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I should have known. The moment I found her snooping around my room, I should have known something wasn’t right. But the sight of her ass had me distracted until rage consumed me and thinking straight became impossible around her.
It’s cold enough that the wind bites our skin as the boat races across the water. The only instructions I gave Angelo was to go far and move fast. Not because I’m angry with her, but because I’m afraid I’m going to try to get back to her. Watching my brothers punish her felt too good, but I meant what I promised when she was lost on that bathroom floor. I am done punishing her. We’re even.
The part that confuses me the most, isn’t that she didn’t feel like she could tell us the truth, or why she did it all in the first place. It’s that all my men ended up dead. Evie is a lot of things, but a cold-blooded killer doesn’t feel like one of them. She’s smart, she strategizes, and I see no strategy where killing all of my men like that makes sense.
And none of this answers the question about why the Shades are coming for us. Sure, I was an ass to her when she got here, but this feels bigger than that. It feels purposeful, almost like it was planned. My head is starting to ache with the information. I need to write it all down, maybe then something will make sense.
“Fuck her,” Damien says, tipping the whisky bottle back. He’s almost finished the whole thing, and he hasn’t drank much since that first lunch with Evie.
Lev tries to comfort him, but Damien shrugs him off and storms away. It’s easy to see he’s the most hurt by all of this.
Lev comes to stand by me, staring out at the water with a solemn look. I expected him to shut down again, but he seems like he’s processing it all the best. I could tell he was angry when we found out, but I think overall he was more hurt. He didn’t want to hurt Evie physically; he wanted to make her heart crack open like his was.
“There has to be something we’re missing,” Lev says, reflecting my same thoughts. “She’s a Shade, but she said she needed our help. Why do you think she did all of those things to us if she needed our help?” he asks.
“Maybe that was part of her trap.” I guess. “Maybe that was the final act in luring us into a false sense of security to finally take us out.”
We sit there and think about that for a few minutes.
Then it hits me. “There had to be someone pulling her strings.”
Lev looks at me like I’m an idiot grasping for straws, and I see why that would be hard to believe with how independent our girl is.
Our girl.
“Think about it, someone was controlling Bryce. We still don’t know who switched that video. Her identity came from a masked man giving us all the information. It couldn’t have been the Shades or they would have gotten to us much easier. Someone killed our men, and she seemed genuinely surprised by that. Maybe the Shades aren’t the only players here. There’s someone else.”
“But who?”
“We need to go back. We need to ask her.”
I shoot a text to Angelo to turn around while I go to my laptop to pull up the cameras in the living area to see if she’s left yet.
A gasp leaves my lips when the cameras finally load. Evie is tied to a chair while three men are beating the shit out of her. Lev rushes to my side, but my eyes don’t leave the screen. She’s been stripped down to just her sports bra and underwear. Her clothes are torn to pieces on the floor. Lev clicks the audio button just as she cries out, and the sound is enough to rip my chest in half.
“Who the fuck is that?” Lev asks.
The boat has already turned, but I don’t know if we can make it back in time. We left her there and someone got to her. It makes sense now. They wanted to push us apart by showing us all the evidence against her. They probably assumed we would either kill her ourselves or leave her for someone else to do it.
Russian words fall from their mouths and I freeze. This isn’t the Shades; this is someone else. I was right, but who could they be? Damien comes running out with Lev in front of him. He almost falls over me to get a look at the screen. I pull out my phone and call Laney.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Get to Evie at the suite. Now!” I yell into the phone. “Find Nessa and run. I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
“Where the fuck are you guys?” Rustling in the background lets me know she’s up and moving. “She practically just left to try and make things right with you! I had to beg her to do that. What did you do?”
Now Laney’s the one yelling, but I don’t know how to put everything into words or even begin to process what she just said.
Was she really coming to tell us the truth and we just walked away?
Bile coats the back of my throat, threatening to spill over as I hear Evie’s screams again. If she’s screaming, then she’s alive, and I have to let that bring me some semblance of peace right now, or I’m going to completely lose my shit before I can get to her.
“Alexi, I swear to God. If Evie dies, I will kill you!” She hits the end button before I can reply.
If she dies, I might just let her.
Chapter 58
