The night out with Matt had helped distract me, probably part of his reason, and I knew there was so much going on, but I felt the room’s emptiness inside of me. It was pushing out everything in there, and I was a void hole in its place.

  I missed Kash.

  I was an idiot. And a fool. I was a total and complete fool, and I needed to call Kash now. Like, now now. Not later now, but the immediate now.

  But I couldn’t.

  Damn.

  Shower. Change. My first lecture ever from my father. After that, if I was still standing and in one piece, I’d call Kash and grovel.

  Sighing, I went to get this going.

  * * *

  Peter was on the phone when I stopped outside. The door was slightly ajar, so I knocked softly and stuck my head in.

  He motioned for me to come in. “I have to go. My daughter just came in.”

  My daughter.

  That was nice to hear, and the acid built. It made the whole “dad being disappointed in you” even worse.

  Putting the phone back, he looked me over again. This time his eyes were a little kinder, and I hated seeing it. There was so much pity in there.

  I sat in one of his chairs, sipping my coffee like it was my shield to the world. “You’re going to lecture me.” Taking a cue from Matt, I slunk down in my chair. If I’d still been speaking Matt’s language, I would’ve thrown a leg over one of the armrests.

  “No, actually.”

  My eyes squinted over the top of my mug. “Huh?”

  A ghost of a smile flashed before he cleared his throat. It was gone, and a hollow look entered his gaze. “I’m in no position to lecture you. You’ve been through so much that I can’t fathom how you’re still standing. You going and having a Matt night, I’m shocked this was the first time it happened. Truth be told, I won’t be surprised if it happens a few more times.”

  I didn’t want understanding.

  Anger blazed through me.

  Peter gave me a sad smile. “I know something happened with Kash, but while I love you both, that’s also not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Oh.” I frowned. “What then?”

  “Payton.”

  I groaned.

  Peter’s faint smile came back. “I expected that response from you, but I had a talk with Seraphina. Your sister and brother need some structure, especially with Quinn’s trial getting more coverage every day. Payton may look like Quinn, but she’s not at all like her. If you’re around her, you’ll start to see her as herself. She’s very loving.”

  Loving.

  Right.

  I didn’t want it.

  “Bailey.”

  “What?” I snapped.

  He stared at me, long and hard, before choosing his words. “I don’t want you to move out, but I also need to think of my other children. I need you to stay. I need Marie to stay. I need Payton to come back, especially because your mother isn’t—” His voice cracked and he looked away.

  It was the first time I was seeing his reaction to Chrissy’s death. That hit me hard, too, smack back in the sternum.

  I murmured, “I wondered how you were handling it.”

  He frowned, blinking rapidly before his eyes seeming to focus on me again. “Handling?”

  “She told me right before they attacked that night.”

  His Adam’s apple moved up and down. “Told you?”

  “That you two were falling in love.”

  He breathed in through his nose. “I had no idea you were aware we had gotten to that part.”

  “You loved her.” I put the coffee on his desk, hugged myself, and sank low in the chair. “But I get it. I understand why you didn’t tell me.”

  Another swift intake of air. “I’m a parent before everything else. You had Kash, but you needed a father, and that is who I will always be for you. I don’t think you know how much I love you, how I would do anything for you.”

  I lifted up a corner of my mouth, letting him see the sadness on my face, and then I noted, “But I do know. It’s the same love you have for Ser and Cyclone. It’s why you’re bringing someone back that’s the face of my kidnapper.” He went rigid, but I stood. I leaned down, placed one hand on his desk, and flattened my palm there. My fingers were turned toward him. “You don’t have to worry about me. If you say Payton will help my siblings, then I’ll deal. I love them, too.”

  His gaze searched mine, studying me, and then he nodded. His shoulders lowered, and he looked decidedly relieved. “Thank you.”

  A dip of my head. “Yeah.” I blinked away a few more stray tears. They were sneaky little bastards. “I’m going to head to bed, if that’s okay?”

  “Bailey.”

  I got to the door, but paused.

  He was still sitting there, his face seeming to have aged just from our exchange. Or maybe he wasn’t masking it anymore. “Whatever was said, Kash knows you’re still mourning. If that is something you’re worried about, you don’t need to. He’ll be back.”

  Yes. But I’m not there for him now, and I should be.

  I tried to give him a grin, but I know it didn’t reach my eyes. “Yeah.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Kash

  We’d just touched down in Aspen, Colorado, when Josh brought a phone to me. “Scott.”

  I took it, continuing as we deplaned and got into the back of two SUVs. “Bailey?”

  “She’s okay. Got drunk with Matt, but she’s at home, sleeping safely.” He hesitated a second. “She seemed sad.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No. I was reading her body language. Peter had a talk with her, but what we could ascertain, it was about the aunt returning to the house.”

  “Yeah.” I remembered now. “Peter’s doing that for the younger ones.” Everyone filed in. The little luggage we brought was a few bags, and they were stowed away. Josh got in next to me and we were off to the next location. “Were you calling to give an update on her?”

  “No. Harden reached out. He said he has news you will want to hear about Bastian.”

  I needed good news, and at this point, any news was good news. Calhoun had been quiet and I didn’t like that. “Have him call.”

  “He said it was news that should be heard in person, and he’s unable to come to you this time.”

  Meaning I had to go to him.

  I mulled over that information. Harden had a reputation that once he said he was on your team, he was, until death or an event close to death would separate him from your side. When he locked in on a mission, it was for life. But the paranoid part of me, the part of me that knew my grandfather was an anal obsessive bastard, also set off alarms inside of me.

  Josh must’ve been thinking the same. “We can reach out to your intel-gathering team. They have military backgrounds, too, and could act as backup if it was needed.”

  “No.” They’d been my first call after my twin took off. I pulled them from working on my grandfather, looking for my brother. Harden was now my only in-field asset on Calhoun.

  We were getting closer, and that was why we were in Aspen.

  It was time to bring in one of his last assets that he thought he still had. Griogos Maragos had a home here.

  The drive was an hour through the mountains.

  We ended the call with Josh being responsible for setting up the meet. He was briefed on the reason we were in Aspen. And exactly one hour later we pulled up to a log cabin-esque house. Three stories. Every single window was lit up.

  Josh took the house in as we parked. “Don’t think she was expecting us.”

  I hid a grin, but then it was go time.

  We got out and the guards took off.

  They would sweep the perimeters, then the interior of the house.

  The first wave approached the house.

  The security system was dismantled.

  The door was unlocked and we entered.

  I was the fourth man inside.

  We cleared the first floor together, moving as a team.

  Two went upstairs.

  I was with Josh as we went downstairs.

  The second floor was cleared.

  The guys went to the third floor right as Josh and I kicked in the last door of the basement.

  Everything was cleared.

  The living room. Bathrooms. Bedrooms. Closets.

  Any door was opened, the room or whatever it led to was swept through.

  We came back together on the main floor, and guns weren’t holstered but they were lowered.

  Josh frowned. “Is she hiding?”

  I looked at Derek. “Did you check the feeds?”

  He already had his computer up and was typing. “Pulling it up now.” He clicked. Clicked. He frowned. Clicked some more, and his eyes lifted. “There’s a secret door behind the living room couch.”

  We were in the living room.

  As one person, we turned.

  The couch was behind us.

  Jasper and Josh moved to the couch, lifting it clear from the wall.

  Derek put his computer down. All of our guns were raised again, and he approached the wall.

  Jasper moved in from the right.

  Josh from the left.

  A small hatch was in the wall, and Derek took point right in front of Josh. He grabbed the latch and opened it, hurling himself and the small door to the side. Josh rounded, his gun drawn. Jasper bent down, sweeping the bottom. Josh the top. Neither saw anything. Both went inside.

  Derek looked at me.

  I looked at him, then nodded to the computer. “Pull the active feeds. I want to see if that’s a tunnel, if she’s coming out somewhere else.”

  He holstered his gun, nodding at the same time, and hurried to the computer.

  We waited. A minute passed. Two. Three.

  There were no shouts.

  The guys checked the perimeter and all radioed in. Everything was cleared out there, so that meant she wasn’t out there somewhere. She was inside the house—or hell, she was in a tunnel for all I knew.

  Josh’s voice came over the radio. “Got her.”

  Derek stopped what he was doing, going to his own radio. “Where?”

  “There’s a back room. I think we’re under the basement. Her grandfather had a whole system down here.”

  “Is she unharmed?”

  A slight laugh from Josh. “Oh yeah. She’s feisty, some cursing, but she’s good to go. She’d been drinking, so I think she got lost in the tunnels. She trapped herself.”

  Over the radio, we heard a feminine voice, “Fuck you! Fuck who’s out there. Is that Kash? Tell him to fuck himself!”

  There were scuffling sounds next.

  A thud.

  Josh came back on the radio, his voice sounding strained. “Jasper needs a hand. We’ll be out momentarily.”

  “Guys outside want to know your orders. They switched channels,” Derek said.

  I nodded, rubbing a hand over my face. I was exhausted and I hadn’t even dealt with this girl yet. “Tell them to set the detonators. This is going to be a message to him.”

  Derek’s eyebrows dipped before smoothing out. “Can I say something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the message of burning down this house? You already eliminated the owner, and he was one of your grandfather’s biggest assets.”

  “The message is that he can’t hide anything from me. I will find it, and I will destroy it. It’s cat and mouse right now, but I’ve become the cat. He just doesn’t know it. Me burning this house down, and the five others we’re going to do by the end of this trip, is me letting him know. He’s now the mouse. I want him scared and I want him doing what she did, messing up and trapping himself.”

  Josh and Jasper arrived back, stepping out from the small door, and in their hands was a struggling old lover.

  I greeted her. “Hello, Victoria.”

  The guys hadn’t lied. Her eyes were dilated, her hair a mess. She was wearing a robe over a nightgown. Her feet were bare and she reeked of booze.

  “You mother fucker fuckerrr. I’m gonna—I’m gonna—aghrdd.” She tried again, twisting around. “Im gont hurd youph. Yood aholed!”

  I had to take stock for a beat, because the last time I saw Victoria, she’d been furious, but she hadn’t been this Victoria. She was skin and bones.

  “Boss.” Jasper lifted her arm, shoving her robe’s sleeve up.

  Her veins were black and blue. Track marks.

  I frowned, shooting an order out to Josh. “Go. Search the house. I want all the drug paraphernalia collected.”

  “What? Noooph. Im nod a drgge. I’m nod.”

  “Vic.”

  The nickname silenced her. She stopped struggling against Jasper’s lone hold. He was behind her, one foot between hers so she couldn’t kick back, and he had a firm grip on both her arms, keeping them slightly behind her.

  Her eyes were wide, but damn, she was gone. Anything I said to her would be wasted. So instead of issuing the threats and the ultimatums that I wanted to, I remembered she was someone I used to care about.

  I never loved her, but I cared for her.

  I stepped close, sliding my hand under a strand of hair that was hanging over her face, and I moved it back. I tucked it behind her ear and I let her feel a gentle slide of my hand down her cheek, a slight cupping of her chin, before I angled her head to see me better.

  “You’re going to get clean.” The words were firm and without reproach from me.

  She took note and her eyes widened. Defiance started to fill, but I shook my head.

  I let go and stepped back. “I’m not asking, Vic.”

  “You took away my grandfather,” she whispered.

  “But not you, Victoria.”

  Her eyes closed first.

  Her shoulders fell.

  The fight left her body.

  It could’ve all been an act. It probably was, because she had the signs of a full drug addict. I wasn’t going to give her an option.

  “Take her outside,” I told Jasper.

  Derek was listening to his radio, and as Jasper led Victoria outside, he approached. “They’re done outside.”

  “Okay.” I nodded toward where Jasper and Victoria were going out the door. “Leave me the remote. I want you to go back with them and the guys.”

  “Will do.”

  A minute later, one of the men came inside and handed me the remote. He explained which button to use, how far we would need to be, and then he left.

  Josh came down the stairs, a full bag with him, and he placed it on the dining room table. “I think I got everything. I’ll do a sweep of the main level and the basement.” He disappeared to the back rooms, and I moved to the far wall, which extended down the farthest hallway.

  I was looking at the pictures when Josh finished, coming up to me. “Done.”

  I didn’t speak. I kept looking.

  He transferred his gaze, taking in the image. “Is that Victoria?”

  “It’s her and her father.”

  Josh looked at me. “Her father’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah.” That was a sad fact that I never stopped to consider until now. “My grandfather killed him.”

  Josh didn’t react, but I felt his attention sharpen.

  “I overlooked it. That was around when Victoria and I met for the first time, and looking back, there were rumors. I never questioned why. I never questioned the reason for it. If I had, then what? Would I have stepped in sooner? That’s probably the time when he decided to use Victoria to get to me.”

  “That’s what Griogos was talking about, that Victoria was supposed to marry you.”

  “Victoria was supposed to control me. That’s how my grandfather thought. He wanted me tied to him. It was just one more way he was trying to control me.”

  “You and her did date.”

  I nodded, moving to the next picture.

  They were smiling in it. I pointed at it. “This is Maragos and his daughter.”

  “The daughter who Calhoun was controlling, too?”

  “He owned her. Griogos sold her to Calhoun.”

  But that wasn’t the point of my trip down memory lane.

  I was remembering the first time I saw Victoria.

  The first flirt. The first kiss. The first date.

  I came to the last picture, and Josh said under his breath, “Damn.”

  It was me, Victoria, Matt, and Tony.

  I forgot that, too. The four of us were friends. We were the beginning of everything.

  “You’re so young in there.”

  I nodded, lingering on Victoria’s face. Fuck. The bitterness was strong.

  I had missed this.

  I had missed it completely.

  “This was another family he destroyed.” I touched Victoria’s face in the picture. She was thirteen. It would be the next year when Tony and Matt began drinking. It would be a few years years after that when Victoria and I started sleeping together. And in the midst of it all, I never thought about how Calhoun took her father first, then indebted her grandfather to him, and through all of that, began to own Victoria and her mother.

  “Why am I getting the feeling you’re changing your mind on her?”

  “She was a friend first. She was an innocent at one point.”

  She looked like Bailey in the eyes. Both pure and both smiling.

  I nodded, rapping my knuckles against Victoria’s thirteen-year-old self one last time before turning to leave. “We’re going to get her clean, and then we’ll go from there.”

  We were two miles away when I hit the remote.

  The sky lit up behind us, painting the sky orange and red.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Bailey

  “I’m supposed to be hunting my grandfather.”

  I gasped, whirling around. Kash had been gone for a while now, maybe a few days. It felt like forever. I was coming back from a rousing game of bowling downstairs. Seraphina won because everyone threw theirs in the gutter. She loved it. Cyclone vowed to make a robot bowling ball so he’d win forever.

  There’d been an ache in me because, well, because of who was standing in front of me.

  “You told me you had a brother.”

  “You told me to go.”

  I winced, remembering. “I didn’t, actually. You asked if I wanted you to leave, but I did hesitate on answering. I’m sorry for that.”