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“No, they did not. What does that tell you?” Sky asks me.
“That they don’t want me talking, especially now that they know I know about your fight against them,” I reply. “Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick.”
Raylan holds me close, pressing his warm lips against my temple. “We won’t let them get close enough to take you. They’ll never be able to hurt you,” he says.
“And my father? I’m sorry, I can’t accept that he’s this deep with the Black Hand. What for? What did they give him to make him care so little about what happens to me?”
“I think he cares, but he had a difficult choice to make, and with Masterson in the picture, he clearly made the wrong one,” Sky says. “We could show you documents. Screenshots. Surveillance footage. Paper trails. We’ve got enough to put him away for a long time, Ariana, but we can’t do that unless we find a way to uncover the Black Hand as well, with undeniable evidence. Otherwise, we will fail, and all this will have been for nothing.”
I try to wrap my head around what they’re telling me. The suspicion is there, but it’s one thing to suspect that my father is in cahoots with a secret, corrupt, and murderous cabal and another thing entirely to accept that as reality. The danger he put me in because of his choices is starting to make him look as bad as the monster who tried to kill me.
“We can show you something else,” Kendric says. “But we’ll need to be careful. The Black Hand and their cronies are going to be everywhere.”
Part of me wants to say no. I should stay here in this cabin where I’m safe, at least for a while. Once again, my curiosity gets the better of me. Yet I cannot deny the truth, either. Whatever comes next has the guys and me smack in the middle of it. We’re building a relationship in the eye of this storm, and I’d like to survive what’s coming so we can explore it further. I need the truth in order to do that, regardless of how ugly it may be. I have to put on my big girl boots forthis.
“Show me,” I reply.
Sky checks his phone. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that. Show me anyway.”
An hour later, we’re back in Everton. The four of us are huddled in one of the pickup trucks, parked on the side of the street in between a minivan and a Volvo. There’s plenty of traffic, plenty of movement up and down the sidewalk. It’s a busy hour, particularly in this blue-collar district.
“I don’t understand what we’re doing here,” I mutter from the passenger seat.
Sky keeps checking his phone. “We’ve got eyes all over the city, and one of our IT kids managed to hack into the City Hall servers last night. From there, he was able to get into one of your father’s personal email inboxes, of which he has five.”
“Five?” I sound understandably surprised. My dad was always a bit of a technophobe. To hear that he’s working five personal emails along with his work inbox is mind-boggling, to say the least. There is clearly so much about him that I have yet to discover.
“Yeah, it will take a while to scour them all since there’s a lot of code used in the email bodies, but we’ll get the intel we need soon enough,” Sky replies. “Point is, there’s a meeting happening here in just a bit, and I have CCTV access from the public system that confirms it. They’re coming,” he says to Kendric and Raylan, who sit quietly in the back.
We had a relatively safe and uneventful ride down here. Whenever we passed by a police car, I turned my face away from the window, but our plain looks and ballcaps have kept us under the radar thus far. I just hope we stay undetected while we do this. It’s insanely dangerous.
“There they are,” Kendric nods, looking somewhere ahead.
I follow his gaze and hold my breath, recognizing Thierry Estes as he comes out of a white Lexus that just pulled over outside a local diner. It’s not the kind of place I expected to see someone like my boss. Thierry Estes spins billions of dollars every month, moving diamonds and high-end jewelry across the elite fashion sector. The man has caviar for breakfast and a bottle of champagne, always on ice at each of his stores in case he gets thirsty. He’s dressed to the nines, as usual.
“Oh, God,” I hear myself groan as I see my father coming down the street.
Unlike Thierry, the mayor of Everton City is dressed down, opting for a black tracksuit and sunglasses, trying to remain incognito. But I would recognize him anywhere. He meets with Thierry just outside the diner, though myfather keeps looking around, clearly suspicious and wary. They shake hands and go in.
Sky hands me his surveillance binoculars. “Tell me what you see.”
“Okay,” I whisper, my stomach already churning.
Through the binoculars, I see my father taking a seat at one of the corner booths. Thierry joins him, and a waitress brings over coffee and a couple of menus. But they’re not alone. A third man leans forward, and when I see him, I almost faint.
“Holy shit,” I hear myself say.
“What?” Raylan asks.
“My dad, Thierry Estes, and Eric Masterson of the fucking FBI are meeting at a diner on the wrong side of town, mere hours after Masterson tried to kill me,” I reply, my voice trembling with rage. “I have a mind to go in there and confront them all.”
“You will do no such thing,” Sky replies bluntly. “We only watch and observe, Ariana. It’s all we can dofor now.” He pauses and glances back at Kendric. “Is your camera ready?”
Only now do I hear the incessant clicking from a DSLR. I look over my shoulder and find Kendric snapping photo after photo, using a long-range Canon with zoom lenses that are likely providing him with clear-cut images of my father, Estes, and Masterson.
“Ican’t believe this,” I mutter to myself and go back to peeping through the binoculars while trying to take deep, measured breaths. “I can’t fucking believe this. What are they doing with Masterson? Does my father know that bastard tried to kill me? I need to know.”
