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Then I looked at the half-packed suitcase on my bed. It’d be a little more obvious than I liked if I walked out of here carrying that.
I pawed through my closet for a backpack, shoved my laptop and as many pieces of clothing into it as I could, and hurried through the house with it slung over my shoulder. My thumb darted over my phone’s screen, summoning an Uber.
When I passed through the gate and walked down the block, the car was just pulling up at the corner I’d indicated as the pick-up spot. I slid into the back and peered down at my phone as the driver hit the gas.
I could log into the scheduled email I’d set up from this device too. I opened up the message with its explanation of all the evidence that the Deadly Rose was working to upend the very foundations of the Devil’s Dozen and hesitated.
With one click, I could blow up the entire foundation of my life.
But I’d never really wanted that foundation anyway. Better to bulldoze over it and build fresh from the ground up.
I dismissed the scheduled send time and tapped the button to send the email now.
The phone chimed as the email flitted off to the inboxes of the Devil’s Dozen’s top dogs. A breath rushed out of me, shaky with a mix of terror and exhilaration.
I’d done it. I’d really done it.
As I sagged back in the seat, tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. I swiped at them, steeped in a strange mood that was more relief than anything else.
By the time the car reached the loft building, my head had started to clear like the first bright, refreshing sunlight after a thunderstorm. At the sight of all four of my men waiting out front, suitcases beside them, my spirits lifted.
I scrambled out to meet them, hauling my backpack with me.
“What’s going on?” Rafael asked immediately, his words tangling with Niko’s, “Are you all right?”
I found myself grinning at all of them like this was the best day of my life. Which maybe in some ways it was.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m free. We’re getting the hell out of here and never coming back.”
THIRTY
Luciana
“Ah,”Niko said, taking a big sip of his Calpis as we walked through the doors into the rink area of the small arena. He waved to one of the men on the arena staff who was sweeping the stands at the far end of the room. “It’s good to be home.”
I couldn’t help laughing at him. “Are you going to say that every time you drink one of those for the whole time we’re in Japan?”
He grinned back at me with a familiar twinkle in his eyes. “If it’s still true, why not? I can see you’ve started appreciating my country’s many benefits too.”
He nodded to the can I had clutched in my hand, what was technically hot chocolate except… cold. I never would have thought I’d get into drinking hot chocolate out of a can, let alone hot chocolate that wasn’t even hot, but I had to admit I was finding the stuff strangely addictive now that I’d tried it.
Quentin took a chug from his bottle of iced green tea and stretched out his arms toward the rink below us. “I appreciate that even the out-of-the-way rinks look all clean and pristine. Maybe I’ll have to move here.”
Jasper elbowed the other guy lightly. “Who would have thought all Quentin Wolfe needed to put him in a good mood was tidy stands?”
“Hey,” Quentin protested. “No one wants to skate in the middle of a mess.”
I shook my head at the two of them and their mock-antagonistic banter before trotting down the steps to the benches nearest the ice. We’d been in Tokyo for two weeks now, training for Worlds, which would be held in nearby Nagano. With my family’s empire in an uproar, it’d seemed safest to put plenty of ocean between us and my mother, and also not to traintooclose to the city she would first think to search for me if she had time to look.
No one had thought to look for us here at all. Niko fielded phone calls from reporters several times a day, giving them a vague story about our training progress after our win at Nationals and putting me or Jasper on to do brief interviews with the ones he felt would boost our profile the most, but we’d escaped all in-person media attention so far. He’d been able to keep the rest of the US team satisfied with the scraps of information he’d given them about our whereabouts too, other than a couple of video-chat meetings since we’d arrived.
Unfortunately, laying low had meant leaving Rafael back at the apartment Niko had found for us, because he stood out too much with the cast on his leg and his crutch. But we were hoping he’d be able to get the cast removed this weekend and be back to close to his old self.
From the bits and pieces of news he’d gathered from back home, the Deadly Rose’s operations had been thrown into so much turmoil it wasn’t likely she’d have had the manpower to search for me in the state of Texas, let alone all over Japan.
But still, it was best to be cautious. The Devil’s Dozen had their fingers everywhere. I wasn’t sure which of them owned territory in Tokyo, but no doubt someone had the local criminal elements under their sway. And we couldn’t be sure whether that someone would be on Mom’s side or against her.
I gulped the last of my chocolate drink and pulled on my skates, eager to get moving and stretch my muscles. By the time I’d stepped onto the ice to start warming up next to Jasper, anticipation was tingling through my nerves. “So, what’s the latest word on our competition?”
