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Pierce was scrolling through his phone, and he held a photo out to Gwen. "Is that him?"
Gwen looked back and forth between the image on the screen and the image on his phone. "Yeah, that is him. Where was that taken?"
Another deep breath from Pierce. "It's from you’re engagement party. He was there that night."
I glared at him. "He was there? At my engagement party to Gwen?"
"Yes,” he said hesitantly.
"Do you mean to tell me that we had an assassin under our noses during the engagement party? How did that happen? How is Gwen even still alive?"
"I don't know,” Pierce said in frustration. “We vetted everyone who walked through those doors. Something is very, very wrong."
Gwen reached out and took my hand in hers. I resisted the urge to pull away, to shield her in some way from my fury. But instead of that dark coldness that usually slid into place, she chased it off with her warmth.
It was a happy warmth, keeping me calm enough to use my words instead of my fists. "Would you fucking find out?"
Gwen spoke up. "I can help."
Pierce shook his head. "No. With all due respect, I fucked up, and I'll fix it."
Lance glanced from me, to Pierce, then to Gwen, and back to Pierce again. "I'll help. I know Gwen's software well. I can double check all the facial recognition data from that night. And I'm a decent hacker. It'll go faster."
Pierce nodded and lifted his gaze back to mine. "I'm sorry, Atticus. I'll fix it. I promise."
I didn't have any words for him. He needed to fucking fix it. This was Pierce. I needed to be able to count on him.
Mistakes like this don't happen with Pierce. He's too good at his job. So if he's making mistakes, you have to ask yourself why.
And I would eventually take it a step further. Not just why, but what the hell else had he missed?
23
Atticus
"Atticus Price, are you sulking?"
I frowned at my wife, looking absolutely gorgeous in her gray pantsuit, the top of which cut off just an inch above where the pants sat, showing a strip of skin that made me want to run my hands under her jacket and cup her breasts…
I blinked rapidly. "What did you say?"
She narrowed her gaze at me, and I gave her a sheepish grin. "Were you listening to me, Atticus, or were you too busy plotting?"
"Yeah, of course I was. You said something, something, about something."
"Atticus, that’s not funny."
"Yes, love, I was listening to you. And I'm not plotting."
"Okay then, tell me that you won't try to murder your father. And that it's not going to cause you emotional distress that I’m talking to him."
I clenched my jaw tight and tried to look the one person on earth next to my brother who knew me the best straight in the eye. "I'm not going to murder him."
The problem was the word murder came out sort of gleefully.
Morgan snorted from the corner of the living room where she perched prettily on the hanging chair Gwen had added a couple of weeks ago.
"Why did it sound like you were so happy about the idea of murder?" Gwen asked.
