He motioned back through the living room. “I’ll take you.”
I followed him through the living room and kitchen to a door in the back. It was closed, but I could hear their voices.
He was about to reach forward, to announce our presence, when I heard my name.
My hand went to his arm, stopping him.
I could hear Kai through the door. “How is he?”
“Shitty,” Tanner replied. “How’d you feel if someone gunned down Riley?”
“I’d be devastated.”
Tanner grunted. “Then you can imagine. He asked her to marry him. You know that?”
“He told me on the phone.”
“Fuck, Kai! Fuuuuck! He’s our little brother. We’re supposed to protect him from this shit. You and me. We signed up for this. We took over, but Jesus. Not him. He—” Tanner’s voice cracked. “He’s the good one.”
“I know.”
“Do you?!” Tanner snarled.
“Watch your shit with me.”
“Sorry. I just—why didn’t he have a detail on him? She’d be alive. The guy would be dead. Jonah wouldn’t be fucking destroyed. He won’t wash her blood off of him. We tried—tried to get him to shower, tried to get him to change clothes. He won’t do it. He slips in and out of these spells, like he’s not even present. He fought me when I tried to get him to change shirts. Fought me. My guards had to wade in, and he fought them, but there was a look in his eye—I don’t think he knows he even did it. And they interrogated him for hours. Why didn’t he have a guard on him?!”
“He did.”
What?
“How do you think I knew what happened to him?” Kai barked.
“You had a guy?” Tanner asked.
“Yes, but he was too far back. They have to be or Jonah spots them, and he keeps slipping them. You know that. He wanted to be normal.”
“Well, he’s not!”
“I KNOW THAT!”
The guard pushed forward, but again I held him in place.
I wanted to hear everything. I had to.
“So what’d your guy say?”
“It was a professional hit,” Kai continued. “He’s a ghost. My guy watched the bus, the airport, train station. If he’s not in town, he drove out.”
“No way he’d go north. This isn’t our area. Why was Jonah here?”
“Because—”
With that, I shoved open the door with a growl. “Because I was an idiot and wanted to not live a mafia lifestyle!” I surged past Kai, going right for Tanner. My fist was up, but I barely registered that. “I wanted to go on a trip with my girlfriend when I asked her to marry me. How fucking stupid of me, right?! I wanted to be normal, Tanner! Can’t you understand that? But you’re right. If I wasn’t, she’d be alive. It’s my fault. I’m hearing you loud and fucking clear—”
I swung, and I heard shuffling behind me, but Tanner had a sad look on his face. He stared at me as everything unfolded in slow motion. He looked at me, at my fist, and decided not to duck.
I pulled my punch, skimming his chin instead.
He stumbled back, still looking at me with that same sadness. He was haunted.
He didn’t hit me. He didn’t do anything. “That’s not what I was saying,” he told me.
“Fuck what you’re saying. It’s the truth.”
He reached for me, but I shoved away.
I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to have Tanner look at me that way. He was always angry, always. He covered it up with funny and crude comments, but he was angry underneath. And Kai—I couldn’t look at him.
Kai was ice. Always controlled. Always thinking, planning. Kai ran our empire.
Kai kept us safe, and he’d tried with me.
It was my fault.
“I have to call her brother,” I announced.
“Jonah.” Tanner started for me, but I moved away, shaking my head. He stopped, but then Kai moved forward.
“Let us call him,” Kai said. “This is Oliver?”
Of course, Kai knew his name. Kai probably knew more about my fiancée than I did. Ex-fiancée? Was she an ex when the relationship ended because of death?
So much fucking pain.
What was the threshold? When would I start going numb? I thought that’s what happened. You feel too much until finally you stop feeling? It was a coping mechanism, or that’s what I’d studied. The shock should’ve settled in long ago.
I remembered what Tanner said before, about the fighting. I didn’t remember that.
Shock must ebb and flow. I hadn’t realized. That was good to know.
“He’d be expecting a call from her, if—wait.” The hospital. “The doctor said they were going to notify her family. They would’ve called him.” Melissa wasn’t tight with their parents, but Oliver was. He was the youngest and most adored, as Melissa put it.
She hadn’t known I was also the youngest. Brooke teased me about being the most adored in my family.
I never told her.
She would’ve liked knowing that.
Brooke.
“I don’t want Brooke to know.”
Tanner and Kai shared a look.
“She’ll freak out, and I can’t handle it. I…” I had no clue what I was doing. Melissa’s family would handle what they could. Kai would take care of anything else. I had work. But… there’d be a funeral. Was I supposed to… No. Her family would do that.
Her body.
Then I remembered why I’d left the library in the first place. “I don’t know where my phone is.”
Kai glanced to Tanner, who was already shaking his head. “I don’t have it.” He frowned at me. “The cops ask to see it?”
They had.
I’d forgotten.
“They still have it.”
Kai pulled his phone out, already dialing a number. “They asked for it for evidence. I’ll see if the lawyers can get it back.”
See? He took care of everything.
“What do you need, Jonah?” Tanner had moved closer.
I shook my head. “I have no idea. I want to murder whoever killed her. I want to see her body, say goodbye. Her family won’t want me at the funeral. I’m sure the cops will tell them the connection. And even if it wasn’t about who we are, it won’t matter. They’ll still go there, be angry she was involved with me in the first place.”
What did I have if I wasn’t with Melissa? Being a surgeon?
“I want to see her body,” I repeated. I looked over at Kai, who was finishing his call. “I need to say goodbye.”
He gave me a small nod and was on the phone again.
He’d make it happen. That’s what he did.
Chapter Six
CARSON
Sometimes being a forensic technician was cool, sometimes it wasn’t.
And I wasn’t even the lab director. That was Milo. I was the technician, so I was more their assistant—doing the tests, taking the samples, stuff like that. But currently, I was exhausted, and I wasn’t loving my job, because I’d already worked a sixteen-hour shift. And even though I’d clocked out, I had more left to do. We’d had more bodies than normal come through. The other tech, Benjamin, had the weekend off for a wedding he was going to up in Oklahoma.