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I stood there alone in the kitchen, my chest heaving. My breathing had accelerated like I was running a race just looking at that damned photo. It reminded me that deep down, I was still that girl. I still carried the trauma of being locked in a tight space while my parents screamed on the other side of the door.
I looked at the island and realized Aiden's keys and his gun were still right there. I looked back at the box, sitting at the end of the table. I could easily sweep everything into the box and disappear into the night. I’d be free. I wouldn’t be at risk of getting attached to yet more people who could be ripped away as easily as a band-aid leaves a wound.
But if Aiden didn't take over the family business, I had no doubt it would mean more pain and suffering for a lot of innocent people.
People who were just as important to someone as my parents were to me.
I closed my eyes and let out a groan. I would stay. I would fight and help Aiden, and I'd take his help in tracking down these killers even though I could do it on my own.
Though I'd have to hide my kidnapping forever or the Belladonnas would have these men disassembled in twenty minutes. The thought of my men’s dead bodies unexpectedly made my heart hurt.
Aiden entered the room, looking cautious, his green eyes taking in everything in a sweep.
As if he expected me to be armed.
Understanding swept through me, and I was all the more annoyed because I’d just been so fucking tender, deciding to stay with him. "You absolute ass. That was a test, wasn't it?"
I crossed the room to his gun. "This probably wasn't even loaded."
"Selena.” His tone was warning.
“You know I’m just as dangerous with or without a gun,” I warned him.
I pulled the gun free of the holster and dropped the clip, expecting to see an empty clip. But the brass tips of the rounds shone dimly out.
He held out his hand for the gun. There was a look in his gaze that I couldn't read.
I placed the gun, and the clip, in his hand.
"I'll hold onto this for you until later," he said. "Until you're ready to use it on the people who hurt your family."
"What about the files?" I asked. "Are you going to hold onto those too?"
"You can take them to your room if you wish," he said. "I'll get a laptop for you to use under supervision to review what’s on the hard drives."
I tilted my head to one side, studying him. "So I passed.Again.Is this your kink, Aiden? You like giving me the opportunity to shoot you?”
"I told him not to test you," Dominic grumbled as he walked into the room behind him.
Aiden ignored him, fixed on me. "You can keep them in your room if you wish. But I suggest you share the burden of what's in those files with us."
"That's not my nature," I said for the second time.
He slid his gun back into his holster. "Neither was staying here instead of running out that door."
His intense green gaze held mine. “Maybe you’re something besidesjusta Belladonna, Selena.”
“Terrifying thought,” I said lightly. Then I collected my box of grisly evidence and carried it past these two men, with their watchful eyes, to go upstairs alone.
CHAPTER17
Dominic
I didn’t likethe idea of Selena sleeping by herself that night with all that evidence weighing on her mind. I wasn’t as worried as Aiden that she would betray us and use the technology against us; I was worried that she didn’t seem able to let us in, to let us share the burden with her. I worried she would be haunted by nightmares or that she would stay up all night looking at terrible photos of her parents’ bodies that no one should ever have to see once, let alone study.
“Are you going to sleep in her room?” I asked Xander.
“Are you?” he asked back. He looked like he’d been working all day, and there was ink on his fingers and smeared on his cheek.
