Chapter 27
Ethan
“Call me, you utter cunt,” I growl softly into the phone, and hang up. I’m not really mad with Aidan or Callan. In fact, I’m impressed. But anything short of a pissed-off voicemail will give him the option to ignore me.
The steak fries gently in the pan as the oven chips cook behind me, and I stand over it, trying not to think about what those two are walking into without me. The food smells like ordinary life, which is ridiculous given the events of today.
I flip the steak. It sizzles.
Annabelle is quiet in the bedroom. I listened for her for the first ten minutes after I left her there, half convinced she would get up and start overthinking herself into the floor again. She didn’t. The absence of her footsteps is the best thing I’ve heard all day.
My phone stays silent on the counter.
I check it anyway.
Nothing from Aidan. Nothing from Callan.
Which means they are either mid-killing or dead, and since the universe has not seen fit to collapse around me, I’m going with mid-killing.
I know how Aidan gets when his patience runs out, and Callan has decided that Annabelle is his, and anyone who tries to hurt her will die.
Between the two of them, Briggs doesn’t know what is coming for him.
Staring at my phone for a few more minutes, when nothing happens, I plate the food, set two glasses of water on the island, and go get her. She isn’t sleeping as I’d half expected. She is lying on her side exactly where I left her, but she has shifted closer to my pillow.
Her eyes lift to mine when I step in.
“Food’s ready.” I cross to the bed and hold my hand out for her. “Come.”
She obeys without argument, pushing herself up slowly against the headboard. Her hair is loose from the bun now, falling around her face in soft, untidy strands. She looks wrung out. Used. Claimed. Mine. Ours.
I lead her to the kitchen and sit her on one of the stools. I take the one next to it and pull her plate closer to me. Picking up the knife and fork, I slice into the steak and hold it up for her.
She stares at me for a second before her gaze drops to the steak. I don’t think for even one second, she will protest.
She doesn’t. She opens her mouth and takes the bite from the fork.
“Good girl.”
I cut another piece and feed her again. She chews slowly, eyes half on me, half somewhere far away. The bruises we gave her are going to come up properly by morning. The bites as well. The thought does filthy things to me at exactly the wrong time.
I give her another bite. A faint colour touches her cheeks. It pleases me more than it has any right to. I take a bite from my own plate, then another for her. She eats because I put the food in front of her and because I ask. No fuss. No stubborn little argument. Just trust.
It is a dangerous thing to hand a man like me.
“Drink,” I tell her.
She picks up the water and does as she’s told.
I watch her throat work as she swallows and force my attention back to the phone on the counter. Still nothing. My temper starts prodding at my ribs again.
Annabelle notices, because she notices too much. “They’re alive.”
“You sound very sure.”
“They’d have called if they were dead just to annoy you.”
I snort. “You’re not wrong.”
The phone buzzes a moment later.
I snatch it up before the second buzz and purposely don’t put it on speaker. “About fucking time.”
Aidan laughs once, breathless and vicious. “Miss me?”
“Deeply. You dead?”
“Obviously not.”
“Callan?”
A pause, then Callan’s voice comes on, cold and flat. “Alive.”
I stab a chip and hold it up for Annabelle. She hesitates, looking at the phone, but I wave the chip around, and she opens up. Her well-being doesn’t stop for anything. “Well? Are you calling with failure or good news?”
Aidan’s laugh comes down the line, rough and pleased. “Good depends on how much you like arson.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I’m liking this so far… go on.” I slice more steak for Annabelle.
“Briggs had a little retreat set up,” Aidan says. “Very private. Very secure. A bit less secure now.”
“How did you find it?”
“We paid a visit to that Finn guy Bennett mentioned,” Callan says.
“Rough as fuck and was happy to hand over the information, no questions asked, so his hands stay clean,” Aidan adds.
“How sure are you about that?” I ask.
“Sure.”
Callan’s voice cuts in, colder, steadier. “Briggs is dead. We are on our way back.”
“Okay, but what about the rest of the ring?”
“Finn is handling it. He needed the head cut off the snake. Apparently, Bennett told him to trust us when we came looking.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“Nope.”
“Jesus. So he was a good guy.”
“Well, good is relative. He wasn’t a raping, murdering arsehole.”
“What is going on?” Annabelle asks.
I ignore her. “How far out are you?”
“An hour probably.”
“You work quickly.”
“Best way. I don’t see the point in fucking about when we know the end result.”
“You sure he’s dead?”
“We watched him burn.”
“Good,” I say and hang up.
“Ethan!” Annabelle says. “What happened?”
“What happened is my brothers work fast. Briggs—the real one this time—is dead.”
“Dead,” she repeats quietly.
I nod and cut another piece of steak for her, because she still needs to eat even if the world is on fire. “Dead.”
“How did they find him so quickly?”
I hold the fork out. “Open.”
She does. Chews. Swallows. Her fingers curl around the edge of the island. “Aidan doesn’t sit around waiting for shit to happen. He never did. He went to Finn—the Sergeant Bennet mentioned. Apparently, Bennett told Finn to trust us.”
“Bennett really was undercover.”
“Looks that way.”
Her eyes drop to the counter. “Fuck.”
I set the fork down and turn on the stool to face her properly. “Tinks.”
She blinks once and looks at me. “We nearly killed him.”
“We didn’t.”
“Maeve nearly did.”
“Maeve did what anyone in her position would’ve done. Bennett knew that when he walked in there.”
“That doesn’t make him less dead.”
“No.”
I don’t insult her with easy comfort. She would hear the lie in it anyway. A good man is dead. Jack is dead. A woman we never got a name for is dead. Briggs times two is dead, and somehow that doesn’t feel clean enough to balance the scales and bring her mother and all those other dead women back.
Annabelle exhales slowly. “How did they do it?”
I consider not telling her. Then I remember who I’m dealing with. She asked for the truth. She got dragged into this because too many people thought she couldn’t handle this much already. “Arson.”
“And they definitely got the right man?”
“They would’ve made sure.”
“This all seemed a bit too easy,” she says, staring at the half-eaten steak.
“Bennett laid out the groundwork. All it needed was Aidan to take the initiative and show up to finish it.”
“How did Bennet know that much about you three?”
“He’s been on this case for years. So have we.”
“That doesn’t explain it.”
“It does when you think about the resources he had, not just as a DI but an undercover officer as well.”
“Are Aidan and Callan going to be arrested?”
It’s a good question.
“No, they won’t find evidence, and even if they did, there is reasonable doubt.”
She frowns and then chews her lip. “You’re triplets. Fuck. I still think this was too easy.” She wrings her hands, then drops them into her lap.
“It wasn’t easy,” I say. “It was fast from our perspective. It’s a different way of looking at it.”
She lifts her eyes to mine. “Explain it to me like I’m five, and then I’ll let it go.”
I pick the fork back up, cut another piece, and wait until she opens for me.
“Bennett had already built the case. He had Finn. He had enough to know where Briggs nested up when he needed privacy. Aidan and Callan didn’t find a mystery man in an hour, out of luck.
They went straight to the man Bennett trusted and forced the next door open. ”
“Forced.”
I give her a look. “Do you want the delicate version?”
“No.”
“Then forced.”
She huffs a breath and takes the next bite. Her appetite is hanging on because I am making it happen, but it is hanging on. That is enough for now.
“The reason it feels wrong,” I say, “is because you spent years not knowing anything. Then, in a few days, all of it came at once. Us in your life, Maeve hunting the same men, Bennett undercover and Jack was in over his head. Then Briggs dies in a fire started by two men who solve problems with violence.” I shrug once. “That would feel unreal to anyone.”
Her stare stays on me, searching. “You really aren’t worried.”
“I’m worried about you. I’m not worried about whether my brothers can kill a man and get away with it.”
“That is such a fucked thing to say like it’s normal.”
“It is normal for us.”
Her throat works. “I know.”
I feed her another bite, then one for me. She swallows and looks down at her plate again.
“Three more bites and you can finish, okay, Tinks?”
She nods, happy to be given an actual end line that isn’t half a plate away. She opens for the next bite.
After three bites, I set the cutlery down and hold the water up. “All of it.”
She drinks because I tell her to. Dark satisfaction in seeing her obey me makes my cock hard.
When she is finished, she looks at me for a long second. “What happens now?”
“Now we wait for my brothers and move forward with our lives.”
“And Maeve?”
I sigh. “That’s a conversation for another time.”
“She isn’t dead, and she isn’t who Jack thought she was. She deserves… something. She is the only mother you have. Cherish that, even if it takes you a second to forgive her for leaving you.”
“You aren’t supposed to be giving me sage advice, Tinks.”
“Just because I want you to take care of me, doesn’t mean I can’t still think for myself.”
“You’re right,” I say.
She goes still as if she wasn’t expecting me to agree so quickly.
I rest my palms on her thighs. “I don’t have to like what she did. I don’t have to forgive her for all the years she stayed gone, but I can put it aside and try to rebuild whatever falls out.”
Annabelle studies my face as if she is checking whether I mean it. “You would do that?”
“For you?” I slide off the stool and step between her knees. “I’d do a lot fucking worse than have an awkward conversation with a woman who disappeared for years.”
A faint, tired smile touches her mouth.
“Bed now,” I say.
She lifts her arms without hesitation, and I lift her off the stool and into my arms. She settles against me as I carry her to the bedroom.
I set her down and pull her top over her head. “You okay?”
“No,” she says and lies back as I pull her leggings off. “But I’m not falling apart either.”
“That’ll do.”
She goes quiet again. I let her as I undress her and then put her pyjamas on before tucking her in, and taking up position in the armchair to make sure she is safe while she sleeps.