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“I think the officer knew where you were all along.” The car pulled into my father’s parking garage. “He had to wait until anyone who wasn’t on Sully’s father’s payroll had left to keep you secure. He would have known about the cleanup.”
I shook my head. “But Elias still found me.”
“The social worker was most likely a plant,” Matthias offered. “He went to do the right thing but got stabbed in the back for it. Otherwise, you might have grown up with him and his wife. He had filed a petition for custody, stating familial ties. It probably tipped off whoever worked for Elias.”
“Fuck.” I could have grown up in Portland with a loving family instead of in the hellhole Elias created for me every day. Love and comfort. Sighing, I set those thoughts aside. What-ifs would get me nowhere, and thinking about what could have been would only lead me down a road I didn’t want to go.
This was where I was today, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. My path led me to Matthias and Vas.
To my father and my siblings.
It led me back to my mother.
These were things I never would have had if it wasn’t for Elias.
I couldn’t be bitter about the past when it had brought me to this point, and I could only hope that the future would keep getting better.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
Ava had been restless all night. Barely sleeping, even in the secure warmth of my embrace. We were all exhausted in the morning. Vas, Liam, Ava. Even the twins wore haggard expressions when they sat down at the dining room table that morning.
My little wife was quietly thinking to herself, her cup of coffee held tightly to her chest. I had come to realize that it was a form of security for her when she was out of sorts or contemplating something. She would drag the warmth of the cup into her and concentrate on the peace it brought her in that moment. It centered her.
Her leg bounced anxiously beneath the table, and she was biting her lip. I couldn’t help but smile at how she was chomping at the bit to see her mother again. Radick had informed us, however, that we should wait until the afternoon to visit so her mother could have enough rest.
Liam had his chin in his hand, elbow braced on the table, eyes cast down in thought. I could only imagine what he was going through, finding out that the woman meant to be his wife was alive and well and that it was his current wife that had tried to murder her. It had been unanimously decided that we would wait until it was time for Katherine’s discharge to include Liam in everything. Unless she asked for him, but I had a feeling that she wouldn’t.
“Any news on Christian?” Ava asked me once I had kissed her good morning. I nodded.
“Mark has been monitoring internet chatter with Bridget,” I said. “But your brothers have been coming up with a plan to draw him out.”
Ava raised her brows in surprise and glanced over at the twins. “Ooh.” She grinned excitedly. “Do tell.”
“You’re gonna be bait.” Seamus grinned at her. I growled quietly next to my wife with my arms crossed against my chest, glaring at the smug bastard.
This was the part of the plan I didn’t like. There was no mistaking that Ava had become well trained while we had been separated, but she was nowhere near master level. She was small and slight, which gave her an advantage, but if her opponent got her in a compromised position, she could have a hard time getting out of it. Especially if it were a man twice her size.
“I do make good bait,” she teased, her eyes twinkling mischievously when they flickered my way before she glanced back to her brother.
“He’s been following you,” Kiernan sneered. “The fucking cockroach has had you under surveillance this entire time, and we barely caught on to it.”
“How?” she wondered. How indeed.
“We thought the hack into the Dashkov building was planting the virus that triggered the explosion,” I told her. And we were fucking wrong about that. “It wasn’t.” I continued. “The hack spread a virus through our entire system that was searching for one thing only. You.”
“Umm.” Ava shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “What do you mean searching for me?”
“Keywords mostly,” Seamus explained. “We believe that whoever set the virus in motion before the explosion has our information being filtered through a program that searches out specific keywords.”
Ava still looked confused.
“It’s similar to putting words into a search engine,” I explained to her. “Like ‘red hair’ or ‘Dashkov.’ Any time their program picked up keywords they entered into their parameter filters, it would alert them.”
“That’s not creepy.” She wrinkled her nose. “Wait,” she looked around, “are they watching us?” She turned a fresh shade of red. “Like in your office or…” The twins exchanged mirrored looks of amusement and disgust.
“No, Red,” I assured her. “My office doesn’t have cameras, and your father’s system is completely separate from ours.”
“But,” Kiernan chimed in, “we believe they’ve been tracking you using CCTV footage as well.”
