Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
She crossed the room to stand in front of me, her agony leaving me frozen.
When she said “Move,” I did.
Stepping away from the door, I watched, numb, as she swung it open. She looked back at me over her shoulder.
“I’m going up to the apartment. I have some backup options—cases I wanted to look at if Emily Shaw didn’t pan out. We don’t have any leads at the moment, so I’m going to put some time in on my actual job, assuming I still have a career to go back to when this is all over.”
“Fine,” I clipped, wanting to beg her to stay and talk this out, but knowing that would only make this worse. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I wasn’t asking permission, Eli. Just telling you where I’ll be as a courtesy.” She turned and stalked out of the small office and down the hall, heading for the elevators.
Fucking fuck. I hadn’t handled that well. Why hadn’t I just told her that if it came down to her or Silas, I’d choose her?
Because I couldn’t.
I wanted to, which said a lot. But Silas—Silas had been in my life for years. He wasn’t my dad. Not even a father figure exactly. But far more than a boss. He’d seen something in me, the potential to be greater. He’d created the team, the closest thing I had to a family.
And while I wasn’t privy to Silas’s secrets, I couldn’t believe he’d done anything to hurt Emily Shaw. She might have been one of the last people to communicate with him before she died and he disappeared, but that didn’t mean he was guilty of anything except dropping off the map.
Until we knew why he’d done that, where he’d gone, I couldn’t explain to Sylvie how I could be so sure that I could protect her, find Emily’s killer, and still search for Silas.
And what would you do, a little voice in the back of my head asked, if it was a choice between Sylvie and Silas?
Everything in me pushed that question away.
I didn’t know. The only answer I had was that I’d never have to choose.
But you don’t know that, the little voice reminded me. Not for sure.
I shrugged it off, closing the office door behind me as I left.
“That didn’t go well, huh?” Maddox rumbled, looking at me with a combination of sympathy and impatience.
“Fuck off.” I didn’t have a better retort.
“We all saw that coming like a train wreck in slow motion,” he muttered as I glared at Emmett.
Emmett looked up from the papers in front of him and raised one dark eyebrow, his brown eyes cold. “Something to say?”
“Would it do any good?” I asked. “You fucking stabbed me in the back.”
“No, I didn’t,” Emmett said. “I did you a favor. It was only going to get worse, man. Someone needed to rip off the Band-Aid, and she deserved to know.”
“That wasn’t your call,” I said.
“If it was yours, you weren’t going to make it,” Emmett said. “Somebody had to.”
“I just needed more time,” I said, looking down the hall where Sylvie had disappeared, knowing that as much as I’d been lying to her, I’d been lying to myself even more. I hadn’t needed time, I’d needed some fucking balls. If I’d told her about Silas earlier…
But I hadn’t, and now I had to figure out how to fix this before I lost Sylvie completely.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ELI
Iwas oddly nervous as I opened the door to the safe house apartment. I hadn’t seen Sylvie since our argument in the office hours ago. An optimistic part of me hoped we were past all of that.
Just in case, I’d come home bearing gifts in the form of the sushi Sylvie had mentioned craving. A wiggle of anxiety in my gut told me it wasn’t going to be that simple. But hey, I could hope, right?
She was sitting at the table, her laptop in front of her, eyebrows pulled together. A deep line grooved between them; her teeth sunk into that full, pink lower lip.
“Hungry?” I asked, grabbing her attention.
Her eyes flicked up, landing on mine, and a wall came down. I’d never seen the hazel of her gaze so flat. Usually, there was something going on in there. Humor. Ambition. Curiosity. Intelligence. Sylvie was never flat.
Her spine straightened, shoulders sliding back, a polite smile on her mouth, and I knew sushi wasn’t going to be enough to fix this. Not even close.
“I could eat,” she said neutrally.
I held up the bag. “I got sushi,” I said unnecessarily, considering the giant illustration of chopsticks and a sushi roll on the side of the bag.
“Great,” she said, her tone not communicating any true enthusiasm.
I’d prefer she was angry and throwing things at me. I didn’t know what to do with this polite chill. She wasn’t mad. She wasn’t trying to score points. She’d just cut me out neatly, bloodlessly. She was a blank slate—not my Sylvie.