Red seeps into my vision, and anger spills into my chest. My lip inches up into a vile smirk. I let out a dark laugh, rubbing my thumb across my lower lip, contemplatively, as I make my way across the room. It’s a slow trek, the way I sneak up on him. Before he realizes it, I grip the back of Zach’s neck and squeeze. He grunts in pain, and I lean in near his ear, so no one else will hear my next words.
“Who’s been cleaning up your messes for the last fifteen years, Zachariah? Don’t fucking test me. Cross me, and I promise you, Covington, it’ll be the last breath you take.” I shove him forward by the grip I have around his neck, and he catches himself in the nick of time, before his face slams against the bar top. I turn, facing the rest of the guys.
Trent’s face is shrouded in anger, his upper lip curling, and unable to rein his stupid in, he blows.
“What, you think you’re hot shit now? You think you can change the fucking rules because your bitch has good pussy?” Trent mocks, stalking across the room and getting in my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Noah take a hasty step forward as though he’s going to jump between us, but I raise my hand, silently telling him to stay put. “Mackenzie is the very reason everything is falling apart. It’s not us. It’s not any bullshit secrets you think we’re keeping. It’s her. And it’s you. I wish she would’ve fucking died in that car with Vincent. Maybe then things would be—” I’ve done well at keeping my cool, but all that vanished the second Mackenzie’s name fell from his lips.
Clamping my hand around his throat, I slam him into the wall, cutting him off midsentence. He chokes, his face turning an odd shade of purple at the force. I’ve done this plenty of times before, held Trent’s entire life in the palm of my hand, but this is the first time my grip has ever been this unrelenting. If I squeeze any harder, I’ll crush his windpipe and kill him.
It’s tempting. So very tempting.
“Try me, Trent,” I goad. “I’ve been waiting for you to fuck up just one time, so I can finally put you in your place. Don’t forget who you’re speaking to. Don’t forget who fucking made you. Who picked all your sorry asses up from the floor—who gave you everything when you had nothing? Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness, Ainsworth, because I’ll fucking end you with no remorse.”
“We’re s-supposed to b-be brothers-s,” he chokes out, his eyes bulging from lack of oxygen.
“Brothers don’t try to fuck each other’s bitches,” I grit, tossing him away from me. “Clean yourself up. You look like a fucking mess.” I turn to the rest of the guys, my gaze colliding with Vincent.
His face is vacant, much like it always is. He’s the only one who hasn’t said a word, and under the circumstances, I thought for sure he’d be the first one to hobble to his feet and let me know just how pissed he is that everything has gotten out of hand, but instead, he sits there, quietly, like he’s plotting. If that isn’t a red flag, I don’t know what is.
“How’s the family?”
He works his jaw back and forth. With that simple question, he knows I know. I may not know everything, but he knows without a shadow of a doubt I don’t believe anything he’s told me. “Still pieces of shit,” he finally says.
I smirk. “Doesn’t surprise me. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, now does it?”
His nostrils flare, and he purses his lips, just dying to snap at me, but that’s one thing about my relationship with Vincent. We don’t always agree on everything, but we also never fight. He respects me and my family, and the things we’ve done for him over the years. You never bite the hand that feeds you.
“All right. Enough,” Noah says, stepping into the center of the room, growing tired of our mess. “Now that all that macho bullshit is out of the way, we have some serious shit to figure out. Even though Baz has spun the narrative of the accident in your guys’ favor, it doesn’t mean that whoever is looking into that fucking case isn’t after something. Could be justice, revenge—whatever the hell it is, it’s a problem. For all of us. So…” He sighs, pausing to drill his gaze into each of us. “That means, if they’re going to uncover something I don’t know about, or Sebastian doesn’t know about, say it, or die a slow death when Baz lets you get thrown to the wolves.”
Silence descends.
We all share a look. Trent, of course, is the first one to break.
“All right. Fine. That summer wasn’t when it started. It started that night.”
My gut clenches.
“You remember, don’t you, Baz?” Zach asks, digging the knife in.
I do.
I can’t forget it. Even if I tried.
“You knew,” I grit out, the second Dan steps into my office. I called him over under the pretense I needed his help with something, but really, I was ready to chew his ass out. It feels like everything is crumbling around me since I learned the truth. I don’t know who I can trust anymore. My upper lip curls as I work to control my anger. I so desperately want to take it out on Dan or the rest of the guys.
He keeps that same impassive expression on his face, the one I’ve grown accustomed to over the years. “I did.” There’s a displeased tilt to his lips, as though he despises a part of himself for keeping such a secret from me.
“And you didn’t think to fucking tell me who she was? Or why she was here, creeping her way into my goddamn life?”
Slowly, he glances up, and the look on his face gives me pause. “You pay me to do a job, and I do it well. The second she stepped foot inside the building, I knew who she was. I looked into everything about her. I wouldn’t have let her get close to you if I thought otherwise. I knew she wasn’t a threat. And you and I both know that wasn’t why she was here. Maybe with them she had an agenda, but not with you.”
A growl reverberates in my chest, and I jab a finger at him. “Stop sticking up for her. Stop trying to make everything she did seem right. How is it you looked her up and found everything, and when I did it, I found nothing?”
He purses his lips at my outburst of anger. It’s unlike me. It just goes to show how off my rocker all this shit has me. “Whoever she’s working with made it to where you would see what they wanted you to see. Some kind of hacker, I presume. She isn’t working alone, that much I know. And listen, I’m not saying she’s innocent. I’m saying I didn’t view her as a threat. She never once dragged you into any of it. She was just a broken woman looking for answers, and she used you to get them.”
“Exactly. She used me to get them. How do I know any of it was real?”
He shrugs. “Guess you’ll have to find out, won’t you?”
I hate the way he’s looking at me right now. With that fucking amused tilt to his lips, as if this is somehow funny.
“And how do you expect me to do that? I kicked her out of here and told her to never come back, and now, I can’t find her anywhere.”
“Did she listen?” He quirks a brow, and I hate him at this moment. Why must all the people in my life be a nuisance?
I narrow my gaze in warning. “If you know where she is, just tell me. No need to play these bullshit guessing games.”