Page 63 of Tico

I nod, though I’m still suspicious of him but for other reasons. “I know. Because I think she drugged you.”

His eyes widen in shock before his face morphs in anger. I pull up another clip from an hour earlier that same night. Ashley is sitting in Corvus’ lap and while his head is turned as he talks to someone beside him, she slips something into his drink.

Corvus rounds on Ashley. “You fucking drugged me?” Anger pours off of him, his fists clenched at his side, shaking with restraint.

Ashley flinches back at the look on his face, but no one steps in to rescue her.

I pull up the last clip which shows Ashley using her copied keys to sneak into one of our offices a couple of nights later. Shuriken, Radar, and Corvus mainly use it, but our profits from the weed business are stored in the safe in that room until we’re able to clean the money and move it legally.

It’s obvious as fuck that she knows where to look for the safe because she walks straight to the hidden panel in the wall that conceals it. She opens the safe, unlocks it, and then riffles through the contents. She pulls out three large bundles of bills and stuffs them in her bag before locking the safe back up and then sneaking back out of the room.

Ember steps around us and gets in Ashley’s face. “Where are the keys?” she demands.

Ashley trembles but then she stands straight. “Those videos are fake. Everyone knows Wire is a hacker. He manipulated the footage.”

Wire steps forward. “The footage isn’t manipulated; its raw feed. The timestamp and the metadata has been validated.”

Suddenly Xochitl appears behind Ashley and restrains her, pulling her arms behind her back.

Ashley shrieks in outrage as she tries to twist out of Xochitl’s grasp. “What the fuck? Let go of me!”

Xochitl tilts her head at Ember, silently telling her she’s got Ashley. Ember steps forward, searching Ashley’s pockets but comes up empty. Poison picks up Ashley’s purse off the floor that she had dropped before the fight and hands it to Ember. A part of me calms at how much Xochitl and Poison are letting Ember take the reins with Ashley. Then again, I think Ember has proven to them that she won’t cross the club.

Ember empties Ashley’s purse, dropping all the contents onto a nearby table. She unzips all the pockets, emptying them, too. From the last hidden pocket, she pulls out a set of keys witha label on them. I step forward and scoff. Theputa(bitch) stupidly labeled them as ‘RB Office’.

Ember grips the keys in her left hand, steps forward and punches Ashley in the jaw. Then she grips Ashley’s jaw hard, making her look at her.

“Where is the money?”

“I… I…” Ashley stammers, her eyes wide with panic.

Poison steps up beside Xochitl, who is still restraining a struggling Ashley. She pulls something out of her cut, and I smirk darkly as I catch sight of what it is. A second later, I can hear the tell-tale sound of zip ties securing her hands behind her back.

I step up besides Ember while giving Ashley a hard glare. “Each of those bundles represented five grand. You stole fifteen grand from us. Where is our fucking money?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Bandit damn near shaking with rage as he stares down at Ashley. “Do you even realize what you’ve done? The consequences for fucking them over like this?” he seethes, his voice shaking and colder than I’ve ever heard before.

Ashley freezes as she stares at him pleadingly. “Ethan, please, you’ve got to help me.”

The cold, detached look he gives her freezes her in place. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, but no words come out. Tears come to her eyes but there is no guilt there. She’s not sorry for her actions. She’s only sorry that she got caught.

“I’m done cleaning up your fucking messes, Ashley. I’ve been doing it my entire life. It’s just one disaster after another with you. One demand after another. One bailout after another. One loan after another.” He turns and then looks back over his shoulder at her. “And don’t come by my house. There’s no room for you there.”

Ashley finally breaks down crying, her eyes wide with panic. “Ethan, please. Please help me. You can’t leave me! I’m your sister.”

Bandit shakes his head and walks towards the door but then pauses as he looks back at me. “I no longer have a sister. I saw none of this. I was home alone all night.”

A broken sound escapes Ashley as she continues to plead with him. Then he leaves, his parting words letting us know he won’t rat us out for what’s to come.

When the door closes, I turn back to Ashley. “Answer me, otherwise this conversation is going to go places you most definitely don’t want it to go. It still might depending on your answer.”

Her bottom lip trembles and her cheeks are streaked with mascara-stained tears. She glances around the room, desperately searching for a lifeline, but she won’t find one. I swear her gaze stays trained on someone for a few seconds longer than everyone else behind me and I make a mental note to look at our security feed later to see who she was looking at.

When she doesn’t answer, I look at Xochitl and Daemon, who had stepped up behind Xochitl. “Take her downstairs to isolation. She can sit on ice for a while. Post a guard outside the door. No one goes in or out without my say.”

As they drag a shrieking Ashley down the hall, I turn my focus back on Ember. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

She gives me a tired smile. “Just a little, but nothing permanent.”