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“I’ll be fine,” I tease, lifting on my toes to give him a kiss on his cheek.
“Not you I’m worried about,” Zeke grumbles, and twists his head to the side to capture my lips in a slow tantalizing kiss. I gasp as he releases me and he gives me a parting wink before brushing past Monte and down the stairs.
“What’s going on?” I ask, clearing my throat and striding over to sit at my desk to put some distance between us after yesterday. The way he had pushed past my boundaries as friends, even if he was trying to play a part, still churns my stomach with unease.
“I’ve found something … about your father’s murder,” he says hesitantly, sliding into the seat in front of me. My brows furrow at the sudden shift, having expected something to do with the Langleys. My quest for vengeance had taken a back seat to all of the action from the past few days, so it takes my mind a few moments to shift gears. “Do you remember what happened that night?”
His question triggers my memory, that afternoon playing in my mind on autopilot.
My father came to visit me in New York and check in on the club. He was tense to say the least, he didn’t even bring any of his usual guards with him. He was distant … he was always distant, but more so this time. He kept glancing at his watch, his nervous ticks on replay as his leg shook with nervous energy every time he sat down.
“What’s going on?” I asked him hesitantly, going out on a limb from our usual topics of conversation. We always kept everything light. He would fill me in on the businesses and let me know if he needed anything from me, and I would tell him how the club was doing and what, if anything, I needed.
“Of course everything is fine,” he snapped, scowling back at me, and I kept my expression blank, not giving him any weakness to pick at. “I’m just running late.”
“For what?” I asked in a bored tone, not letting him see my curiosity. He normally stayed overnight every time he came to visit, perusing the books in my office for most of the night before heading home the next morning.
He scowled back at me but seemed to think better of it, biting back his usual scathing retort. “I have to go to an event tonight with some … associates,” he said carefully, glancing around us to make sure no one was too close.
My brow creased, and I glanced around again, hoping I’d see one of his betas lurking in a corner of the bar. “I can go with you,” I offered, though nervous energy thrummed through me at the thought of him going on his own.
“Absolutely not,” he roared, bolting from his seat, nearly running for the office door. I followed behind him, pausing when I noticed a red mask slipping from his opened briefcase.
“Dad,” I called out, letting the familiar term for him slip from my lips. I cursed myself for not calling him father and using the formality as a shield like I normally had.
His head whipped back to look at me, eyes wide in shock, until he saw the mask perched between my fingers. He stomped back towards me and snatched it from my hand, scowling down at the thing.
“Masquerade,” he spat angrily at the full decorative mask that would conceal all of his face, as though it had personally offended him. “I love you, Skylar,” he said, his face the most sincere I’d seen in years. I stood dumbfounded as he turned and walked away through the front door, the strings of the red mask fluttering behind him until the door closed, blocking my view.
I wish I’d known that would be the last time I saw him alive. The next time I glimpsed that red mask was in an evidence bag next to his limp lifeless body splayed on an autopsy table. A bullet hole marred his face, in the center of his temple, the bullet from a sniper rifle they said. I couldn’t stomach seeing the back of his head though. We knew someone had planned to take him out that night, had set him up and been waiting outside the party when he went out into the alley. And given the way he was acting before, he knew—he knew he was being marked, he knew he might die that night. But we haven’t been able to find any footage, despite combing the surrounding surveillance systems, and we couldn’t find any sign of the person that took him out. No other organization even claimed the kill, something most would have been boasting about.
“Of course I do,” I whisper hoarsely, my voice barely audible to my own ears as I answer his question.
“I’ve been searching the IP addresses in the area, searching for any home security systems in the apartment building that we wouldn’t have known about, and finally found something,” Monte explains, slipping the tablet in front of me nervously. I quirk a brow in question, unsure why exactly he would need to be anxious, but he just nods towards the screen in response.
I reach for the tablet, my hand seeming to move in slow motion as my finger lands on the cool glass. Pressing the power button, the screen lights up a video ready to be played. My heart picks up in a rapid staccato against my chest as I glance down at it in shock.I can’t believe this is it, we’ve finally found something to ID the shooter, and it’s here right in front of me …
My finger trembles as I push the play button, my eyes fastening on the figure crouched near the edge of the roof as he screws the silencer on to his sniper rifle. My breath catches as he sets the gun up, training it on the alleyway my father would later be found lifeless in. He presses a hand to his ear, likely speaking to someone over a com, and places his hands back on the rifle.
My face falls when the back door opens and a figure in a red mask steps out, everything below his eyebrows completely obscured by the decorative disguise. My lips quiver as I hold back a shout, as though I’m watching this happen in real time and still have a chance to save him, rather than seeing it all too late on a recording of the past. The steel door closes and the killer lines up his shot. My father paces with his phone to his ear, completely unaware of the figure shrouded in darkness just above him with his finger on the trigger. Completely unaware his life is seconds away from being cut too short.
As though it’s playing out in slow motion, the figure presses the trigger and my father freezes in place, his eyes shooting up to the roof to find out where it rang off from, but it’s already too late as blood blooms on his forehead, the shot hitting its mark. I numbly feel Monte’s hand on mine in a feeble attempt to calm me down. I hold on to my last shreds of brain power, needing to see the son of a bitch’s face that killed my father.
The figure whips around, his brows furrowed in confusion as he glances up to the windows of the apartment building, and the video cuts off there, frozen on the face of my father’s killer. The crease in his brow is one that I’ve smoothed out many times in the last few days. I stare blankly at the familiar face, my mind needing a few moments to catch up with what my eyes are seeing right now. I draw in a ragged breath, followed by another, thankful that I’m in a chair right now, because I’m sure if I’d been standing my feet would have given out from under me. A figure blurs before me through my tears, and warm hands wrap around me, pulling me against a hard chest.
The tablet falls limply from my hand, clattering onto the desk, and bile rises in my throat as I think about the man on the screen and how close I had just come to letting him put his hands on me in my father’s office—my father that he had killed. Zeke killed my father, him or Zayn maybe, but Zeke is the trained assassin. Neither thought puts me at ease since both men are my mates.
I glance up at Monte, a mix of rage and hopelessness in my eyes. Monte cradles my head against his chest, but my whole body goes numb, leaving me void of feeling as one final thought echoes through my mind.
I have to kill him, I have to kill my mate.
