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“Distance?” I shouted.
“Do you want to be seen hanging out with a woman who matches whatever description they have? One that you didn’t start kicking it with till that night?” Liam laughed bitterly.
I rolled my eyes. “She needs protection,” I said. “Besides, Mads was asking about Quinton way more than Nate.”
“Quinton?” Liam said, confused.
“You know, that guy that you…" I brought my finger to my head, fake-shooting myself. Liam continued staring at me like I had gone crazy. “The man you killed in the alleyway?”
“Oh, the fool who got the upper hand on you?” Liam asked.
“That isn’t exactly how it happened,” I retorted.
“That’sexactlyhow it happened,” Logan added.
“What does that lowlife have to do with any of it?” Liam crossed his arms.
I shrugged. “I guess Audry knew him.” I kept the information about what I knew to myself. I knew she was the girl we were worried about, but that tidbit of information didn’t need a wider audience.
“You guess?” Liam pressed.
“What do you expect me to do? I can’t exactly go up to the woman and be like, ‘hey, this man that you know for whatever reason, we killed him and dumped his body because I snaked his date after he fucked some girl in the bathroom,’” I said. “Unless you want me to spill everything to her.”
“Not particularly.” Liam tapped his finger to his chin, the gears moving in his head.
“If it’s protection Audry needs, have her just stay at the hotel. Neutral ground. No one will touch her there, not unless they’re certain she killed Nate,” Logan added before Liam could come up with another option.
“Again,how exactly do I get her to do that without spilling our secrets?”
“Figure it out,” Liam said. “It’s a good plan.”
Logan’s mouth fell open a bit as Liam left the room. “Did he just…agree with me?”
“Capture this feeling, Logan. It may never happen again,” I warned sarcastically, earning myself a head slap from him.
Chapter 37
Audry
Isat outside my father’s office feeling like a petrified little girl caught with her hand in the cookie jar. I had done my best over the past few weeks to avoid my parents. But the confrontation was inevitable. My little brother had been doing his best to field them, allowing me my space, but even his goodwill wasn’t endless. The more he got involved, the more pressure they put on him, which was the last thing I wanted.
“Mr. Santora should be almost done with his meeting,” his secretary explained. She sat across from me at her desk, her hair twirled into a bun atop her head. She smelled of lavender and stress. She was part of the underbelly of a major corporation.
I stood up, glancing at the photos on the wall. One pictured my grandfather, his arm stretched over another vaguely familiar man. The green eyes pierced the camera lens with such certainty. The other three men were scattered on either side of my grandfather.
I perused the other photos, finding the green-eyed man in a variety of them. My mind raced as I saw it there. The man’s forearm was outstretched, shaking my grandfather’s hand. A tattoo of a spider rested on the inner flesh. The same tattoo Isaw on Kai and Liam. Even Carson had one on her back shoulder blade.
“Who is this?” I asked, pointing to the image.
The secretary glanced up from her computer, looking at me over the tops of her glasses. “I’m not sure, sweetheart.” And with that, she went back to typing, bothered by my intrusion to ask about strangers on a wall from ages ago.
The door to my father’s office opened, and a man stepped out. He nodded at me once before disappearing down the hall and around the corner.
This was it. Into the wasp nest I went.
I stepped into his office. The large windows overlooked the beach. We were high enough that the downtown smog was just a dusty cloud. My father leaned over his desk, scribbling notes on a blank page. His name plate glowed in the overdone lighting: Silas Santora.
My mother lounged on the couch, her nose stuffed into a financial report. She scribbled her red pen along the paperwork, mumbling profanities.
