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King sits up and leans forward onto his elbows, much like Carver had been earlier. “We let you down, Winter. We got lucky today, but next time … fuck, babe. I don’t even want to think about what could happen next time, especially now. She’s getting even more desperate by the second, and now that Harding is dead, she’s got no one. She’s getting far too unpredictable.”
“What about that kid?” Cruz grumbles, making my head whip back to him, my brows furrowed in confusion.
“Kid? What kid?”
“Are you serious?” Cruz questions. “In that photograph you found in your father’s office. Wasn’t that bitch pregnant? How long ago was that taken anyway? Fifteen, twenty years ago?”
Shit, he’s right. She was pregnant which means she has a kid wandering around here somewhere and I’ve been wasting all my time searching for Paris when I could have been finding something to use against her. I stand and start pacing, trying to figure out what little bits of information I have. “Well, my father died eighteen years ago and for that photograph to be filed in his office, assuming no one planted it in there after the fact, the picture had to be taken at least over eighteen years ago.”
“So, you have a cousin about your age,” King says. “And I’d assume, seeing as though both your moms are identical twins, that he or she would look kinda similar to you.”
I drop down on the end of Cruz’s couch, staring ahead at the fireplace but not really seeing anything. They’re right. I have a cousin, which means that all of this shit is so much bigger than just me, Paris, and Dynasty.
Fuck, I’ve always wanted family, but the simple fact that Paris is his or her mother means that trusting this new cousin is going to be hard.
I have to find this person.
I shoot straight back up off the couch. “Take your pills,” I call to the guys, running straight back out of the living room and racing down the hall to my father’s office. If there were details on Harding’s affair with Paris, then surely my father must have had something more on her. I don’t care if I have to go through every single file on his shelf. I’m certain that there’s something there. There has to be.
Tobias King was the one who told me that my father’s office would always bring me answers and I’m trusting him now. That little piece of information has proven useful before, and now I need it to come through for me again.
I hook my fingers around the door frame of my father’s office and slingshot myself into the room. I come to a screeching halt as I find Carver rummaging through the shelves, tearing files off and flicking them over his shoulder, trashing the room. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I demand.
He doesn’t even flinch at my tone, almost as though he already knew that I was standing right here. “I’ve let you down for the last fucking time, Elodie,” he growls, grabbing the next file and flicking through it. “She could have fucking killed you and I just passed out on the goddamn floor. FUCK. I should be better. I was trained better.”
“Carver,” I say, instantly getting ignored.
“She was in your fucking room with a goddamn knife. How the fuck did I miss this?” He throws another file. “I can’t lose you. I won’t fucking lose you.”
“CARVER.”
He still ignores me, getting more and more frustrated. He pulls out the last file, flicks through it and throws it over his shoulder to join the rest of the mess he’s created until he turns around and wipes everything off my father’s desk with a ferocious growl. “FUCKING HELL.”
He props his hands against the desk, leaning into it and breathing heavily as he desperately searches for control, but it’s gone. The broody, controlled, and precise Carver that I’m so used to is completely gone, leaving me with this reckless, unsure version of himself, one that has my heart racing in all the wrong kinds of ways.
I walk around the big mahogany desk, approaching him with caution, like one would do to a wild animal. “Carver,” I whisper, bringing my hand up and placing it over his big shoulder, the thoughts and urgency of finding this long-lost cousin completely gone and replaced with nothing but pure concern for the man before me, a man who I’m madly in love with.
When he hurts, I hurt.
Carver flinches at my touch and as his head whips around and his wild, erratic gaze falls upon mine, I see nothing but devastation and failure. “Don’t,” he rumbles, the lone word echoing through the room and bouncing off every wall. “Don’t come over here and try to convince me that it’s all going to be alright. That was our shot, our one chance at ending this, and we fucked it up. I fucked it up.”
