Chapter 35

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Rug, meet wool.

One's pulled out from under you; the other's over your eyes.

Rowan

Okay. New plan.

I lost sight of our target shortly after I lost sight of Briar. He was our one lead, and I threw it away. Because…because I miscalculated. Making matters worse, she vanished without a trace alongside our target. Just like how our parents disappeared. My men saw nothing and have no information. By the time I got past security, she was gone.

If the Maxim Project has her…

My mouth goes dry as I roll her ring box over in my hand, breathe deep, and walk circles in my room, desperately trying to clear my head. I've contacted Lace and Chip. I'm waiting on them to get here. I need help, the kind of help Briar magically creates. I hope her friends have enough of it to bypass our weeks of hunting for the lead I squandered so far.

She could be anywhere.

Anywhere.

As realization after realization hit me and I discovered her trail was completely cold, I raced home, got a team working to hack airport security tapes, track any flights in and out of all the surrounding areas, monitor any cars leaving the venue area throughout the duration of the event.

Because of my pitiful priorities, we never made contact, we never learned motivations, we never got the chance to track the man back to headquarters, we got nothing.

Since I don't know motivations, I don't know if the Maxim Project wants my Briar tortured or killed.

I don't know if I'm having fifty men track down a corpse.

Tears bead in my eyes as I stall in the corner with Bugsy's cage, grip the metal, and fight to calm myself as he preens and twitters.

Looking back on how seamlessly our target came and went with Briar, it all feels like a set up. The Maxim Project operates as flawlessly as she does—every chess piece in the palm of their hands.

Lace and Chip will be here soon.

She's fine.

She has to be.

She's more capable than anyone I've ever met.

If they've been stupid enough to bring her into their nest, they better be prepared for the consequences. She'll unravel them from the inside out, ship me my parents' limbs in a box, and suggest that I overreacted. As a joke. Right before asking me to send her my tablet, because her Lily's Garden progress is invaluable even though our business is done here.

Stuffing the ring box in my pocket, I console myself with delusion up until the moment a knock sounds on my door.

"Boss?" Chip's voice calls.

In two strides, I'm there, swinging the heavy door open, and locating Chip, Lace…and Aster.

He's still supposed to be at The Giungla.

My brow furrows.

The shifting concern on their faces makes my stomach riot.

"What?" I growl. "Did you find something? Is it bad?"

Chip winces, running his fingers through his curls. "It's not…great?"

Aster steps forward, rubbing the scar on his chin with one thumb as he holds out a crisp, thick card.

The sight alone turns my blood to ice.

Because it's perfectly, devastatingly familiar.

I spent sleepless weeks studying one like it, searching for any signs, any hints, any reason.

I found nothing.

There was no ransom. No clue.

Just gloating.

A simple, gold-indented line of text.

We have your parents. - The Maxim Project

My fingers tremble as I take the card, read Briar in place of parents, and close my eyes.

The last thing I needed was confirmation.

Jaw clenched tight enough to make my skull ache, I release a breath, snap open my eyes, and face Aster. "I want men sent to the city, vehicles scouring every alley. Until we get confirmation that she's on a plane, until a camera feed glitches, every eye we have is looking."

Lace clears her throat. "Uh, Boss,."

My attention spears toward her.

Her hands lift as she cocks a hip and steps back. "Whoa, there. Take it easy, big guy."

Take it easy? Is she insane? How am I supposed to take it easy right now?

She continues, "We have a pretty good idea of where Briar might possibly be—"

Something inside me snaps. My hand flies toward the collar of Lace's tank top, but Chip intercepts me, twisting my hand down and back. "Uh-uh. I don't think so, buddy. My wife told you to take it easy."

My lip curls into a sneer as I opt to grab Chip's shirt with my free hand instead. Voice low, shaking, I say, "If we have an idea where she is, why didn't you tell me on the phone?"

"Because—" Aster pries my hand off Chip and sends me stumbling back a step. "—we're not entirely concerned."

Chip dusts off his clothes and mumbles, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Aster says.

I look between them as something looms in the air. I meet Aster's eyes. "What's going on?"

"We think Granger's men have her."

Chip drawls, "Because someone didn't blow up a certain warehouse when they had the chan—"

"Hush," Lace quips. "Ya sound as bad as Bossette right now. Concerned or not, this is serious"

"Someone has to bring the dynamite to the party in her absence."

My eyes narrow as I lift the card I'm crushing between my fingers. It's a flawless replication of the cards the Maxim Project sent. None of Granger's men had high enough clearance to study it if they're impersonating.

"How did all three of you reach this conclusion with this kind of evidence?"

Lace crosses her arms. "It's not really our place to tell ya."

Chip kisses her cheek, soothing, "When our friend's psychotic, yes it is." Dropping all gentility off a cliff, Chip faces me. "We know the card's a fraud because the Maxim Project isn't an organization or even a group of people."

"Well?" I snap. "What is it then?"

Aster's heavy gaze meets mine, deadly serious. "It's you."

?

Seated on the couch in my room, I drink every last scrap of information down—like a bottle of vodka laced in poison. Briar's played me. From the start. Her entire purpose for being here was to clean up my family. Give me a new life. I was her project. Her Maxim Project.

Her entire purpose was to maximize my potential as a family head.

"Non-consensual therapy, she called it," Lace says, seated beside me on the couch, boots propped on my coffee table. "We thought it was a bad idea."

"But there's no getting through to her when she gets that crazy spark in her eye." Chip sighs. "We knew her heart would be too good to deal with someone like you. Playing against bad guys is one thing, but when both sides are good? There can't be a winner. She can't justify the manipulation anymore. Despite how she is, she hasn't made a single close friend since we were kids. Only the three of us got grandfathered in. Everyone else she doesn't believe is capable of seeing who she really is. Everyone else is someone she's duped. She's too lost in the games to identify what is and isn't real anymore."

"She's been trained to grip bad men's hearts in her fist and crush. She thought she could follow similar methods with you, without the crushing. Love and care heal a lot. She thought it was important for you to learn what really being loved and cared about felt like." Lace's blue eyes hit mine, then drag away. "Problem is, she's a good girl, too good to play a good person. Somewhere along the way, she just started acting like herself, and loving you like she loves people."

"With a bit more romantic affection tossed in there," Chip adds.

My heart quivers. "Where are my parents?"

"They're in a quaint little prison of ours in a quaint little country no one's heard of, population: Rosanera," Aster—or Lance as I suppose is the name he normally goes by—says. "Over the past few months, she's occasionally called and made life a little more…inconvenient for them."

My brow arches. "How so?"

Lace mumbles, "She only gave them lemonade and pineapple as fluids for a solid week at one point."

"…what?"

A fond smile touches Chip's mouth. "Bromelain. It's an enzyme in pineapple that digests protein. After eating enough of it, your mouth goes raw. Bloody, even. Add lemonade to the mix…"

Swearing, I cover my mouth.

"She fancies that there's an art to most things," Lance murmurs. "Abuse, attire, existence. Nothing's ever so simple with her. She's a little too creative for that. Kind of like your parents, Boss."

I clench a fist. "She is nothing like my parents."

Lance hums. "Are you sure about that? People tend to fall for the familiar, you especially."

"Everything's a game with her." Lace toys with the hem of her shirt. "She plays to win."

"But that doesn't make her the monster they were." Rising, I clench my fist at my side. "And that also doesn't mean she's infallible. I'm going after her, just to make sure she's okay."

"She's not the type to change her stubborn mind over a prince charming move," Lace comments. "Give her another half hour, and we can turn on the TV to discover she's blown up a warehouse."

My jaw tightens. "Since Granger's men are the only other people who know about the Maxim Project and she has to be with them if they're using that name, she's currently being held by dozens of men who hate her. Am I the only one who understands what that means?"

Lace stares at me, for far longer than is entirely comfortable. Finally, she echoes, "Men," as though that isn't the part that has me half-nauseous. Men, especially Granger's, are not safe. And no matter how skilled Briar is, she is still human. She can still be overpowered.

"Rowan." Chip closes the distance between us and sets a hand on my shoulder. "I know what you're thinking, buddy. But she will castrate them. Effortlessly."

"And if she's unconscious?" I grit. "If she's distracted? If anything goes wrong?"

"Then it is already too late," Lance mumbles. "Granger's men are unstable. Sending a team after them, if she is compromised, could force their hands. They don't have deeper plots. The only skin they have in this is vengeance. Killing her in front of us before we mow them down makes none of us the winners."

"We trust her," Lace says. "She has never steered us wrong. Not once. She'll get out of this, and it'll be a great story over ice cream later."

"I trust her, too, but that doesn't mean she isn't crying for the same help she offers everyone else." A tight breath sifts into my lungs. "I don't need a team."

"Rowan—"

I swat Chip's hand off me and march past him. "Some things are worse than death."

"Hello," Bugsy trills from the corner as I open the door, "my name's Oreo."

Freezing in the archway, I look at my bird.

"Oreo." He chirps. "My name's Oreo." He plays with the colorful bells strung up in his cage. "Hello, my name's Oreo. Pretty bird."

One boundary. I gave her one boundary. One. She could stab me if she wanted. Twist the knife. Gaslight me into thinking it was for my own good just like my parents always did. I'd get over it. But, no. She messed with my stupid bird.

"Well, I'll be darned," Chip murmurs. "She did it."

My eye twitches. "Lance."

"Boss?"

"If I'm not back in a few hours, I'm dead. If Briar isn't, it's because I've killed her."