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“Exactly my thought,” Blake says. “And about that wording in your father’s will, I tried to pull your birth certificate and Isaac’s as well. I found yours and it reads as expected. Isaac’s is another story. It’s sealed, and there’s no online record. I’ve sent a man to get hard copies any way necessary.”
Harper turns to me. “What the heck is this?”
My mind is chasing the messages we’ve been given. “Good question,” I say, walking to the coffee table, grabbing the message I haven’t decoded, and staring down at it. I sit down and search for birth certificate numbers in the state of Colorado but this one doesn’t connect any dots there. The format and digits don’t add up.
My phone buzzes with a text message and I grab it to confirm that it’s from Isaac and as cordial as I’d expect from him:I’m at the hospital. Where the fuck are you?
Harper sits down next to me and I show her the message. “At least it’s a controlled environment,” she says. “No one can get hurt.”
I snort. “He doesn’t have a chance in hell of hurting me.”
“I was more worried about him,” she replies.
“I second that notion,” Blake interjects, joining us and clearly aware of what’s going on. “You and Isaac don’t need to be alone.” He eyes Harper and then me. “Not after her attack and I speak from experience. I lost a fiancée once. I lived for revenge for yearsof my life.”
This statement explains a lot to me. It tells me why I’m comfortable with Blake. Why he doesn’t push back at places that would earn him a hard push out the door, though he got close after my father’s attack. I stand up and pull Harper with me. “Can you handle knowing what you know, and standing in front of him like you don’t?”
“You mean will I hurt him? You’ll be there to protect him, right?”
My lips quirk. God, I love this woman. I glance at Blake. “Can we have Savage to stand between us and him if it comes to that?”
“Maybe I better come along,” he says dryly. “Savage loves revenge a little too much, even someone else’s.”
“I’ll take Savage,” I say, sliding an arm around Harper. “Let’s go to the hospital.”
Blake nods and makes a call to alert his team. “Savage already handed off Grayson to Smith. He’s meeting us downstairs.”
Harper and I head for the door, and I help her pull on a jacket. “I’ll take you shopping today,” I promise softly while Blake takes a hint and steps outside.
“I’m not worried about shopping,” she says. “Though at some point we have to talk about my apartment and my things.”
“I’ll make sure I get in touch with the service we talked about today.”
She inhales and lets it out. “Yes. That’s—yes, okay.” She cuts her gaze.
I catch her chin. “What is it?”
“I’m excited about our new life, I am. It’s just—it’s daunting to realize that everything that was mine when I left is gone. It’s like I spent years of my life building nothing.”
“We can sell this place. We can pick out a place that you want, that feels like ours, not mine.”
“No. Eric, I love this apartment. It’s stunning.”
“I want you to feel like it’s yours.”
“It will in time. This has all just been a whirlwind. A crazy whirlwind. I’m starting over. And Ineedto start over. This is the right decision and a happy one, but I can’t revel in that until this storm has passed. I feel like the happiness is hiding in the clouds, just out of our reach. And a tornado is waiting to erupt and just destroy everything.”
“Hiding in the clouds,withinour reach.” All the sudden, numbers blast through my mind and I count out the digits in that first message, before my lips quirk. “You’re brilliant, baby.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You are.” I kiss her and open the door to find Blake waiting. “I know what the first message means.”
Chapter one hundred
Eric
The answer was right in front of me the entire time, and my mind was too damn muddled with Kingston nonsense to see what was right in front of me.
