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They were right. “It’s my job to protect this family,” I said as if that would explain how I was feeling.
“No, Jamie.” She shook her head. “Your job is to helpmeprotect this family. You either trust me to do it or not.”
I put my hands on my hips and exhaled my anger out. “Alright. What’s the story behind Dean?”
“Dean is a cop who volunteered to go undercover to infiltrate our family. According to Dean, Brooks was in charge of the undercover mission—operation—whatever you fucking call it. The first year Dean was here working grounds security, he couldn’t give Brooks much of anything.”
“What about when he was assigned to you?” Louie asked her.
Maura shook her head. “I’ll get to that,” she said. “Apparently, my grumpy best friend has a little bit of a dark side. He didn’t care for being a cop all that much and during his first year with us, he got to see how the other side lived and he began to care for those he worked with. I was the last push he needed to flip sides.”
“Because he loves you.” I voiced what I’d known for quite some time.
Maura didn’t deny it.
“I fucking knew it,” Louie growled, sounding more pissed about that than the fact that Dean was a cop.
Maura let out an annoyed sigh. “Don’t mistake loving and caring for someone as the same thing as being in love with someone. There is zero sexual attraction between Dean and me. Dean is my family, my best friend, and someone I can count on a great deal, and I am all of that for him.”
That seemed to calm Louie enough for her to continue. She went on to explain how she’d discovered that Dean was a cop and what she’d overheard Brooks say to him. “What I found odd was when Brooks learned Dean was my personal security, Brooks became obsessive over me rather than the family. He asked Dean to find out the type of underwear I like to wear, who I’ve had sex with, what shoe size I am.”
Louie glanced at me with a murderous look in his eye. “It sounds like we need to kill Brooks.”
Maura rolled her eyes. “When Dean wouldn’t give him much on me, Brooks started focusing on the family again. Dean tried to ignore him and told him he was out. Brooks threatened that if he didn’t give him something, he would tell the family he was a cop.”
Maura went quiet for a moment, and I realized then why she had said the other day that not only would Dean’s life be at risk, but so would hers. “You gave Brooks something.”
She nodded. “I gave him information on Riona and evidence that she was responsible for Blake’s murder.”
Blake had been grounds security who Riona and her men had used to break into the manor to decorate Stefan’s entire study with pictures of Maura throughout her life, which included the night Maura had been raped at seventeen. All the pictures had been taken from afar as if Riona had been clearly stalking and was obsessed with Maura. After Riona had finished her art project in Stefan’s study, she and her men had left with Blake. They had killed him and left his body down the street from the manor.
“Your mother?” Louie said, eyes wide.
I exhaled heavily. “Ratting on enemies is really bad, Maura. There’s an unspoken rule amongst criminals. If shit happens in our world, it’s handled in our world. We never involve cops.”
“Don’t ask me if I regret it, because you won’t like the answer,” she said. “He didn’t do anything with it anyway. I had Vincent hack his personal and work computers and the police database. There was nothing that showed he documented who Blake’s killer is. His case is still marked as unsolved, which, again, is odd. After the detectives came to the house a few weeks ago, I had Vincent do some extensive digging on Brooks.” Maura looked down and it was obvious that what she had to say was bothering her. “Detective Antony Brooks is Zack Mathews’ older brother.”
I was a little taken aback. “Zack as in…Zack and Tyson?”
Fuck.
Maura nodded. “Brooks and Zack have the same mother. Brooks was away at college studying marine biology when I killed Zack. After he learned of Zack’s death, he dropped out of college to become a cop.”
Louie let out a curse. “Does he know you killed his rapist of a brother?”
Maura’s brow furrowed. “That or he knows the family is responsible.”
I met Louie’s eyes. “I guess we do need to kill him.”
“The last thing we need to be doing is going out and killing a cop,” Maura said, looking from me to Louie. “Brooks does have a vendetta against me or the family, but he hasn’t tried to do anything that is outside of the law. We at least have that working for us.”
“He hasn’t done anythingyet,” Louie grumbled.
“We need to focus on keeping this family intact and finding Stefan,” Maura said firmly.
“And finding Dylan,” I added.
Maura glanced down. It was the only hint that she was still beating herself up over sparing his life. “The thing about us Quinns is that we’re stubborn and vindictive. When word gets out that Stefan is missing, whether Dylan took him or not, Dylan will make an appearance, to either kill me or take the family from me.”
