Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six

Charlotte Mitchell

I n the middle of the night, I lay on the soft, plush bed of Nix’s guest bedroom, staring at the texture on the ceiling and contemplating the entire fucked up night. It didn’t go as planned. I wanted to gain intel; I wanted to get closer to discovering who is behind all this.

I didn’t expect to be outed.

And I didn’t expect to live if it ever happened.

But he has feelings for me, and that leaves me awake all night because what we are doing is so dangerous on so many levels. I could lose my job. He could lose his. We could never find the boss. Hell, we could die trying.

I look at the clock on the bedside table and quietly groan at the baby-blue numbers displaying the time. In a few hours, the city will come alive, and as of right now, we don’t have a single game plan on what we do from here. It’s a conversation I dread having because he’s going to want all the control. Not that I blame him, and by rights, I should give him a majority of it, considering he knows more about the deeper, dark parts of this business than I do. And if anyone has a chance of finding out who his boss is, it’ll be him because, on the ride over here, he confessed that he’d never met him before. Never even heard his voice.

Andre has, and Andre is more likely to tell Nix something he shouldn’t than he is to tell me. My wheels are spinning over how we can get the details of what Andre has stored in his brain… without tipping him off.

Damn near impossible.

Slowly, I slide to a sitting position and run a hand through my damp hair from my earlier shower before readjusting Nix’s big t-shirt. I hadn’t had clothes to change into since we didn’t stop at my apartment, so Nix gave me some of his clothes. I have no underwear, but the shirt is long enough to cover my lower regions anyway. Not that it matters, he’s seen me naked.

After I showered, he showed me around his place. Aside from the kitchen and the living room, he has an immaculate dining room, a spacious balcony, an office lined with bookshelves, and two bedrooms: one master and one guest. I never entered the master. Both of us had one interest: time to think everything over. It went without speaking to one another that we both needed it. And when I laid my head down, I had been tired, but now?

Now I can’t sleep. Now that I’m alone, even if Nix is in his bedroom down the hall, it’s all too real.

Sliding back the covers, I pad across the room on the chilly, dark wood floors and quietly open my door. I have every intention of grabbing a glass of water to see if that helps calm my mind, but I don’t want to wake him. I don’t want to start this conversation before I have had time to come up with my own plan to present .

The hallway is dark, and I make my way along it but pause at his office. The door is slightly ajar, and a little light is filtering its way through the crack; it must have been left on. I nibble my bottom lip, weighing my options. I don’t know much about him. He doesn’t let me in. But his office? It could have little tidbits of him, small things to discover about this closed-off man.

But what if I’m caught? I wouldn’t have a valid excuse because he wouldn’t like the fact that I was picking through his things when he’s such a private person.

However . . . something in there could help me make my decision on how to proceed. Something inspiring, something mundane to Nix but huge to me.

I look a little way down the hall and at his bedroom door. It’s firmly closed and seemingly dark if the sliver of black under the door is anything to go by.

I turn back to the office and slowly push the door open. Thankfully, it opens without the hinges making a sound.

My first glance is at the books I saw earlier, the shelves covering every inch of the right and left walls. They’re filled with different colored spines and various trinkets and pictures. The far wall has a large window that overlooks the city.

In the middle of the room is his desk where a lamp was left on and pointed toward the clean surface. It holds a double-screen monitor system set up with a Bluetooth keyboard. I head to it as quietly as I can and run my fingers over the keyboard without pressing the buttons. I’m not going to dive into what he does on this computer. Chances are I really don’t want to know, and investigating his side of the business would be pointless. I need Andre’s side. I know what Nix does, and if he’s willing to take down the rest of the operation and his boss, I doubt it gets much worse .

I pause on the space key. Or maybe it does.

With a quick glance at the door, I press the key. The monitors come to life, but a password is the first thing that shows up. I wrinkle my nose at this ‘doorstop’ and move on to the shelves. Knowing Nix and his secrecy, there’s no way I’m going to figure out his password. I just have to trust that, whatever other parts he played, he really plans to change his ways from them. It’s a big decision, to choose me over all this and everything he’s worked for, but he’s putting it aside for me and that means something to me. I just have to figure out how to repay him for deciding to help me. I still don’t know how I’m going to protect him like I promised, but hopefully, I have some time to figure it out.

My fingers run across the spines. Some old, some new. From what I can tell, the right side of the room holds business and non-fiction books, and with a quick glance at the left, it looks mostly fiction. I didn’t know he liked to read, and that’s something I would have never considered if I hadn’t walked in here.

It’s almost like him. One side is the reality he lives in, and the other side is hopes and dreams that he thinks will never happen. It makes my heart hurt a little that he lives a separate life in private, one that doesn’t involve the real world.

In the dimness of the room, I almost walk right past it. Squatting on a shelf is a small picture, and I bend a little to get a better look.

Within it, three people stand against the background of the streets of what can only be New York. By the looks of it, it’s not a very good place in the city. The buildings have seen better days.

I turn my attention toward the three people. They’re definitely teenagers if their youthful features are anything to go by. Immediately, I spot Nix. His blonde hair is a little wilder than it is now, and his clothes appear too big for his thin body.

Next to him is a darker-skinned young man who has to be the same age. His black hair is cropped so close to his head that he might as well shave it. To the right of this boy, and holding his hand, is a blonde young lady. Another teen – same age. She’s much smaller than the boys, but she looks the healthiest of both. Her clothes fit her better, and her hair appears to have received more attention than the other two.

Nix has never talked about anyone else in his life, minus Megan. Is this her? Who is the other guy? Why are they holding hands? Were they dating?

So many questions swirl around in my head, and I’m curious enough to take the picture frame off the shelf, flip it over, and unclasp the back. Once the back is off, I take the picture out and peer at the handwriting on the back.

It says, “2005, Feenix, Noll, and Megan.”

I was right about Megan, but who is Noll?

“I didn’t peg you for a snooper.”

I jump at Nix’s voice. It’s clear and deep, as though he truly hadn’t been sleeping like I had thought. The frame nearly falls from my hand, but I scoop it up before it can crash to the floor.

Pinching my lips together, I gently put the picture frame back together and set it carefully on the shelf. “It’s in my job description to snoop.”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “Am I under scrutiny?”

“Just your life.”

“Why?”

I shrug. “I know nothing about you.” I glance over at the picture. “Who is Noll?”

He steps into the room a little, leans against the door frame, and crosses his arms over his chest. “My childhood best friend.”

“Do you still talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he still your best friend?”

He heads farther into the room and approaches me. Sliding his hand to the small of my back, he steers me from the room and answers, “Yes,” once we are out in the hallway.

Quietly, he shuts the door, and it feels a little like he’s shutting me out permanently from the subject.

“Don’t do that,” I say softly as I turn toward him in the darkness.

“Do what?” I can’t see his face, but I imagine it’s the usual careful blank.

“Continue to shut me out.” I scowl. “I at least deserve to know about your friends since I wasn’t aware that you had any.”

He runs a hand through his hair, and it’s the only sign that he feels something in this moment. “I don’t want to talk about my private life in my office.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Why?”

Dropping his hand, he sighs and whispers, “There’s a camera with audio in my office, and it isn’t mine.”

My scowl only deepens until I realize what he’s talking about. “Your boss is watching?”

With one curt nod, he points down the hall to the living room. As soon as we’re standing by the fireplace, I face him again, expecting more answers.

“He watches everything I do in there. Talking about my life inside those four walls isn’t what I want him to hear. I didn’t even want you in there. If he decides to look, he'll know that you’re here.”

“So that’s why you wouldn’t let me go inside before? ”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” I breathe out. “Sorry.”

He carefully pushes hair behind my ear. “I should have told you. I just didn’t want you to think you were being watched.”

I nod a little and lean into his touch, but all too soon, he pulls away and pivots toward the kitchen. I stand there for a moment, reeling at the idea that Nix’s life isn’t as private as he wants it to be, and wondering how the hell we’re going to sneak around with a camera in his office, before I follow him into the kitchen.

He’s digging in the fridge, his back turned toward me. It’s then I realize what he’s wearing. Gray sweatpants hug his ass tightly, and his cut-off shirt reveals the muscles of his arms. Even with the stress of it all, I can still appreciate that he’s a beautiful man.

“What are you doing?” I ask as I place my hand on the cold granite and drum my fingers against it a few times.

“Breakfast,” he answers before swiveling from the fridge with an armful of produce.

“We haven’t even slept yet.” The frown on my face matches that of my tone.

He looks back at me over his shoulder. “I doubt we’d even sleep if we tried.”

“Okay,” I murmur. “Breakfast. And then what?”

“The gym. There’s one on the main level of the building.”

“What am I going to do?” As much as I’d love to watch his muscles ripple, I can’t just hang around up here and do nothing. Watch TV? Try to nap? Clean his pristine apartment? None of those options sound good to me. Not with everything that’s going on. And it’s not like I can snoop back into his office and try to discover a key into the volt of secrets Andre might hold .

With his back to me, he busies himself cracking eggs into a bowl. “You’re coming with me.”

“To work out?” I squeak. I’d look pathetic lifting weights. I haven’t done so in a long time, not since the academy.

Finally, he spins, and a small smile tips up the edges of his lips. It’s a glorious sight to see. “I don’t care what you do in the gym, mama, and though I’d like to watch your ass move on a treadmill, my only point is to make sure you’re never alone. Stand there if you want, but you’re coming with. End of conversation.”