He swirls whiskey in his glass, saluting me with it when I catch his eye before downing it in one easy slide. Then he rises and I realise he’s tall, as tall as Kelly. He starts toward us, his stride just a little off. It’s not quite smooth, as though walking doesn’t come easy for him.
I nudge Kelly, nodding imperceptibly at the man. Kelly glances over. “Shit,” he mutters.
“What?”
There’s no time to answer. He’s upon us. “May I cut in?”
Kelly’s hold on me tightens, making me uneasy. He gives a single shake of his head. “Bad idea, Valentine.”
The whole reception appears filled with Valentines. I was introduced to Mac earlier, the youngest, but there are three brothers, the two younger ones work with Casey and I know who they are because I was introduced to them during dinner, so this must be the eldest. And for some reason Kelly is bothered by him.
“Bad ideas are always the best kind, aren’t they, Ace?” he says, arching a brow as though we’re co-conspirators in a crime.
Kelly releases me, stepping away, though he does it with flat eyes and a deep exhale through flared nostrils.
The eldest Valentine takes my hand, his arm sliding around my waist. The heat from his palm burns against the bared skin of my back. It’s unsettling. My eyes search the dancefloor for Kelly. He’s gone. They return to the man in front of me, lifting until they reach bright cold green. “Do I know you?” I ask as we begin to move.
“No you don’t, but I know you.”
I look again for Kelly, my discomfort rising. “Who are you?”
“Now that’s a question you probably shouldn’t ask, but the answer is one you should probably know.”
My expression remains flat but my mind is racing. What is going on? “Shall I call you the Riddler then?”
He chuckles. “My name is Mitchell Valentine. My friends call me Mitch.”
His name means nothing. “Good you for you, Mitchell Valentine.”
My polite sarcasm deflects off of him like Teflon, leaving him unaffected. “So …” He lifts my hand in his, taking me through a small turn before returning me back to a perfect dance frame. “How do you like to spend your time, Miss Jones?”
“Is that a roundabout way of asking me what I do? Because if you know me like you say you do, then you would already have your answer.”
We move slowly about the room. Despite his excellent dance technique, Mitchell moves with a light degree of difficulty. I almost wouldn’t notice except dancing with Kelly was effortless; his proximity making my pulse race and my belly tickle with butterflies. “You study finance.”
Trepidation grips me by the spine. “And how do you spend your time, Mr. Valentine?” I ask, battling for composure as I search again for Kelly. Where are you?
A smile quirks the corners of his lips. “Is this your roundabout way of asking me what I do?”
“It is.”
The song reaches an end and the couples surrounding us on the dancefloor pause, clapping their hands toward the musicians. I step back from Mitchell’s hold, swallowing as I face Evie and Henry, clapping alongside everyone else, a polite smile on my lips. From beside me he tilts his head downward, in my ear saying, “I work for the AFP, Miss Jones.”
Fear rises swiftly, a dark cloud that chokes the air surrounding me. My hands stutter to a halt, and I can’t catch a breath.
The Australian Federal Police.
Mitchell is watching my reaction, waiting for it. I can feel his eyes.
My chest burns for air. It’s a battle to keep my expression neutral as I lift my head to look at him. “A noble profession.” I swallow, holding on to my composure by my fingernails. “Thank you for the dance. If you’ll excuse me.”
I weave my way through couples as I leave the dancefloor, no longer looking for Kelly. My stride is slow. Casual. But inside my heart is pounding hard enough to hurt. I keep my eyes focused on the exit door as though I’m in the deep dark waters of the ocean and I’m swimming for the surface, my eyes on the light above and my lungs ready to explode.
I shove it open, gasping as cool night air washes over me. Mitchell knows me. He was watching me. And Kelly left me with him. He left me with him, handing me over like a lamb to slaughter. Sure, he did it with some reluctance, but he still did it. A sob rises, betrayal burning like a thousand fire ants biting at my skin.
I put a shaky hand to my forehead, unsure if my trust in Kelly has been misplaced. Until now his actions say it hasn’t, but suddenly I feel tangled in a web of deceit. The way he railed at me when I questioned his motives in the car. He was so believable, throwing it back on me like I was the one who’d wronged him, rather than the other way around. How could I be so stupid?
27
Kelly
My eyes follow Ace as she leaves the dance floor. She’s moving casually, yet her face is pale and her eyes are fixed on her destination like she’s adrift in a wild storm and the exit door is her life raft.
Then my gaze narrows on Valentine. He shrugs at me as I push off from the back wall I was leaning against and follow her out. The door closes behind me as my eyes adjust to the darkness. The muted outdoor fairy lights illuminate her form. Ace is standing by the three-tier water fountain, her back to me and hands shoved in her hair.
She drops her arms and turns, hearing my dress shoes rap against the sandstone tile as I walk toward her. “Is this your plan? To hand me over to the cops on a silver fucking platter?”
Her expression is wild with panic. Damn Valentine for cutting in. Damn him for planting fear in her chest. “Ace—”
“Don’t.” I reach for her and she steps backward, warding me off. “Don’t touch me. I asked if you were hiding something from me and you lied.” Her voice rises. “I trusted you.”
Her accusation is sharp and cuts me to the bone. Not because she’s wrong, but because she’s right. I didn’t outright lie, but I deflected and isn’t that basically the same thing?
“Why would you do that, Kelly? Why would you get the police involved? Why?” she shouts, her cheeks flushed with anger and arm thumping the air for emphasis. “All I had to do was deliver the cars and walk away. I was walking away. I told you I wanted a new life and you’d rather see me in prison instead?”
“You’re not going to prison, babe.”
“I’m not your babe,” Ace spits, bending as she wrenches a high-heeled, strappy shoe from her foot. “Fuck this.” She does the same with the other. Barefoot, she pitches them at my chest like a pro-baller. “Fuck you, Kelly,” she yells and stomps away, huffing loudly.
I grab her before she gets far, pulling her into me, her back against my chest and my arms wrapping around her front. She struggles to get free, her shoulders twisting and her hands plucking against my arms. “I don’t want you touching me,” she pants. I pull her closer, my arms tightening around her like a steel band. “Let me go!”
“I can’t.” I shake my head, my voice a plea because she’s asking the impossible. I’m not strong enough. And I don’t know how that happened because once upon a time I was in a tattoo shop getting a bear on my arm, choosing solitude over people, and now I’m here, my arms wrapped around a girl I suddenly can’t live without. “Don’t ask me to let you go.”
Her voice breaks. “Please. Let me go. I can’t …” She wheezes, her breath catching. “I won’t go back there.” Ace is shaking and thrashing like a caged animal, her anxiety escalating. “I won’t!”
She wrenches her body so hard her legs give out, and she sags against me. “You’re not going to prison, babe. I promise you.” I duck my head, pressing my lips to the side of her neck, doing my best to soothe her panic. “I promise you.”
Ace takes a ragged breath in, her chest expanding beneath my arms. She lets it out slowly before taking another deep inhale. I hold on, not knowing what else to do. After several moments, she straightens, taking her own weight. She’s stopped struggling against me, but she holds herself away, silently denying me the right to c
omfort her any further.
“Arcadia.” I tilt my head, my eyes on the profile of her face. Her lips are pressed tight and her eyes are locked on the sprawling gardens that roll down into the darkness in front of her. She turns her head away from me.
“Don’t, Kelly.” Her voice is hollow. “I don’t want to hear anymore lies. You—”
I turn Ace around, my hands on her shoulders, cutting her off before she says anything too painful to hear. She doesn’t resist. Her capitulation should be a relief, but there’s no expression on her face. It’s empty of all emotion, and that’s somehow worse. “Just listen. Will you do that for me? I know I have no right to ask. I messed everything up royally, thinkin’ I knew what was best for you, and I need to explain. I need to explain why.”
“Everything okay out here, Daniels?” Valentine calls out from behind me.
My body tenses, every muscle quivering with the need to turn around and slam my fist into Mitch Valentine’s face. I want it so bad I can almost feel it—the clench of my hand, the throbbing burn of my knuckles as my fist makes contact with his nose, my heart thumping with satisfaction at causing him some semblance of pain. It’s what he deserves for playin’ a hand that wasn’t his to play. A hand that caused unnecessary pain to the woman in my arms, the same woman who won’t even look at me.
But I don’t and it costs me. My stomach is roiling with built-up anger that has nowhere else to go.
“You need to leave, Valentine,” I say without turning around. My voice is controlled, every word low and measured with effort. This is my brother’s wedding and I’m determined not to ruin it. Me and black-tie events always end badly, and I won’t be that man anymore.
“She needed to know after what happened with Tony,” Valentine adds, and Ace stiffens beneath my hands, “your presence doesn’t offer protection like we thought. It changes everything.”
My anger snaps and snarls against the restraints of its leash. “I won’t tell you again, Valentine.”
His footsteps fade out until all we hear are the muted sounds of music and conversation and the tinkling of glassware and laughter in the distance.
Ace finally lifts her head and our eyes meet. “You promise?” she croaks.
I’m confused for a brief moment. Then I realise what she’s asking, and remember what she said. I won’t go back there. “Ace, have you been there before?” I ask quietly.
“I have.” Her chin lifts, defiant and bold, and I know it’s an act because no one goes through something like that and remains unscathed.
“Babe,” I say quietly, not prying even though I want to. Tonight has already tested her limits, even when I’m yet to explain what I’ve done. She’ll share when she’s ready. “I promise you won’t go back there.”
Ace gives me a quick nod. I’m not sure she believes me. I’ve betrayed her trust by keeping her in the dark, so I can’t blame her if she doesn’t.
“Can we just go?” she asks.
“We can go.” I bend, collecting her shoes from the ground.
“I’ll put them back on.”
We say our goodbyes inside, Grace pulling me in for a hug. I hug back with one arm because my other hand is holding Ace and I’m not prepared to let go. “Thank you, Kelly,” she whispers in my ear.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say quietly while Ace talks to Casey. “I just showed up and ate your food and drank your booze.”
“Exactly. You showed up.”
I look to my brother. He taught me how to surf when I was ten. How to duck beneath each wave on your board. How to paddle out beyond the wash. How to balance in just the right position as you sliced through the wave. We would sit there on our borrowed boards because we never had our own, and we would talk about what we wanted to do when we eventually got free.
I remember his gaze on the horizon, as if he saw a life beyond the waves that was so much different to what it is now.
“I want to be a cop,” he said. “I want to help those who aren’t strong enough to help themselves.”
Even at ten, his words raised a lump in my throat because he was talking about kids just like us. We weren’t strong enough. Not then. Maybe not even now. “You just want to bag the chicks with a uniform fetish.”
He laughed, flicking me with water. “What about you, brat?”
I was always brat to him. I was the youngest. Mum was a little softer with me. Casey had to grow up faster than I did. Be the man of the house our father wasn’t able to be. Dad was always drinking. Most nights would find him passed out snoring on the arm chair in the living room. Vodka was his drink of choice because it was undetectable. He could drink it at work. It’s the only reason why I stomach whiskey, because it doesn’t raise bad memories—ones buried so deep I know I’ll carry them with me to the grave.
I flicked water back at Casey. “I don’t know,” I replied, even though I did. There was a powerful urge to make my brother proud of me, and telling him all I wanted to do was work with cars seemed lame. He was always better at everything—stronger, smarter, and braver. So much braver than me. He was the one with a thousand friends at school while I had just two. I had to sit at the breakfast table for twice as long to finish my homework because school never came easy for me like it did him.
“I thought you had a thing for cars,” he said as we floated on our boards.
I swiped water from my face, snorting. “No. I can do better than that. Maybe I’ll join the police too,” I lied.
Casey looked across at me, blue eyes the same as mine, piercing me with intelligence as if he saw me better than I saw myself. “You don’t need to prove anything to anyone, brat. Whatever you do, do it for yourself.”
I’m thrust from the memory when Casey laughs loud and hard at something Ace has said. I blink, my chest tight, because I realise all these years I put him on a pedestal when he was only human too. I blamed him because I thought him better than me, and when he didn’t live up to my impossible standards, he fell—and he fell hard. And my response was to turn my back and find another family. Shame rises up inside me. I’m an asshole. I’m an absolute fucking asshole, and I need to step up.
“Congratulations, Brother,” I say, holding out my hand.
His laughter dies away. His brand-new wife stills beside me, seeming to hold her breath, and Ace shifts closer to my side.
Casey takes my hand, shaking it. If our paths were different, I might have stood there as his best man rather than standing on the sidelines, watching him live the life he always wanted to have. We’ll never go back to what we used to be, and only now, as the dark cloud of bitterness has finally begun to dissipate, can I see it, and it hurts. We only have one life as brothers, and we lost our way and fucked it up.
“You did good,” I tell him.
“Thanks, brat.” He looks from me to Ace and back again. “But so did you.”
Ace removes her shoes when we get to the car, though this time she doesn’t throw them at my chest. She sets them on the floor of the car before sliding inside. I shut her door and walk around the front of the car, ripping at the bow tie around my neck. I climb in, tossing my jacket on the back seat behind me as I undo the top button of my shirt.
Gravel crunches beneath the tyres as I drive slowly from the parking lot. “Tell me about Mitchell Valentine,” Ace says as I flick the indicator on, turning out onto the main road.
“Why?” I ask with surprise. I expected her to ask about the plan, not the man involved in it.
She stares out her window. “Because you’re a Sentinel. He’s a Fed. Chalk and cheese, yet somehow, you’re friends. You trust him enough to put my future in his hands, and I want to know why.”
* * *
Arcadia
“You’ve heard of the King Street Boys, yeah?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“They were drug runners, Ace. Adam Rossiter ran the show, the half-brother of Elijah Rossiter. Elijah was Chief Inspector with the Sydney Police.”
“I know.” I remember the
scandal. The brothers had the same father, but were raised by different mothers in different states. Yet it came to light that Elijah was actually running the show. The King Street Boys had everyone in their pocket—from celebrities to politicians, even police. And Elijah ran it all.
“Elijah and Mitch grew up together,” Kelly says.
“Holy shit,” I mutter.
Kelly nods. “Best friends. They went to the same school, they fuckin’ double-dated together. And Mitch never knew. Not for a long while. You know what happened when he found out?”
“What?”
“Nothing. He never said a word.”
“How is that possible?” Because something like that would break a person. It would be like me finding out that Echo was an undercover agent with the Feds or something.
“Because that’s the type of man he is. Loyal to the fuckin’ bone. But if you betray him, he’ll do whatever it takes to bring you down. And if he has to pretend to be someone he’s not, like he did with Elijah, then he’ll do it, biding his time for years waiting for just the right moment.”
“And he did.” Because the King Street Boys were disbanded in a police sting that made international news. One of the biggest operations in Australian history. It was all over the television because of the high-profile members involved.
“Operation Strike. Mitch ran the whole show, and Elijah never knew that he knew.”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
“Exactly,” Kelly replies. “Mitch was lead detective with Sydney City Police before his move to the AFP. His woman was a detective involved in the sting too. Gabriella. They both got shot. He lived. She died.”
“Jesus, Kelly,” I whisper. Hearing that hits hard. It reminds you that no one is invincible—not me, not Echo, not even Kelly.
“I know because I was there. The Sentinels got caught up in the strike because the King Street Boys took a friend of ours hostage. The bullet that hit Mitch was meant for me, but he got in the way. It hit him in the neck, the force of it slamming him into me. We both went down, blood fuckin’ everywhere. I stuck my fingers in his neck until paramedics arrived.”