“I love you more, my beautiful girl.” Flashing her his cheeky wink, he bit into his bottom lip. “Now get him out of here.”
A cry ripped from her when she gave him one last hard kiss and then took my trembling hand.
“No,” I sobbed, clinging to my brother. “I can’t.”
“Yes,” he bit out, “Yes. You can. You love her for both of us. You laugh for both us. And you fucking live for both of us.” He sucked in a breath and gritted his teeth. “Now get the fuck out of here!”
Harley tugged on my hand, her cries as loud as mine.
“GO!” Jobe screamed as the clock hit one minute. “GO!”
My feet moved as Harley pulled me across the room. My hand gripped the doorframe and I took one last look back.
00:23
Jobe smiled. And he nodded. “I’ll be waiting,” he mouthed. “And I’ll always be with you.”
I don’t remember leaving the house. I don’t remember the ear-splitting roar as Harley’s home blew from the inside out. I don’t remember the sound of my own screams.
I just remember his smile.
And I’ll never forget it.
Thirty-one
The tiny bit of satisfaction I got as I clicked the enter key didn’t last very long. My eyes lowered to it. To the key that would forever haunt me. And so I made sure to make it work for me. For Rome. For Jobe.
“Did it burrow?” Ben asked, the hope and fear in his voice making me blow out a breath.
“I think so.” I watched numbers scroll, colours merge, encryptions decrypt and sizzle. Closing my eyes, I shot both Jobe and Evan a prayer. “Now I need you both,” I whispered.
It had been four days. Rome was so quiet, so withdrawn. A piece of him had died, literally. He struggled to take each breath, he battled with the simplest of functions, and he watched over me every second of every day. I thought he would have shifted his grief to blame, on me. But he didn’t. Although he never left my side, he made no attempt to love me. And I knew why.
“You be careful. Do not leave this fucking house,” Ben growled at me as we both turned to look at Rome through the glass partition wall, perched on the sofa in his own little world.
I gave him a nod and watched him disappear through Rome’s apartment door. Blowing out a nervous breath I left the office and slowly went to my man.
He didn’t look at me when I came to stand in front of him, still lost to the horrors in his head.
“Is it Jobe’s?”
His eyes shot up, widening and fixing on me. Shock glittered in each unique eye but then the shimmer of tears softened the pain and misery. A small smile, the first one in so long, lightened his face and he leaned forward, placing his hand over my stomach. “Yes. He was the only one who didn’t use a condom.”
I nodded, my mouth drying. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged, and let out a long sigh. “You were coping with the withdrawal. We weren’t sure your mind could cope with it just yet.”
“But…” I stutter, incoherent thought failing me. “How did you know? How did you find out?”
Sensing my worry, he slipped his hand across my stomach and grabbed my hand. “We had a doctor here. He couldn’t give you medication without asking.”
“If I was…pregnant?”
“Yes. He asked and, well, Jobe said he hadn’t used anything. So the doctor did a blood test. Your Coco-Pops have been loaded with vitamins, and drugs, safe drugs, to help you and baby with the withdrawal.” A mischievous twinkle in his eyes made mine water, the sight of his sheer beauty making my heart pang for another.
“Rome,” I whispered.
“Carter,” he corrected. “There’s no more Rome and Jobe, only Carter. Two in one.”
I nodded, my heart swelling at the dedication to his brother. “Carter, I’m not doing so well.”
Tears dripped off my chin and landed on his face as he looked up at me. The agony on his face made me drop to my knees and bury my face into him, my arms clinging to him as if he would vanish before my eyes. “I’m not doing so good,” I repeated.
“Babe,” he choked out, his tears wetting my hair and bearing down on me with the weight of them. “He loved you so very much.”
“I know. And he loved you more. He gave you his life, Rome…Carter. He gave you my life, and his baby’s life. I need you to love us for both of you.”
His cries became suffocating, his fingers digging into my flesh so hard I knew he would leave bruises. “I’m so lost, Harley,” he wept. “I’m so fucking lost without him. I don’t know what to do. My heart hurts, my lungs hurt, my soul is in fucking agony. I’m just so damn fucking…angry!”
I climbed onto his lap, taking his wet face in my soft hold. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This all on me.”
He growled, shaking his head. “Fuck. No.”
He was angry. And I understood that. He was hurting more than I could help him. “Do you hate me?”
He shook his head hard, his horrified eyes finding mine. “No. Never. I’m so hateful of everything. But never you.”
I slid against his crotch, trying to ease his frustration and give him any bit of pleasure and diversion I could. His cock was hard, his stare just as much so.
I ran my tongue up the side of his neck, planting tiny kisses over his skin and up to his ear. “Do you want to hate fuck me?”
He gasped, his cock hardening and pressing into my pussy. His fingers slid into my hair and he took a fistful, winding it around his knuckles and pulling my head back so he could stare into my guilty eyes. “I just want to love you,” he whispered.
I scrambled with his fly, as he yanked at my jeans, tearing them down my legs just enough until I was exposed and sliding down his length. We both gasped, the pleasure driving a wedge between the hurt and pain.
Dropping his face to my chest, he clung to me as I rode him slowly and deeply, grinding my hips against his pelvis to grant him every molecule of ecstasy that I could.
“Harley,” he breathed against me, using me, needing me. Loving me for both of the men I had fallen in love with.
We both fell at the same time, the need for pleasure overriding the agony and giving our souls a reprieve.
“He’ll pay, I promise.” And I did. I fucking swore it.
“How?” he snarled, pulling back from me. “He’s been one step ahead all this time. We can’t chase what we can’t find, or see.”
“It’s okay.” I took his face in my hands, my heart aching at the desolation staring back at me. “We won’t need to chase him. He’s coming here.”
He stilled, tilting his head in confusion. “What? How?”
Running my thumb across his bottom lip, I collected his heartache and slipped it between my lips. I slid off him, pulled my jeans back up and settled on the floor in front of him. I deserved his grief and pain as much as my own. Leaning back on my heels, I stared at the floor. “A long time ago, Michael hit my equipment. Just like this time. It was different then though. He completely wiped me out, cleaned my system of everything. It was all just a game to him, and at that time he still wanted to play – with me.”
Carter watched me closely, his brows pinched tight as he listened.
My mouth was so dry and I gagged subconsciously at what I had done. “Did you know my father?”
“I knew of him but not personally.”
I smiled wide with the memories. “He was the best father in the world. Nothing was too much trouble for him where I was concerned. He doted on me. He was the most notorious hacker and tech guy in Britain, in fact much farther. He had men, a group that worked with him. Much like me, Evan and Ben. But much more, and a whole lot fucking wider. My dad had allies in every part of the world. He was loved, because he was the best, but not only that, he was cruel but fair, tough yet so soft with his children. And family is everything to these guys.”
Carter slipped his hand in mine and squeezed tight when my past, once again, made me hurt.
“Anyway,” I shoo
k my head. “You just need to know that a lot of men owed my dad. A lot. And they’re all mean fuckers. They tried to help me after my family died, but by then I had met Michael and I was too far in my own shit to allow them anything of me. To me, they were the reason my dad was dead. They should have looked out for him, protected him and my family. I was angry then, and it was all just a mess in my head.”
“I get it,” he said, nodding his head faintly.
“But back to Michael wiping my work.” I sniffed. “Ben wrote a program afterwards. Everything on each of our systems is randomly, but frequently, uploaded to the other’s personal ones, more than just the ones in my basement, as a backup. It was just to protect our work, and us.”
Carter’s eyes widened.
“The virus, in its procedural term, not material, was uploaded to Ben’s.”
Carter sat silent.
“Michael didn’t bother to veil his pathway because, well, I should be dead. So Ben inverted it, and traced its channel.”
“You have Michael’s location?”
“No. It doesn’t work like that. But it gave us an in to his kit. The doors were still open at his end. He hadn’t severed the link.” I was trying to be non-technical even though I suspected Carter would be able to keep up with me.
He dropped backwards, his eyes narrow but with a flare of hope, and awe. “You can hack into Michael’s shit?”
I cleared my throat and shifted. “I can, and I have.”
“What did you do?”
“I sent in a bot. It will work its way through and establish a connection with every single address I gave it, but it will appear as though it’s come straight from Michael.”
“And what is it going to do when it makes contact with each address?”
I swallowed back the nausea. “It will upload a video.”
He knew. He stiffened, and blanched. “A video of what?”
I lowered my head, the heat on my face searing the air around us.
“A video of what, Harley?” His fingers curled around the tops of my arms and he yanked me up to his level. “Of what?”
“Of…” I ran my tongue around my teeth, trying in vain to lubricate them. “Of four men raping me.”
My pulse was beating so hard in my ears that I nearly missed his sharp intake of breath. “You… you sent that… The horror you went through, to seek vengeance for Jobe?”
I nodded. “At this very moment, every man that was on my dad’s payroll will be receiving a video of their best friend’s daughter being raped and mutilated. They will also be listening to Mole explain exactly why my father was killed, and who was associated with the death of the Davids family.”
His eyes grew wider and wider with every word.
“And every single associate of Michael’s will right about now be accepting a delayed virus, disguised as a tasty porn film – from Michael, of course,” I added with a grin. “That will clear out their bank accounts and deposit it all into one of Mr Michael McKenzie.”
“So it will look like he stitched up his own friends.”
I nodded slowly. “Spot on.”
“So, either your father’s friends will find him, or his own contacts will.”
“My father’s people will find him first. It’ll take Michael’s friends a while to figure it out, it’s a delayed worm to give us time. But I don’t want any backlash on my dad’s friends for this.”
“So you covered their backs by making Michael’s upcoming murder a gift.”
“Spot on,” I repeated. “He knew I had the video. He knew it implicated him, and that’s why he’s been playing me. But he thought I wouldn’t ever distribute it.” I shuddered. “It’s not very… complimentary.” I laughed trying to hide my mortification.
“Well, yeah.” Carter leaned into me, placing a soft kiss to my lips. “You should have destroyed it, Harley. I know they’re your dad’s friends, but fuck, to send them that, of yourself. You’re hurting yourself more.”
I shook my head. “They’re good people, Carter. As you know, not all criminals are bad people.” I shot him a cheeky wink. “For them to watch that will be like witnessing their own daughter get raped. And then the confession from Mole, and Michael’s implication. They’ll be out for blood.”
“But you wanted to be the one,” he sighed, the sadness in his eyes consuming me.
“And I will be.” I grinned. “They will bring him to me as a gift.”
“Shit!” Carter chuckled. “Well, fuck me. My girl is a genius.”
“See,” I shrugged, “There it is again! I’ve told you this many, many times.”
“And I need to tell you time and time again how much both Jobe and I love you.”
“You don’t need to. I know. I’ll always feel his love, in you. Because he lives on, in you.” I palmed my stomach. “And in his child. Our child. Let him have his peace, Carter. He never found it in life. Give it to him as the last gift you can.”
A single tear rolled from his eyes, and he nodded. “That I can give him.”
“And, of course,” I whispered. “I’ll love you for the both of us. And his child will love you for who his father was, and who his daddy will be. From now, we live life for Jobe Carter. We keep breathing air for him, and we honour him in everything we do. He will never die, Rome. Because we won’t let him.”
Pulling me up into his lap, he hugged me close, peppering my hair with kisses from both him and his brother. I smiled. Because I was right, Jobe would never die. I felt him in the arms of Rome, I heard him in each breath that Rome exhaled. I saw him in the green and blue depths of Rome’s soul.
Rome was right. Carter lived, and in him so did both Rome and Jobe.
Thirty-Two
The hitman was going to die. The anger I’d carried inside me for so many years would soon join my brother in the afterlife. Caesar044 had promised Ariel15 that we would end this. Both Jobe and I had operated as Caesar, we’d both lived as the hitman, and we’d both promised to complete the mission with the eradication of Number Four. It was the second to last promise we’d made. I would love Harley forever. I remembered back to the night Jobe died. We’d fucked Harley and she’d slipped off into the office. Jobe and I had laid on separate sofas and promised that we would love Harley forever. We made that promise as two separate men who would love one woman in entirely different, yet synchronised, ways and I would honour the pact until the day I took my last breath. But it was Carter’s promise I would keep tonight. We’d also promised, before falling asleep while our girl worked her magic, that Carter would end with the death of Michael McKenzie. We would clear our accounts, shut down our operations, and disappear. And that was what I planned to do tonight, with Harley, and the baby that belonged to the three of us. Kill the cunt who had ruined our lives, and walk together into the new life that awaited us, as a pair, and not the trio we should have grown old as.
“He’ll be here,” I said as Harley paced in front of me. “You know he’ll be here, babe.”
“I know.”
Still she continued to pace and I continued to watch her burn tracks in the carpet. She caressed her stomach, one hand gripping the bottom, the other caressing the top, her natural instinct to protect already soothing the tiny form inside her. I looked up at the ceiling, saying a silent prayer to my brother in the sky, that he’d get us through this with no glitches. We couldn’t take anymore punishment. We were done. I’d never believed that more than when I looked at my woman—our woman—and noted the dark rings under her eyes, the devastation that held her features in permanent contortion, and the tension and fear of what would happen tonight that made her back bow, her legs tremble and her teeth worry her bottom lip.
“It could be days.”
“It won’t be days,” she said, stopping to glance at me for just a minute. “He’ll be here tonight.”
“Will you sit down?” She shook her head. “Please. You made me promise to love you both for Jobe, which I can do without question. But, for now, the respons
ibility is in your hands. You can’t suffer physically, because you’re no longer carrying just yourself.”
She stopped, her muscles going into a state of shock. When what I said sank in, she turned and faced me, smiling sadly as the tears in her eyes glimmered with sadness. They never left, the tears, but when I held her at night—when we held each other and cried over the loss of our puzzle piece—after she’d fallen asleep, I tried to kiss every one away and prayed another wouldn’t follow.
“You’re right.” She nodded and walked towards me, tumbling into my waiting arms and curling up on my lap. “I’m sorry.”
With Harley in my arms, breathing deeply, and our baby in her stomach between us, protected by the both of us, I laid us down across the sofa and stroked her hair until we both fell asleep.
Fuck. Whoever wanted into the apartment meant business. Three loud bangs on the door woke me up. Three more made me sit up and rub my eyes. The seventh, eighth and ninth bangs brought me back to life.
“Harley.” I shook her gently as I stood up and jogged to the door. “Babe.”
When I reached the door and turned, she was awake, standing up, and she had her game face on.
“Open the door.”
I did, and no sooner had the latch loosened, the door flew open and a dude the size of the fucking doorway stormed in. Alec stood behind him and two more men flanked Alec. They were old, white-haired, rubbery and worn, but Jesus shit, the look in their eyes made my blood freeze over. I stepped back, letting them in.
“Get the merchandise,” one of the guys said. The big—bigger one.
The second he’d spoken Harley flew into his arms and he hoisted her from the ground, burying his face in her strawberry-scented hair. A growl rumbled low in my throat but I kept it contained. Now was not the time to be possessive, or jealous of a man who exuded an uncle-like energy. Not that I would know. I no longer had a family. I stared up at the ceiling as tears blurred my vision and the sounds of Harley’s sobs filled the room.
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