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Chapter One
“Full house, aces over kings. Read ’em and weep, boys.” Aurelia fans her cards across the felt table, a triumphant gleam and Cheshire grin spreading clear across her face. A collective groan emanates from everyone here. Everyone except for me. I’m too busy focusing on my phone that’s blowing up like a series of grenades.
It’s likely a glitch—no one can get into my Boston place that I don’t want in—but it’s weird that my alarms are sounding all the same.
“Reils, you could let us win one hand,” Asher bemoans, but for real, considering Aurelia has been playing poker with us—and beating us—for more than a year at this point, I don’t know why we bother complaining when we still willingly play each month. “How come you never let us win one hand?”
Aurelia stands up and does a little victory dance, twirling past her fiancé, Zax, and giving him a quick peck on the lips. “Because Goonies never say die.”
My lips twitch at her Goonies reference while I squint at my phone and quickly scroll through camera after camera without finding what triggered the alarm.
“Lenox?” Greyson calls out, snapping me away from my screen. He’s shuffling the cards, his expectant gaze on me, clearly having been trying to get my attention a few times already. “You in, man?”
I stare around the table at my lifelong best friends and then over at Aurelia, who has now become a part of our family, and debate if I should say anything. Instead, all I do is shake my head and move to stand when Ash throws out…
“You know, now that you’re the only single one of us, we really should try and set you up.”
Fuck. Not this shit again. Not them too.
“It’s time,” he persists when I don’t respond. “Even Thor falls in love in the movies, silent warrior. You too can follow in your doppelganger’s footsteps. Every Thor deserves a Jane.”
“Jane dies, bro,” Callan informs him as he bites into a buffalo wing. “Come up with a better analogy.”
I stare blankly at them, not even bothering to entertain the notion when Aurelia jumps in with, “Oh, yeah. Definitely. I mean, not with a Jane, because that was tragic, but we should totally set you up. It’ll be great.”
Only not so much.
“But with whom?” she continues, glancing around at the guys and puffing out an annoyed breath. “Ugh. I need Layla, Wynter, and Fallon in here for this. They’d have ideas.”
Yes, I’m sure my best friends’ women would have lots of ideas, so it’s perfect that they’re down the hall watching a movie and not in here with us.
“It can’t be someone in the fashion world,” Greyson picks up, looking at Zax and Aurelia who own fashion houses. “Could be a musician like me. He plays piano like a god, and women swoon for that. Especially musically inclined women. Could be a tattoo artist like him, but that feels cliché and I’m not sure there are any other people who do that who live close enough to him in Maine to make that work.”
“True,” Asher agrees, pointing at Grey. “That’s a good call, and he does know the industry since we were Central Square once upon a time. I’m not much help. My teammates are all dudes, and there are very few women who work for the Rebels. Not a doctor.”
“No,” Callan states contemplatively. “Unless maybe she works in the ER like Layla and I do, but I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head. Especially since Lenox lives in fucking Maine. Besides, she needs to be?—”
“Fiery,” Grey finishes for him as if I’m not sitting here, privy to their conversation and plans to set me up. I want no part of either. I have more important things on my mind currently, like my alarm going off. “And she has to be able to deal with the fact that he rarely speaks unless he has to.”
“Enough,” I shoot out, proving his point. “No one is setting me up.” It’s like they’re taking a page from the town yentas as my assistant Brooklynn calls them. Every woman in my small town in Maine is actively trying to do the same. They all have a cousin or an aunt or a niece or a daughter who is so absolutely perfect for me I just have to meet them.
Never. Going. To. Happen.
“Oh, I’ve got it!” Aurelia exclaims, snapping her fingers in an “ah-ha” way, giving me a coy smirk I don’t like. “What about Georgia?”
“No!” Grey and Zax immediately shout, and ice fills my veins even as my chest clenches at the mere mention of her. I get it. I even deserve it. She’s their cousin, more like a little sister to them with how close they are, and I tested every friendship limit they had. Just thinking about that knocks me with a pang of old guilt. “Definitely not her,” Zax finishes gruffly. “But someone else.”
“Or not.” And just like that, I get up under the pretense of going to the bathroom. No one questions me. Sometimes being mostly mute has its advantages.
I walk down the hall of Zax’s massive penthouse, catching sight of my friends’ women and their kids, and immediately keep going.
My heart picks up a few extra beats as I enter the nearest bathroom and shut and lock the door. I scroll back through the outside cameras, and now that I’m able to give it my full attention, I see it. Movement. A shadowy figure punches in a code only me and the people in the poker room have and enters my house.
What in the absolute fuck?
Did I get doxxed? Did someone I’ve hacked and brought down find me? I shake my head. There really is no way. But that doesn’t change the fact that someone is most definitely in my house. I tap from camera to camera until I find them… sitting on the sofa in my family room without turning on any lights.
Huh?
