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“Wait.” I stepped out of his arms, immediately missing his warmth, and frowned. I knew that name. I’d known him as Daz, but Darryl Beckett had been larger than life. His heir, Kristy Beckett, was a tiny woman but a force to be reckoned with. I pointed at the box. “I know them.”
“Who is it?” Tristan asked, stepping closer to look.
Brow furrowed, I turned to him. “It’s Ry’s mum and dad. Daz died, like two months before Rosa did. Ry’s mum, Kristy, and Zee’s dad are tight.”
Tristan’s eyes widened, and he inhaled sharply, reaching for me like a lifeline. I held him close, needing the comfort from the gut punch too.
“Fuck,” Tristan hissed. He wiped his hand over his face, exhaling on a groan. “You’ve all been through so much.”
I buried my face against his firm chest and closed my eyes, taking comfort in his warmth and the strength of his arms around my shoulders. “Zee and Ry especially.”
“How did he die?” Tristan asked hesitantly, his voice a low rumble against my ear.
“I don’t know.” I shook my head, my heart hurting for Ry. He was so stoic, so guarded, but underneath it all was a soft heart and a fiercely loyal man who’d do whatever it took to keep the people he loved safe. It was his doing that I was in the room with three of them at that moment and why he was up on deck, protecting us against a risk we weren’t even sure was real.
“But I do know it was unexpected,” I added, letting Tristan reach his own conclusion, likely the same one we’d drawn once we were old enough to understand what could have happened. Seeing this information—his name on the list—was another blow, another terrible hint at what had gone down.
Tristan closed his eyes, and his shoulders slumped forward, his head hanging low. I stepped closer, this time taking him into my arms.
He rested his forehead against mine and sighed. “So fucking unfair.”
Eighteen
Zali
“I
need to go home and get some things,” Tristan murmured against my hair.
I was resting my hands on the window ledge in my office, staring unseeing out over the marina. I wanted to be on the water in my happy place where the only thing I could hear was the cry of a circling hawk, the lap of the current against the hull, and waves crashing against the island sheltering us from the ocean.
My gut was telling me Tristan leaving wasn’t a good idea, but I couldn’t very well keep him a prisoner. Well… he might not appreciate it anyway. I was spooked. Shook. Fear churned in my belly, and I forced myself to uncurl my fingers from the metal of the frame.
“Love, I know you’re scared, but I’ll be okay. There’s nothing connecting the liquidator with the accident other than our speculation. How would he even know that I was doing research on him?”
I whirled around, astounded that he’d said something so naïve. Dressed only in an oversized tee, I was hardly intimidating, but he was being reckless, and I wouldn’t stand for it. “The same way that they figured out you were doing research on ReimagINC in the first place.” I threw my hands up in the air and paced across the room, my footfalls more of a stomp than a light step. “Wasn’t one death threat enough?” I hated the uncertainty in my voice and the frisson of panic skittering through my veins.
But Tristan was also right. I was letting fear cloud my judgement.
I sighed. I understood why he didn’t say anything earlier, but I wish he had. “I’ve set up searches to run in the background and pinpoint IP addresses to track anyone monitoring you. I want you to talk to the IT department at the university about keystroke monitoring and the protections they have in place for you. We can at least be safe than sorry.”
“You don’t think that someone has been in my office, do you?” Tristan looked taken aback, his eyes blown wide, the colour draining from his face.
I hadn’t wanted to scare him, but he needed to understand that if the Martinelli family was any way involved, he had reason to be fearful.
“I’m not ruling it out. These people managed to get into your building to pin a note to your front door. They know enough of what they’re doing to be able to access your office too.” I swallowed, forcing down the bile that threatened to burn a pathway up my oesophagus. “But they wouldn’t even need to.” If anything happened to him….
“How about I go with Tristan? Then at least there’s two of us going back to his apartment,” Ez suggested, his tone soothing like he was speaking to a cornered animal.
In some ways that was exactly what I was. I wanted to lash out, scorch the earth, and inflict pain like those bastards had never experienced before.
No one would hurt my guys.
No one would fuck with what was mine.
“Okay, yeah, but our sticking together like glue is only a temporary solution. I need to figure out who they are. The sooner I can do that, the sooner we can figure out how to eliminate the threat.”
“Zali,” Ezra warned, but I held up my hand in a stopping motion, silencing him.
