by ANGEL PAYNE
“Hey, man. We’re almost back to the house. Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Unless you’re talking about an epic argument or the tirade that got me banished from the bedroom? Nope, not a thing.”
“Damn.” His tone was sincere. “Sorry, my friend. What’s gotten into her now, you think? Maybe she’s OTR?”
“Don’t be so crass,” I spat. “And it’s definitely not that. I have firsthand knowledge. She keeps saying it’s stress. I’d suggest her sister-in-law coming out for a few days, but the woman is a powder keg.”
“Yeah, but also the powder keg who’s holding Abstract Catering together.”
I grimaced. Scrubbed a hand up my jaw. “I fucking hate this,” I muttered. “I’m the reason that’s even having to happen. The cause of Abbigail being away from her business.”
The company that was her own version of Shark Enterprises. That she’d built with her bare hands and raw passion.
“Well, the sooner we can get her out of Twentynine Palms detention duty, the better.”
I almost questioned if the guy was referring to himself as much as Abbigail but decided I probably wouldn’t like the answer. Instead, I said, “I’ve had a brainstorm about the keyring. Maybe it can help.”
“Outstanding,” Elijah stated. “Because I’ve got something too, but it’s definitely only half the puzzle.”
“Let’s meet in the office when you’re back.”
“We’re pulling into the garage right now.”
A few minutes later, he and I sat at the desk in the study, looking at the computer monitor to which he’d connected his laptop. The gift from Terryn lay on the hardwood desk between us, and an image of the charm was on the display, blown up so the detail could be seen.
The symbols matched.
But right now, that was all we knew.
“So, talk to me, Banks. How did you find this online?” I asked.
“Easy.” Elijah shrugged. This was his wheelhouse, so he spoke like the discovery process was simple and reasonable and anyone could do it.
Except it wasn’t simple and easy. I paid him a ridiculous amount of money to do his job because he was at the top of heap at what he did.
“I scanned the charm, then searched for the image and found a handful that matched. Certain things about the image stand out, you see? Like the colors, the points here and here.” He motioned to the screen while he explained. “So, all of the supposed matches had those things in common. From there, it was a matter of weeding through the images and looking at the finer details and picking out the actual match. The words around the outside of the triangle were the key.”
Victori Sunt Spolia
Each word spanned the outside edges of a triangle, which served as the framework for a twine of laurel leaves.
“So were you able to locate this company? This is a logo for a company, right?” I leaned in closer to the monitor to read the small lettering around the logo.
“Unbelievable.” I shook my head as the growl emanated from the pit of my throat. I peered closer, just to make sure I was really right about this.
“What?” Elijah leaned in too. “What is it, man? Have you seen this symbol before?”
“I think so.” I steepled my hands. “But I don’t think it’s a symbol.”
“What is it, then?” He fidgeted with tension, struggling to be polite about it. “Because I’m still coming up empty on anything beyond the match. I’ve had a few hits, but every thread I follow comes up as a dead end. Big fucking wastes of time. It seems like they’re intentionally misleading.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“So you want to share with a brother?” Elijah rubbed the back of his neck, more open about his frustration. I understood his agony. We’d been friends for a long damn time, and like me, he was a take-charge fixer. He was as pissed as me that we hadn’t won this game yet.
But I sensed he’d be more enraged by what I had to share next.
“That’s not a symbol,” I asserted. “I think it’s a logo.”
Elijah narrowed his gaze at me. Swung it back to the monitor. “A…huh?”
“That phrase is in Latin.” I pointed at the screen. “It basically means, ‘to the victor goes the spoils.’ In the eighteen hundreds, it was more famous as ‘to the victor belong the spoils.’ Basically, the strongest person wins and takes all the treasure, right?”
I waited for Elijah’s nod. He didn’t take long for the acknowledgment.
“Earlier, I was sitting over by that window—”
“With ice on your singed pubes?” Elijah smirked.
“Something along those lines,” I went on without giving him more kerosene for that fire. “And along came these three lizards, onto the same rock. As I watched them fight for the alpha sunning spot, I had that same thought. How the biggest asshole reptile won the right to sun himself.”
Elijah chuffed before affirming, “To the victor go the spoils—and the sun.”
I rocked back in my chair. “Well, guess who I thought of right after that?”
“Well, shit.” Elijah settled back against his own seatback. “Viktor Blake?”
I pointed at him. “Ding, ding, ding. Stuffed shark for the winner.”
He rested his head against his upturned fist. “Man, your mind is a complicated and crazy place.”
“I love you too, honey.”
He pinned his stare back on the monitor. “So you think that son of a bitch is behind this?”
“I’d bet you a few lizards on it.”
“Well, you can keep those—but just this morsel may help a lot in my search. If I cross-reference his name and known aliases with the logo, it might pull up something interesting.”
“Good.”
I meant it. Goddammit, at last we might be getting somewhere with this crap. Thank you, Terryn Ramsey. But the celebratory grin I expected from Elijah was a no-show. The guy still seemed stuck on a pause button as he sat back, thinking, before rising and then turning to face me.
“Bas. Let me ask you something.”
I gave a single nod and then waited for him to continue. I had no clue what to expect next. The look on his face shifted like storm clouds rolling across a prairie sky.
“What happens if you confirm Blake and the logo are connected? What are you going to do?”
I remained still. That was a good question. My immediate instinct led at once to an outrageous plan, but I didn’t have to state that out loud. Elijah already knew it too. But killing the bastard wouldn’t get us anywhere. I’d be every authority’s first suspect if Blake turned up dead.
“I think we need to figure out his motivation,” I said at last. “Is this all still the bullshit from the old neighborhood? If so, it’s gone way too far at this point. People are dead now.”
“Agreed,” my friend declared. “Which means we’ve got to follow the dots to something else.” The storm on his features turned darker. “In this case, probably someone else.”
My instincts flared again. This time, in the most tormenting ways. “What the hell are you getting at?”
“I think you know, man.” He waited as I plunged my head into my hands. “I know you don’t want to, but you do.” Then as I heaved in a lungful of air. “It’s Abbigail. At some point, we have to acknowledge that.”
I still didn’t say anything. I barely moved—until my violent flinch when Elijah lowered a brotherly clasp to my shoulder.
“Bas?”
He gave me a gentle nudge. I jerked up my head, leveling my gaze to his.
“What do you want from me, Elijah?” I asked plaintively.
“I want you to face the reality of the situation.”
“And you think I’m not, damn it?”
“Blake has an unhealthy fixation with her. I watched him at that groundbreaking, and it was disturbing.” Elijah’s voice was quiet and eerie, and chills ran up my spine. At the same time, rage kept boiling my blood and balling my fists.
“I know th
at, you fucker,” I seethed. “I was there too!”
“But you haven’t processed anything past that, aside from going off on Blake like a caveman.”
I swallowed hard. Didn’t do a damn thing for the sting behind my eyes and the lump of lead in my throat. “Processed it?” I flung. “In case you can’t tell, I’ve been busy processing a few other matters at the moment, Banks.”
“And I’m not debating that.” He was still speaking like the goddamned reincarnation of Mr. Miyagi, trying to quietly coax me into walking across his ridiculous rice paper. “But maybe, while you’ve got the chance, you need to step back and evaluate where you’re going with all this. Where you’re actually going with Abbigail too.”
I stomped my way back over to the window from this morning. More than anything, I wished there was another vodka and tonic waiting for me there. “What about Abbigail?”
“You tell me, man. You never really talk about it. About her.”
“What the hell are you— I talk about her all the damn time!”
“About how to protect her. About how to get her to behave the way you want her to. But what about how you actually feel about her, dude? About how much she means to you? About your plans for a future with her?”
I turned my back on him. Slammed my hands to my hips in lieu of smashing one through the plate glass window. “I’m not a touchy-feely asshole like you and Twombley, okay? Just because the two of you sit around braiding each other’s hair and shit doesn’t mean I do. I’m not wired that way.”
“And look where it’s gotten you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” If he didn’t tread carefully, the next place I put a fist would be in his mouth.
“Well, while you’ve been busy with your world domination plans and studiously ignoring your feelings, your arch nemesis is trying to take your most prized possession,” he rebutted. “And said possession has now gotten incredibly ill, yet you still don’t seem to think any of it’s important enough to pay attention to.”
I spun back around. Elijah had folded his arms across his chest. Mr. Miyagi, in all his self-satisfied pride, was still in the house.
“Important enough?” I gritted out. “What the fuck more do you want me to do, Banks? Open a goddamned vein? Because I will. Because the woman in that bedroom is that important!”
As he rolled his eyes, I longed to knock him so hard that his pupils flew to China. “And of course yelling at me will fix everything. That’s the answer, huh?”
As soon as the patronizing words were out, I fought the craving to deck him again. To smack his head into the desktop until he started really hearing me. But that would help nothing.
Fucker probably knew that too.
Not that he’d get the satisfaction of my admission.
I stumbled back to my chair. Fell back into the thing as I let fly with a long, conflicted groan.
“Shit. I brought her here to keep her safe. I had no idea she was this sick.”
Elijah grunted. “Well, she’s this sick.”
“It’s been tearing me up to see her like this. I planned on calling a doctor this afternoon to come out here and look at her, but then I found her in the kitchen, content and cooking, and she looked completely fine. I’m so damn confused!”
“No.” He shook his head. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
I glared harder at him. “What the living fuck are you talking about?”
“Are you really that blind, man? Or that stupid?” When I just continued staring, he facepalmed himself. Hard. “Okay, yeah. I guess you really are.”
I slammed my hands to the tops of my thighs. The wrath in my move catapulted up my body, landing solidly at the center of my chest. “You going to spit it out sometime this century, Banks?”
He lowered his hand. Glared like we were in third grade all over again and he was having to explain new math to me. “Just…call the doctor anyway, okay? And stop evading the important stuff with Abbigail. Something tells me you two will need to be solid on that shit, sooner rather than later.”
He wasn’t going to divulge more than that. Which definitely left me stranded in the dark about the new math.
Which meant I still felt like decking him.
As soon as I remembered how to add two and two.
Chapter Five
Abbigail
Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Romeo and Juliet could both suck a bag of dicks as far as I was concerned. Sweet sorrow? More like absolute hell. Full-on gut-wrenching misery was even more accurate.
Bas and I finally had sucked up our egos and made up for our terrible fight. I apologized for my “impertinence”—his label—and he did the same about his “breast-obsessed distractibility”—my label—which led to some of the best sex of my existence in the giant master suite bed. Afterward, there was a different energy about him, as if the last of his rage had spilled out along with his orgasm. In its place was a quiet watchfulness that I couldn’t figure out but wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I kind of liked it.
We spent the rest of the afternoon lazing in each other’s arms, trading off between an oversize float in the pool, a large lounge chair on the deck—and just about every other surface in the master bedroom. We made love on every surface that was available and even some we improvised.
Memories I battled to keep close in my heart, instead of the crushing ache threatening it as soon as Joel started up the town car that night. A pain that swelled and grew as I watched the vehicle—and in it, the man I was hopelessly in love with—disappear down the driveway. I didn’t stop watching until the red taillights were nothing but tear-blurred stars in the far, far distance.
Thirty minutes later, it was still a toss-up which ached more: my head from crying so much, my stomach from dry heaving over the toilet bowl, or my heart from shattering yet again. Every shard felt irreparable this time—and I honestly didn’t know how much more abuse the organ could sustain before refusing to beat any more.
Curling into a smaller ball didn’t help. I tried my left side and then the right, tossing from one end of the bed to the other. I couldn’t get comfortable. All I smelled was Sebastian’s scent. It wasn’t just his cologne wafting up from the sheets. It was all of him. The smell of the heady perspiration that slicked his skin while he fucked me. The expensive hair products he artfully fingered through his dark waves to demand their submission.
“Damn it.” I drew out the last vowel, making it a groan into the pillow. As I closed my eyes, I swore I could even smell his smile, his laughter, his passion. It sounded insane, but I could so easily picture him. Could so easily be engulfed by all the memories of him. The mischief in his eyes as he loomed over me. The devious slant of his lips as cunning thoughts pursued his mind. And oh yes, all the beautiful ways he made those fantasies come true, arousing and tempting me with his lips, fingers and tongue…until I begged. Begged for all of it. Every wicked, depraved way he could drive my need so high and hot and urgent…
But I couldn’t beg him anymore. Because he wasn’t here anymore. My whispered pleas met nothing but heavy, empty air. It was all so unfair.
So. Freaking. Unfair.
I’d entreated him to stay. Pleaded for just one more night. Asked in my sweetest, most desperate voice for him to stay with me for one more night and have Joel drive him back early in the morning—but nothing worked. The man had a resolve stronger than the hull of a modern-day battleship, and now he actually had a direction in which to steer that big barge. I knew that even before I tried changing his mind, but I also knew I had to try. I had to do everything I could to keep him with me instead of lying here lonely and afraid and unsure.
Exactly like I was feeling now.
A laugh burst from me as I considered that. Afraid. Afraid of what, exactly? I didn’t fear for my own safety. Elijah had me locked away in this fortress as though I were a damn prisoner. No, my fear was for Bas himself.
At least I thought that was what it was. The guys kept me so carefull
y closed off and in the dark, believing I was too fragile to handle any information they had uncovered on the case, I had to fill in the blanks on my own from the tidbits I overheard or that were accidentally shared in front of me.
I only knew all this “investigating” had gone on for months now, and the most viable culprit they had right now was Viktor Blake. The concept still seemed like grasping at straws to me, but I had resigned myself to leaving the investigation to Bas, Elijah, and their team. Those men knew way more than me about what made Viktor tick. I simply had to trust Bas. And surprisingly, that was something that came very easily.
Oh, yes. Surprisingly. Since my mom’s death, trust was something I had a hard time dispensing—until that morning I stood in the Inglewood kitchen with Rio, watching the morning news about a suicide jumper in Long Beach. Soon after, Sebastian Shark strode into my world and changed everything. The man made trusting him as natural as breathing—almost from the first moment we met and absolutely from the first moment we touched. He had a way about him that just said, I’ve got you.
But this whole situation felt like he was asking for more than trust. Something even beyond blind faith. And I was tired, deep into my bones, of trying to generate it all the time. It was easier to just be resigned to the circumstances. To give up the fight. If I couldn’t even keep my eyes open, what was the point in caring about anything beyond this compound? Hell, I barely even cared about combing my hair anymore. At least once a day, Elijah found me in my window seat, softly snoring with a book on my chest. Bas had brought me most of the paperback TBR stack that normally sat on my home nightstand when he visited.
God, how I missed that nightstand. And the luxurious bed it was next to. And the house in Calabasas. Our house. My normal life.
But would anything be normal again?
The men still refused to restore my cell phone’s calling capabilities, insisting someone could easily trace my incoming calls. But Sebastian had told me if I wanted to make a phone call, Elijah would allow me to do so without a hassle.
First thing the next morning, I decided it was time to put that acquiescence to the test.
