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He wasn’t that dumb and try as he might to clear his expression of guilt, she was sure that she read it on his face. Until now, she’d trusted that he had his reasons for acting shady about Cuckoo, but it turned out she had a limit to how much freedom she would give him when it came to keeping secrets from her and Caine had just taken her to it.
“I can’t cry on your shoulder about being useless to the Kindred because I miss all the pertinent signs and then ignore them when I do recognize them just because you’re the guilty one,” she said.
Affront smacked him. “Guilty? What the fuck?”
Kicking off her boots, she clambered to her knees on the end of the bed because it gave her more height than standing on the floor would. “Why did you bring her in to take over at CI? You thought she was great at business, fine, I didn’t like it, but it made sense. But that doesn’t explain why you turned off the camera in my apartment after telling me you put her there to keep an eye on her.”
He didn’t need to hear a name to know whom Zara was talking about. “I did, we had the hardware set up—”
“You turned it off,” she said, demanding the truth while she still held onto the trust he’d worked so hard to gain from her.
“What makes you think I turned it off?”
“I was talking to Bess, one of the screens came up blank. I thought it was broken so I checked it out. The data log shows it’s not broken, it’s off, and you were the one to turn it off.” His hands went to the back of his head, and she could tell he was cursing the day she was taught how to use the manor security system. “Why would you do that unless you wanted to…” She couldn’t bring herself to make the accusation.
“Unless I wanted to what?” he barked, storming to the end of the bed and grabbing her shoulders to haul her to the absolute edge. “Don’t stop there, lay it out for me. What do you think I’ve got cooking? You think I’m screwing around on you?”
“Are you?” she asked, sorry that Caine had managed to get in her head. Too many things were stacking up that suggested she should be suspicious. Maybe she wasn’t great at the mission stuff, but as a woman, she could tell when her boyfriend was hiding something from her.
He gritted his teeth behind the pinch of his narrow lips. Praying he’d say something to alleviate her worries that could explain the inconsistencies, her heart bounced from her throat to her gut, but she made herself seal her lips and wait.
Brodie tightened his grip on her shoulders until she winced at the pain of his power. Opening her lips to release the gasp of pain, she tried to twist herself out of his hands, but he was too strong. With a brutal thrust, he threw her body away from his, tossing her so far that she landed on the pillows.
Striding away from the bed, he went to the window. “If that’s what you think then yeah, I am,” he said. Grabbing the chair from the desk, he turned it around to straddle it, leaning on the back so he could look out the window across to Kahlil’s location.
Releasing the tension in her body, her arms fell and she straightened her legs. That didn’t sound right. Brodie’s sulk was infuriating and it solved nothing. Caine might not have her best interests at heart, but he’d posed a possibility she couldn’t ignore. She had every right to question her love on it.
If something else was going on here, she deserved to know. The Kindred deserved to know. He had enough integrity that if he wanted to end his relationship with her Brodie would have revoked her clearance for the manor and told her to clear out. He wouldn’t have given her the floor to direct their latest mission.
Except Brodie hadn’t been forthcoming about why he’d involved Cuckoo in their lives and this latest development was too significant for her to allow him to continue being evasive.
Setting him in her sights, she pulled her legs up to cross them as she took her weight off the headboard. “You turn around and look me in the eye when you lie to me,” she asserted and awaited his next move.
Slowly, he turned until only one of his forearms was left on the chair back. “What makes you think I’m lying?”
Without expression or nuance, she matched his intensity. “I’m pretty much all the woman you can handle, Rave,” she said. “I keep you plenty busy.” His brow rose before he returned his stare to the window. “She was the woman, the one who got between you and Caine.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled.
“Art told me there was a woman…” Zara braced for his reaction to the next truth. “Caine told me it was her.”
Brodie had to be wondering if there was any person who didn’t reveal the secrets of his past to her, but he didn’t react as strongly as she’d anticipated. “He tell you that in front of Saint or when he had the gun on you?” he muttered like he didn’t care which of the answers were correct.
“No,” she said, because neither of them were true and she wouldn’t hide her encounter with his foe. “Five minutes ago in the alley downstairs.”
This time when he turned to glimpse her, he wasn’t passive or casual and despite her heart being on overdrive again, she didn’t blink. “Motherfuck,” he grumbled. In one fluid motion, he stood up, hooked the back of the chair in one hand, and spun to hurl it across the room into the opposite wall where it splintered in a thunderous crash before its pieces scattered on the floor. “Motherfuck!”
“Calm down,” she said, soothing with open hands as she climbed onto her knees. “Nothing happened.”
“Nothing?” Flying at the bed, he grabbed her to haul her off and up against him. “We didn’t even know if the motherfucker was still alive. Now we know he’s alive and tailing you again!”
“Rather me than you,” she said.
She didn’t want Caine around to rile her lover because that was what he wanted, and he was managing to do it by using her as the conduit. Questioning whether she should have confessed, Zara knew she could only be honest. She couldn’t ask for it and not return it.
“Where the fuck you come up with that logic?” he asked, shaking her. “If he’s on you, then you’re in danger. And when you’re in danger and I’m not there…”
“What?” she asked. His long fingers dug into her upper arms, and he held her so close and so high that her forearms were squashed between their two bodies. Opening her hands, she stretched her fingers to stroke what she could reach of his jaw. “It pisses you off?” That much was obvious from the shattered furniture.
