Chapter 29

Steven hands me another tissue from the console, which I take thankfully. “Sorry I’m such a mess,” I say between sobs.

I’d cried through telling Trixie what I could, but sitting still in this quiet car is too much, and the sobs have been racking my body for the last fifteen minutes as we get closer to the Goldstone building. Poor Steven seems at a loss and just keeps handing me tissues. Guess they didn’t teach him about this in badass school, whichever one he went to.

We pull into the garage, and I swear his shoulders lower a solid two inches from his ears. But he clears his throat and says professionally, “Miss Dunn, let me help you upstairs.”

I let him open the door after scanning the parking lot, then lead me to Thomas’s private elevator. After a whoosh that makes my belly climb into my throat, the doors open to reveal Mia.

Her eyes are red and puffy too as she launches herself at me. “Oh, my God, Char,” she says, gathering me in her arms. I let her hug me, soothe me, and eventually, my arms come up to circle her too. She’s mumbling into my shoulder, “Could’ve lost . . . what the fuck . . . so glad you’re . . .”

I nod, hugging her back. “I know, but I’m okay. Well, physically, anyway. My heart hurts.”

I rub at my chest, and Mia’s eyes shoot to Steven. “Why didn’t you take her to the hospital if she’s injured?” she demands.

He shakes his head almost imperceptibly as I place a staying hand on Mia’s arm because she looks like she’s about to launch herself at Steven too, and not in such a caring way. “Not from the fire. Lance.”

“Lance?” she asks, confusion pulling her eyebrows so tightly together they look like caterpillars about to battle above her nose. “What about him?”

She looks between me and Steven, who’s staring into space like he wishes he could be anywhere but here in this moment. Mia’s fire is growing by the millisecond, her face already a deeper shade of pink than her current hair. “What? Somebody better start speaking or I’m gonna track him down and introduce him to Thunder and Lightning.” She holds up one fist, then the other. “And then a friend I like to Hail, because it’ll drop you to your knees.” She kicks her leg up in a hi-yah motion.

Even through the tears, she breaks me into a laugh. A snotty, ugly one, but a laugh, nevertheless. “Can we sit down?”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Mia leads me to the couch, and Steven stays at his post by the elevator, pulling his phone back out to text. I wonder if he’s texting Jonathan and if he knows anything about what’s happening to Lance down at the police station.

We sit down, and I curl my feet up underneath me, needing to be small and less of a target because it feels like the universe is taking pot shots at my life today. Mia waits exactly two heartbeats before saying, “Speak, Tovarich. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

I don’t know where to start. It feels like I’ve lived a lifetime in just a few hours. “You know about the fire?”

“Yeah, something about an oven, but everyone got out, right?”

“Yeah, so we got out ,and I’m watching my baby burn when this cop comes over and starts asking questions. He’s all ‘who has access’ and I tell him just me, Trixie, and Lance, but then I remember that Sabrina came by today and I left her back there for a second while I stepped to the front.” My eyes are unseeing, cloudy behind unshed tears as I remember, but I blink them back.

I’ve cried enough. I need to be strong. I’ve been through bad shit and come out the other side, stronger for it. This is worse than anything else, for sure, but I’ll be invincible, savage and cold as ice after this. And alone again, a small voice whispers.

“Sabrina?” Mia growls. “That bitch!”

I shake my head before she can get too far. “I thought the same thing, and thought it might be Blackwell too. Just grasping for straws, you know? But then the cop wanted us to go to the station to make statements and Lance lost it. At first, he said he’d meet us there, but then when the cop tried to force him to go, Lance fought him. That’s when the phone fell out of his pocket.”

I swallow thickly, wringing my hands. The hands that held the proof of his betrayal.

“What phone?” Mia asks quietly. I think she can tell this is the crux of the issue, the reason for the tears. Even more so than the bakery. I can rebuild that, but my heart? It’s shattered beyond repair this time.

I meet her eyes, wishing she could erase the memory, that I could go back a couple of hours and never have seen that screen. “Lance had a second phone, and his last text message came up on the screen when I grabbed it. It was from . . . Blackwell.” The tears won’t be held back, but I don’t give into them fully. I let them trail hotly down my puffy cheeks but keep my head held high, refusing to break.

Mia jumps from the couch, pissed. “Blackwell? Lance is . . . he’s working for . . .” She turns down the hallway, bellowing, “Tommy!!”

He comes running, phone held to his ear. His eyes search the room wildly, looking for a threat, but when he sees only Mia and me, he tells whoever’s on the phone, “Hold up.”

He looks at Mia, and he says, “What’s wrong?”

“Did you know about Lance? That he’s working for Blackwell?” she demands, a hand on her hip. If you didn’t know her, it wouldn’t seem all that scary. I mean, she’s a small, nerdy woman with streaked hair who’s currently wearing ripped jeans and a K-pop T-shirt.

But you’d be wrong. Mia’s the second-scariest person I know. Second only to Gabe, but he’s a different kind of scary.

Thomas cringes, nodding. “Yes, we’re working on it.”

Mia sputters, and I think she was hoping Thomas would tell her it was all a big misunderstanding. “But he...” She turns back to me, sadness in her eyes. “I thought he was going to crack that cynical heart of yours and be your happily ever after.”

“Me too, honey. Me too,” I agree hollowly.

I shake it off, remembering why I came here in the first place. “He’s got a head start. None of us saw this coming, least of all me. So we need to circle the wagons,” I tell Thomas, using Trixie’s phrasing that rings true. “You’ve got to get Izzy and Gabe here. Whatever Blackwell’s planning, he can’t get us all at once, not if we’re here, surrounded by security.”

He nods, taking his phone back out. He presses a couple of numbers and has a quick conversation with Gabe. When he hangs up, he tells us, “They’re already on their way. Steven reported to the crew that you were coming here, and Gabe said he couldn’t hold Izzy back from getting to your side. They’ll be here any minute.”

The tiniest smile tries to break free at the idea that Gabe couldn’t hold Izzy back. She’s strong, but he’s . . . Gabe. Which is actually why he couldn’t stop her, because as scary of a guy as he is, and as deadly of a hitman as he used to be, Izzy’s got him wrapped around her little finger.

The elevator whirs, and Steven lifts his gun, pressing the button on the headset at his ear.

There’s a tense moment where I irrationally fear Blackwell himself is going to walk off the elevator. But when the door opens, Gabe and Izzy walk into the apartment.

Izzy rushes me, much like Mia did, wrapping me up for a hug. “Motherfucker, I’m going to slice his balls off and serve them as the Blue Plate Special.” Izzy’s language has taken a turn for the worse, or at least the more creative, since she started seeing Gabe. It’s oddly funny because I rarely hear him curse, but Izzy says he curses like a sailor.

A sailor . . . my sailor.

Lance.

Fuck, is everything going to bring me back to thoughts of him? I sigh, telling Izzy, “Thanks, honey, but don’t blow the Gravy Train’s health inspection over me. Those people are hardasses.”

It’s the barest hint of humor but the first sign that I’m going to be okay. Eventually. After I kill Lance, slowly and painfully. I chance a glance at Gabe, wondering how much it’d cost me to hire him, but he winks like he already knows what I’m thinking and I’m betting his family discount is pretty steep.

Gabe breaks into my murderous thoughts. “What do we know? What’s the plan?”

I appreciate the move to action, because I can’t stay stagnant in my pity party of heartbreak or I’ll drown. I need to do something about this attack on my bakery and my heart. Action, that’s what I need. Retaliation.

I sit back down on the couch, Mia on one side and Izzy on the other, while Thomas and Gabe face each other. I feel like I’ve got my people around me, but my stupid broken heart still feels like there’s someone missing.

“Jonathan and Mia have been digging, and we’ve made some moves. Business moves to hurt Blackwell, but obviously, they’re not enough,” Thomas says.

“And we’ve found sketchy stuff, loads of it, actually,” Mia adds. “But no smoking gun, and we don’t know where enough of the bodies are buried, literally or figuratively.”

“We need more time,” Thomas growls. “We need solid proof or making an accusation like this could backfire majorly. He’s got major clout in Roseboro, damn near built the city. We can’t let anyone he’s got in his pocket sweep this under the rug. We need undeniable evidence that he’s doing all of this.”

Thomas looks to Gabe, but Izzy gets up and stands in front of him. “No, we’ve talked about this. I get that the most damning evidence we have of Blackwell’s wrongdoing is that he hired Gabe to kill me, but if we go to the police with that, they’ll arrest Gabe, especially if they do any looking into his past. So no, there’s got to be another way. He’s a maniacal mastermind. He’s got to have left a trail. We just have to find it.” She looks off into space like she’s searching too, but she’s coming up empty-handed, like we all are.

“There is another option to get information,” Gabe says carefully. He looks at me, apology in his eyes. “We have another of Blackwell’s pawns. We could ask him questions.”

I flinch, electricity shooting through me. “Bring Lance here? Why? He’s already in jail.”

Thomas clears his throat. “Jonathan bailed him out fifteen minutes ago.”

I look at Thomas incredulously, bile in my gut threatening to come up. “What? Why would he do that?”

Thomas looks at Gabe, who says gently, “Because it’s our best option. I’ll take care of it.”

I know he’s not just talking about walking Lance back down to the police station to turn him back in. And as much as Lance has hurt me, I don’t want the ending Gabe would give him. He might deserve it, but I’m not the sort of person who could do that to someone, nor let Gabe do it in my stead. As much as my superficial knee-jerk reaction is kill the bastard, my true nature isn’t so sadistic. I won’t become that for Lance’s betrayal, not for anything.

I don’t begrudge Gabe for what he’s done, but I won’t bear the same weighty responsibility he does for that drastic of an action. I don’t want him to kill Lance. So why bother asking the questions he won’t answer when the threat isn’t real?

“It’s not like he’s going to spill his guts and tell us everything. He’s obviously a great liar, had me completely fooled and believing in fairy tales,” I say, and everyone in this room knows how unlikely that is, and by extension, what a good liar that means Lance must be. “We need to just go after Blackwell head-on.”

Thomas and Gabe meet eyes over my head, and I’ve never felt so inconsequential. I’m just a cog in the wheel, but Thomas owns the wheel and Gabe is the one turning it. I pull my legs up to my chest, placing my head on my knees and sighing as I close my eyes.

I’d thought my life now was different. I’d finally stepped out of my stepmother’s control, Dad’s passive awareness, and all the heartbreaking drama there. I was in control, free to make my own way, my own choices. But it was an illusion.

My bakery, the one I’d poured every bit of my blood, sweat, and tears into? Partially Thomas’s. My friends have men of their own now. My life, the one I thought I was master of my own destiny for? It’s just a linchpin in someone else’s game.

I’m just a pawn, always have been. And apparently, always will be.

“Fine, whatever you want to do,” I say, the words echoing in the cavern between my chest and my thighs.

I just don’t want to hurt anymore.