly together, not even acknowledging her sons. “What do you mean she was going to give Petra to Tsepov? What the fuck?”
“She told Alice that if she got rid of Petra, everything could go back to normal. Your mother is deluded, man. She needs treatment.”
Good luck with that.
I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. I’d long ago given up on the idea of my mother seeking help for her drinking. Wasn’t going to happen.
I settled for, “I have extra security on the building. Teams out looking for Maxwell. Holley is pissed, but he has guys on it. We should be okay for the night.”
“Probably. I’m staying anyway.”
Griffen pushed himself off the stool at the breakfast counter, unwinding his body slowly as if weighed down by memories he wished had stayed buried. I shouldn’t have brought up the fiancée.
I’d been an asshole all day. To my best friend. To the woman I love. I’d make it up to them tomorrow.
Tomorrow had to be a better day than today, didn’t it?
I was an asshole and an idiot.
It turned out tomorrow would be even worse.