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I was beyond being reasoned with. My gut was telling me this liquidator was a plant, that my mum and brother had been murdered, and someone had made a shit ton of money from all of it. I was no Robin Hood, but you’d be fucked thinking that I was going to let them keep one fucking cent of their blood money. I’d sooner burn it with their cold dead bodies piled on top than let them enjoy one more breath after they’d stolen all they had from us.
Martinelli family or not.
The door behind me opened and closed with a quiet click. I turned, half expecting it to be Ry, but it was Tristan and Ez. Both had their hair sticking up like they’d run their fingers through it and tugged on the ends. Both were pale, but Ezra had a hard glint in his eye, his mouth set to a grim line, while Tristan looked shaken.
“Is everything okay? Didn’t you both have work?” I went to them, guiding them over to the couch Ezra and I had slept on. Ez stuck close to Tristan, never letting more than a sliver of space come between them. Tristan’s hands trembled as he clasped them in his lap.
Worry surged through me, chilling me to the core.
“What happened?” I demanded gently as Ry slipped into the room and closed the door behind him. He stood behind me like a sentinel, the warmth from his body seeping into my iced-up veins.
“This.” Ezra pulled a clear plastic sleeve from his jacket pocket and passed it to me. It looked innocuous enough, but the breath whooshed from my lungs and my legs threatened to give out from underneath me as I read the note.
Stop hunting. Your prey is far more vicious than you know.
We killed the bitch and her kid.
They begged for it to end.
You will too.
“Fuck,” Ry muttered, taking it out of my hands and laying the previously folded-up A4 page on the coffee table that I’d sat on to stop myself from falling.
He parked his butt next to me and grasped my shoulder, squeezing it in solidarity. Shit had gone down between him and Tristan, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Ry was loyal to us. He would never waver, no matter what went down.
“Where is Flynn?” Tristan asked, his voice raw and his eyes flicking nervously around the room, looking for our man.
I reached for his hands and squeezed them tight. They were ice cold, the tremble more pronounced when I held onto him.
I tried desperately to keep my voice even and calm when I explained, “He’s in my cabin, catching up on some sleep. He’s safe, Tristan.”
He huffed out a relieved breath and hung his head low. “Ez said that this is out of his jurisdiction. It’s a Queensland police matter if we report it. But I only trust the two of you, Zali—”
“I’ll find them, and I’ll make them pay,” I promised him. There was no hesitation, no doubt in my voice. It was a cold hard fact. These fuckers would rue the day they ever crossed my path. “I’ll keep you safe, Tristan. We’re going to start with security for every one of us. But first we going to make it a little harder for them to sneak up on us.”
I turned to Ry, and he nodded without me needing to say anything further.
“Agreed. We’re stocked for a couple of days, but it won’t be enough with so many of us onboard. I’ll put in a grocery order and get it priority delivered. We can leave in a couple of hours. Sooner if they aren’t busy.”
“That’s great. Make it happen, please, Ry.” I turned my attention to my guys, my heart warming at the way Ezra knew Tristan needed someone right there with him. “Ezra, take Tristan up to the top deck and get him in the spa. His hands are freezing. He’s probably in shock.”
Ezra nodded and stood, helping Tristan up. “What are you going to do?”
“Find these fuckers and finish them.”
The door clicked closed behind them, and I minimized the screen I’d been staring at. I didn’t know how to tell Ry I’d been refunding the amounts investors had given to Mum. I hadn’t known his dad had invested money, and the amount had to have been their entire life savings. They weren’t rich people—Ry’s mum was in childcare, his dad an electrician—a few hundred thousand was likely everything they had. Ry wouldn’t want the money. He’d brush me off and tell me that he had enough. But it wasn’t going to him. It was his mum’s, and I wanted her to be comfortable—I doubted she had any retirement savings, so she was a long way off that. But if I knew Kristy, she wouldn’t want it either, especially if what I suspected was true. Daz’s sudden death a few months before the company went under was too much of a coincidence. He’d figured out that something was very wrong well before anyone else had.
But as much as I needed to clear the air with Ry, I had to focus on the urgent tasks at hand. I had a job to do, and that meant combing through every one of the company’s transactions to follow the money trail.
I poured through every record I could find, meticulously tracing the deposits and transfers out, identifying which ones went into legitimate investments or were paid out to clients and those that didn’t match the disclosed destinations. One after another I checked them, highlighting more than I ticked off. Day turned into night, and I kept working, stopping only when Ry and then Flynn brought me food, forcing me to eat it before they left.
The yacht’s engines fired to life, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. This was what I needed. No people, no hustle and bustle. Just calm waters lapping against the hull and seagulls floating on the wind currents.
We picked up speed as Ry navigated us out from the marina, but there were more twists and turns than needed to get us up the relatively straight shot to Jumpinpin. He’d taken the scenic, deserted route, winding his way through the quiet waterways, the only witnesses the nocturnal animals who called the estuarine system home.
Ry dropped anchor hours later under the cover of midnight. The blanket of stars in the sky was brighter and the waters silent. No engine noise permeated the air either, and I stopped for a moment, letting the silence travel through me. I wasn’t sure where we were, but it was exactly where I needed to be.
Of course, we weren’t out of danger. A vessel as big as mine was easily spotted from both the air and the water, and if we were among the narrow channels, we wouldn’t even see them coming until they were on top of us.
