I was cold without his touch. “Carter.”
He grimaced. “I forgot he was friends with Noah and Theresa. I had hoped to keep him away from you.” He paused for a beat. “He was selling information to Franco.”
“What? Why would you—how long have you known that?”
“It’s why he was working for me. We were watching him and Octave was the best place for him to work. All of my businesses are legit, but he didn’t know that.”
“Wait. You stuck him at Octave so that he could give information to Franco?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “No, we stuck him there because there was no information to give. Anywhere else and he would’ve been suspicious, but Octave doesn’t strike people as being vanilla. That’s what it is, though.” His grin fell flat. “He’s the one who told Franco where you were. He’s why we were attacked the first time.”
“But…” That meant that they had been looking for me…not Jeremy’s body anymore…
“Yeah,” he sighed. “They knew, Emma. They knew it was you.”
Ben gave me enough money.
Ice ran through my veins. My mouth fell open as my breathing slowed.
He looked happy last week. He thought he was hot stuff.
I stopped breathing. It couldn’t be, but it had to be. No way. I felt gutted. Someone had taken a knife and slid it across my throat before they reared back for one deep thrust. A sick sensation started to fill me and I began to tremble.
“Emma?”
I shook my head. It couldn’t be, but he said it himself.
“Emma!” His hand grasped the back of my head. He forced me to look at him. “What’s going on?”
“You,” I gasped out. I couldn’t talk.
“Me?”
“You said—it was Ben. Ben told them.” Ben gave me enough money. Oh god. I closed my eyes. A raging headache had started. It was going to split me open. Mallory and Ben are gone. Panic overwhelmed me and I couldn’t breathe. I opened my mouth to draw in oxygen, but none came. My lungs had stopped worked. I pounded on my chest, blinded, feeling more and more panic suffocating me. It was taking over me. I couldn’t see.
Carter cursed and lifted me in his arms. He was taking me somewhere. My mouth was gaping open as I desperately tried to draw in oxygen. Nothing. I started to thrash around. Oh god. Oh god.
Then water hit me. It was freezing, but it dosed the storm inside of me. Screaming, I lunged away from it, but Carter held me in place. He bent to change the temperature with his arms around me. His body trapped me in place and I tried crawling over him to get away. A second later the water warmed and my chest rose up and down at a steadier rate. I was calming down.
“What’s wrong with her?” Theresa asked from a distance.
Mallory and Ben are gone.
I shook my head. I couldn’t get Amanda’s voice out of my head. It was him. He had sold me out.
Ben gave me enough money.
He gave her money to take care of my things.
My feet gave way as I realized what that meant. He knew—he wanted my things put away. He paid for my things, mine and Mallory’s, to be stored away. Did he know what they were going to do? He had to know.
“Emma?” Carter held me now.
I looked up at the concern in his voice. He was gazing down at me, his eyes already knowing. What did he know?
“Emma? Are you okay?” Theresa stood at the shower door. She was pale and her bottom lip was quivering. She held onto the door handle, but her hand was shaking.
I spoke, raw of emotion, “You told me he would sell me out.”
Carter closed his eyes. His shoulders dropped and a breath left him. He knew.
He’d been right. I had even hoped for it, but knowing it happened—feeling it now. It was different. I couldn’t have been prepared for the betrayal.
“Who sold you out?” Her hand started to rattle the shower door know. “What’s going on?”
I held Carter’s gaze. The world fell away underneath my feet. I didn’t feel the water anymore. “He told them, didn’t he?”
He nodded.
Reaching for him, my hands held onto his shoulders and he lifted me from the shower. He walked us both out and into a bedroom. Setting me back on my feet, he walked into the bathroom. Theresa touched my hand, her eyes grew wide when she felt my coldness.
She whispered, “What’s going on, Emma?”
Carter came back with towels. He handed one to me as he took a second to wrap around my body. Then he started drying off himself as he went back out the door.
“Emma?”
Ben sold me out. He was paid to sell me out, but what about Mallory? They were gone. Where had they gone? Was she okay?
Theresa inched closer and dropped her voice, “I know he killed Scott. Don’t worry, Emma. I’m going to call the police. I know you’re infatuated with him, but he’s not good for you. I’m going to take care of it. I’m going to get you away from him.”
I looked at her, but felt detached from myself. It was like I was watching us from a safe distance, outside of my body. I watched as I said to her, “He was going to kill me.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I won’t let him. I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Scott Graham was going to kill me. Carter saved my life.”
Her eyes widened. Then narrowed. “You’re in shock. I can see that. You don’t know what happened—”
My hand latched onto her arm and held it in a death grip.
She cried out and then tried to pry my fingers off her arm, one at a time. She glanced to my face and back again to her arm, back and forth, back and forth. Her eyebrows furrowed together and she bit her lip. “Emma, you don’t know what you’re saying. You think you’re in love with him, but you’re not. You’re blinded by his looks and his power. He’s dangerous, Emma. He’s very dangerous.”
“He’s my family.”
She got three of my fingers off, but they latched back on. She sighed. “Okay. Okay, Emma. I can see this is going to take longer than I thought. Don’t say anything to him. He’s going to come back any moment—”
“I killed someone.”
My words silenced her. Her arm dropped to her side and she staggered back a step. “Wha—what did you say?”
“I’m protecting her.”
She whirled around to see Carter in the doorway. A grim expression was on his face and he held dry clothes in his arms. Then he walked around me and peered close. “Her eyes are glazed over.”
“She’s in shock. She thinks she killed someone.”
“She did,” he snapped at her and tossed the clothes on the bed. “Leave and I’ll take care of her.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. You might be buddies with Noah and you might’ve known Emma in a previous life, but I’m not leaving you alone with her. Not one second—”
“Noah.” Carter turned to the doorway.
“What?!” she squeaked as she was lifted in the air. Noah had been waiting in the background. He stepped forward, grabbed Theresa, and left the room with her. Carter called after them, “She can’t leave. Not yet.”
“I know,” Noah’s voice lashed out at him, over his shoulder.
The door was slammed shut a second later, and I turned towards Carter. I was still detached from my body, but he lifted his hand to my face. He cupped the side of it and ran his thumb over my cheek before he murmured, softly, “Come back to me.”
I shook my head. It was safer where I was.
“Come back to me.” He moved closer. His voice was a sensual caress against my skin. “Come back to me.”
I shook my head. It was better not to feel. There was no fear. No one betrayed me when I was like this.
Then he rested his forehead against mine and breathed out, “Please, Emma. I need you with me. I love you.”
I closed my eyes and the hurt seeped back into me. Everything hurt at once. It was too much, but I opened them again and I saw the relief in his. His hand closed around mine, and he tucked some of my hair behind my ear. I couldn’t handle it, not all of it, and I felt myself numbing again. Then I stepped back. I couldn’t do this if he was touching me. And I knew that I needed to hear it all. “Tell me what’s going on.”
He nodded, a look of surrender coming over him. “You’re not going to like some of it.”
“I have to know.”
“Okay.” He waited until I sat and then he started. “I told you before that I had an inside man with Franco, but I stopped hearing from him right before our first attack. He texted me that Ben sold you out so I doubled your guards after that, but I don’t think you noticed. Then when we were attacked, I knew something had happened to him. He would’ve let me know ahead of time.”
“They killed him?”
He nodded. “His body surfaced yesterday. It was delivered to one of the Mauricio houses.”
I sucked in my breath. There was more. I knew there was more. “What else?”
He hesitated, tense, and then asked, “Are you sure you want to hear all of this?”
“I have to.” I had no other choice. “Mallory’s gone, Carter. I’m really hoping that Ben took his money and split with her, but I need to know for sure. That means that I have to know everything. You have to tell me everything. Please.”
He didn’t wait another second. “Your friend Ben went to Franco and told him that you were the killer. He didn’t know about me or what happened with the body, but they’d been looking for Mallory. They knew Jeremy Dunvan had been seeing a regular girlfriend. He knew it was only a matter of time before they found her, so he gave them your name for some money and her safety guaranteed.” A hard look came over him. His wolf eyes turned into ice. “He was stupid. They’re planning to kill him anyways, if they haven’t already.”
“You know this from your inside guy?”
“And we know that Scott Graham told Franco you were at the club. He didn’t know that I’d be there too or that you’d be going home with me. They can’t get to you when you’re in my buildings. It’s why we’ve been attacked twice on the streets. After the first attack, we were going to take Scott to the warehouse for an interrogation.” He stopped for a second. “That’s what we do before someone’s killed.”
They were going to kill Scott, but they didn’t. “What happened?” I never blinked.
“We needed to know more and I figured my guy was dead so we left Scott where he was. He was being kept around to see if he’d be useful to us. His time ran up tonight. Gene came in to take him to the warehouse, but he got free somehow.”
“Why tonight?” My heart sped up.
“Because everything was going to be done tonight.”
“What?”
He started to pace as his hand raked through his hair. His wet shirt had started to dry, but it was lifted up from the movement. It stuck to his skin and remained there. As I watched him go back and forth, his muscles tightened with tension. Suddenly dread started to fill me. Aside from the attack and stampede that Scott’s gun had started, there were other events going on. Events, I was starting to realize, that had been in the making for awhile.
I stood slowly, dismay filling me more and more until I was standing in front of him. I stopped him, holding onto his arm. “What was supposed to happen tonight?”
“Franco Dunvan was supposed to die tonight.”
“By you?”
He shook his head, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “By his own family.”
“Just tell me. Explain it to me.”
“I’ve been in Chicago since last weekend.” He paused for a beat. “Do you know who lives in Chicago?”
“No.”
“It’s the headquarters for the Bertal Family.”
My heart kept pounding, stronger and stronger. “Okay, so you went there? Why?”
His hand touched my arm. His hold was gentle as he tugged me close. I could feel his heart through his shirt. He murmured, dropping his voice to an intimate whisper, “I went there to barter a truce between the Mauricio Family and the Bertal Family.”
My heart stopped. “You did that for me?”
“I would do anything for you.” His hand cupped the back of my neck. He tilted my head up to meet his eyes. They were hungry and dark. When I saw the demand in them, a flame of desire lit in me. It grew into a fire that blazed hotter and brighter the longer I held his gaze. “Both families have wanted peace between them, and I gave it to them. I didn’t get the final decision until this evening, but I got it. I was called in to see the heads of the Mauricio family this afternoon. That’s where I was before going to Octave, but it’s done. By tomorrow morning, Franco Dunvan will be dead and you’ll be safe.”
“What’d you do? How could you do that? I thought the two families had been feuding for years.”
“No.” He shook his head. “They’ve stopped fighting. The only section that’s continued the fight was Franco’s. When I went to them, I told them my stake and that I wanted your safety. I gave them 2.5% of the wealth that I’ll accumulate over the next five years.”
“And your family was fine with this?”
“I gave them 2.5% as well. Five percent of my earnings will go to the families from businesses that are clean. I bought us out and I bought Franco’s death. This is a small price to pay, but large enough so that both families will get along. That was the deal, that both families take the 2.5%. I’m the truce between them. As long as I make money with clean businesses, it looks good to them and their name. You want legal businesses to mask the illegal businesses, but I’m out with all of those other dealings. I’m out. And you’re out from Franco’s watch.”
“But why did Scott try to kill me?”
“I think it was a last attempt. My guess is that the hits started today and Franco figured it out. He wanted to hurt me the only way he really could. You.” A primal look entered his wolf eyes. “It’s what I would’ve done if I’d been cornered like that. I’d strike where I’d do the most damage, but it didn’t work. You’re safe.”
“People are dying tonight?”
He nodded. “Only Franco’s business associates. The Bertal family is cleaning up. Franco’s death is their gift to me. They’re doing the rest because they have to cover their backs too.”
All of this was for me. All of that bloodshed was because of me. I didn’t know how I felt about that, but I hadn’t started this for me. I did it for Mallory. “Carter,” I rasped out. “Do you know where Mallory is?”
He shook his head. “No, but if she’s alive, they’ll find her. The new Head of the Bertal family in this city knows about her. They know why you shot Jeremy. They’ll contact me when she’s found.”
I nodded. That was all that mattered, right? All of this was for her.
“Emma.”
“What?”
He seemed unsure now. “You need to know something else.”
“What is it?” My heart started to pound again.
“Jeremy Dunvan was known for breaking in whores for their sex slaves.” He paused, still unsure.
“Tell me.”
The hesitation slid away to reveal a deep resignation in him. “My inside guy told me that they thought Jeremy was breaking in your roommate the night you shot him. He wasn’t going to kill her. He was going to use her as a sex slave.”
His words hit me. They were cold and stabbing.
He was going to turn her into a sex slave… He was going to turn her into a sex slave… Carter’s words were on repeat in my mind. I kept hearing them over and over. Suddenly, I didn’t care that those people were being killed. I wished I had done more than just shooting Jeremy Dunvan. He deserved worse. He should’ve died painful and slow.
“Are you okay?”
Carter had told me hours ago what they had been planning to do