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Brynn had the upper hand. She hadwaymore power than I ever did now. As far as the world knew, Guy Maranga was alive, still pulling the strings behind the scenes. What they didn’t know was that Brynn was the one pulling them. She was the one orchestrating every move under his name.
“I don’t want to tell you what to do, Leo,” she said, leaning against the edge of her desk. “I’m not interested in bossing you around. From now on, you’ll know as much about everything that’s going on with Candace as I do.”
It was a strange shift in dynamic hearing Brynn say that. She wasn’t the same woman I’d walked away from all those years ago. She wasn’t the same person who needed protecting. I could see the steel in her eyes now. She was calling the shots, and I had to come to terms with that.
“Then where are we going?” I asked, still unsure.
A sly smile played on her lips; the kind that made my gut tighten with suspicion. “I’ve heard about Wyndemere from my men,” she said. “Maybe it’s time you show me around.”
Wyndemere. My home.
“We’re going back to Wyndemere?” I repeated, my disbelief evident. “Candace will know the second I step foot back in Wisconsin with you. She knows about you,” I pointed out.
Brynn winked at me, a spark of mischief in her eyes. “She knows about Brynn from over twenty years ago. She’s got no clue about who I am today.”
I realized what she was getting at. Candace thought she knew Brynn, the woman from the past, the one who’d been in my life before everything had fallen apart. But that Brynn was long gone. Now, she was Guy Maranga in every sense that mattered. She was more powerful, more dangerous than Candace could ever imagine.
And that’s exactly how Brynn planned to take her down.
We were heading back to Wyndemere, and we were going to let Candace walk right into a trap. Brynn had become the kind of person Candace couldn’t even see coming. While Candace was busy playing her game, Brynn was playing something else entirely, and I was starting to realize just how dangerous that made her.
Candace had no idea what was coming.
And honestly, neither did I.
Chapter Five
Brynn
“Are you sure this is the best idea to get involved?”
I rolled my eyes, tossing my empty duffel bag onto the bed with more force than necessary. “I think that’s something you should’ve asked me before you grabbed Leo from the airport.”
Sig leaned against the large armoire, folding his arms over his chest like he always did when he thought I was making a mistake. “I told you then we should keep our noses out of this Banachi bullshit.”
“Keeping a bunch of people alive isn’t bullshit, Sig.” I moved over to the dresser, pulling open a drawer to grab some bras and underwear, and tossed them into the bag.
“A bunch of people you either don’t know or haven’t seen in over twenty years. Yeah, I think that qualifies as bullshit.”
I stopped packing and turned to face him. “We’re already in it, Sig.”
Sig’s jaw tightened. “I think I see why Guy never liked the fact that you were connected to Banachi. You’re thinking with your heart, not your head.”
I sighed and walked over to my closet, grabbing a few shirts. “Is this something you would’ve told Guy?” Sig had been my personal protection for the last ten years, but ultimately, he’d always answered to Guy. Now, he answered to me, though I could still sense his occasional doubt. Hell, I doubted myself sometimes, but I didn’t have the luxury of stopping to overthink. I just had to keep moving forward, screwing up less and less.
He crossed his arms tighter. “You already know the answer to that,” he drawled.
I rolled my eyes, not wanting to talk about this anymore. “The weather’s cooler up north, yeah?”
“Pack for actual fall weather,” he advised. “Not South Carolina fall.”
I nodded, pulling a few pairs of pants from the closet, then moving to my trunk at the foot of the bed to dig out some cardigans. Wyndemere was going to be a far cry from the suffocating heat we’d gotten used to down here. I was looking forward to the cooler air, even if it meant stepping back into a place I’d left behind.
“A change of scenery will be good for us all, Sig,” I muttered, rummaging through the trunk. “And while we’re at it, we’ll handle Candace.”
“Something we shouldn’t have to handle,” he muttered back.
I shot him a glare. “What’s the point of being one of the most powerful people in the world if I can’t do what I want when I want?”
