Elect - Dyken Rachel Van (электронные книги бесплатно .txt) 📗

“So was she,” Frank mumbled. “So was she.”

“Holy shit!” Tex dropped his gun to the floor with a loud clatter. “Holy shit!”

“What?” I hit him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“You guys are…” He pointed at Mr. Alfero and Luca. “You guys are—”

“Brothers,” Phoenix grumbled. “They’re brothers.”

I looked at the two of them. How had I not seen the resemblance before? It was uncanny. Obviously Frank was older by a good fifteen years, and they both had the dark hair, though Frank’s was sprinkled with gray. They had the same blue eyes, nose, chin. Really, it was strange to see.

“But…” My mind was unable to work that fast. “Phoenix, how did you know that?”

“Phoenix made his money as an excellent spy. Didn’t you, son?” Luca spat. “Going through Trace’s things, reading the personal journals. Then, in an instant of trying to discover everyone’s dirty little secrets, you saw something. Something you were not supposed to see. And that’s the problem with spying. Eventually you will be caught.”

Wordless, Phoenix hung his head.

“And your father paid the price with his very life.”

Phoenix shook his head. “It wasn’t supposed to go that far. I thought I was helping. I thought that if I exposed him, or at least caused unrest with the families that day, it would buy me time, that they would see that there were so many lies and it was never about my family. And… I was scared, all right? We owed money to him, and my father wasn’t doing anything about it and then when I discovered we weren’t to blame I freaked. I wanted him out of the equation. He was ruining everything.”

“What do you mean? This isn’t about your family?” I asked.

“No.” Phoenix looked like he was shaking. “It’s about yours.”

“Well, shit.” Tex rubbed the back of his neck. “So what do we do now?”

“We’ll be in touch,” Frank said.

Phoenix winced as Frank slapped him hard on the back. “The less you know, the better it will be for everyone.”

Mil stood silently in the corner. Nothing was adding up.

“So, what do we do?” I pleaded. “There has to be a way we can help.”

“Kiss your girlfriend.” Luca winked. “Pretend everything is fantastic, because I promise you, in a few days, we’ll be nothing but a horrible dream.”

“People don’t die in dreams.”

Frank hung his head and muttered a prayer. Luca grabbed his gun and held it to Phoenix’s side.

“ ’Til we meet again.” Luca nodded and stood on the other side of Phoenix as he and Frank walked him out of the room.

“Mil?” Tex asked. “Any other fun secrets you aren’t telling us about?”

She shrugged and then shook her head.

I pulled out my gun and pushed her against the cement wall. She winced in pain and closed her eyes as I pushed her hair back with my gun. “Talk.”

“Not much for talking,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Let me refresh your memory,” I seethed. “My best friend dies a day after he meets you and now you’re letting your stepbrother run off with the guy who killed him? Who just so happens to be holding Trace’s grandfather captive like a damn prisoner.”

I pressed the gun further into her neck, causing her throat to convulse against the metal. “Nixon said to protect me at all costs,” she said.

“And that”—I released her with a jerk and tucked my gun in the back of my jeans—“is the only reason you’re still breathing. If I suspect anything, if you sneak out to meet someone, if you suddenly disappear,” I swore, “Mil, I will hunt you down, I will torture you until you beg me to kill you and you know what I’ll say?”

“What?” She rubbed her throat, tears pooled in her eyes.

“No.” I smirked. “I’ll say hell no and I’ll just keep torturing. I’m protecting you as a promise to my very dead best friend—don’t make me regret it.”

“Anything else?” she croaked, a smug smile tugging the corners of her mouth. Damn, I wanted to strangle her.

“No.”

“Then let’s go home.” She pushed past me, shoving my body to the side as if she had enough strength to take me down. I watched her the entire walk to the car, I watched and waited for a misstep. Nothing added up—she had to be the answer.

Chapter Thirty-four Chase

When we got home, I was torn between searching for Trace and just letting her be alone for a while. I mean, I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. Guilty, guilty, guilty, my conscience screamed at me.

I should have done something.

But no, I was too stuck in my own drama and jealousy.

And now my best friend was dead.

And the love of my life’s heart was broken. Damn, I wasn’t even sure if she knew where the pieces had fallen, and the worst part was, I still wanted to find every damn one and fix it—fix everything. But you can’t fix what refuses your help, and right now it seemed all Trace wanted to do was suffer.

“Chase?” Trace was walking toward me in the hallway. She looked how I felt—like shit.

“Yeah?” I put my gun on the table and met her halfway. “Have you eaten anything?”

She shrugged. Her eyes were sunken and her hair looked somewhat matted to her head. It looked like she hadn’t showered or done anything outside of staring at the wall since I’d been gone.

“Trace, you need to eat.”

She was like a ghost. If she shrugged one more time I was going to lose my shit. Instead, she did nothing. There was no expression on her face, just emptiness.

Did I get it? Hell yeah, I got it. I was hurting, too, but she was precious; she’d been everything to Nixon. What kind of person would that make me if I let her go down that road? If I let her sulk? This was about tough love—shit, she was going to hate me—but she needed to snap out of it and take care of herself. There was mourning and there was burying your soul with the one you’d lost.

She was doing the latter.

And damn if I was going to let her do it.

I grabbed her hand and dragged her down the hall.

“Chase.” She pulled against me. “What are you doing? Chase!”

Good, let her be pissed.

I dragged her into the bathroom and slammed the door. In one swift movement I had the water on in the shower. The bathroom was massive; the rain shower was one you could walk into without having to step over anything. It was the best therapy I could think of, other than getting her drunk, and I was pretty sure that would just make her suicidal.

“Get in.” I pointed to the shower. “Or so help me God I will strip you naked and toss you in there myself.”

She met my eyes. A slow-burning fire radiated from them, and then extinguished as she shrugged one last time.

“That’s it.” I grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her, literally, into the shower, both of us with our clothes on.

Once we were under the water, I held her there. Hot water ran down our faces. She tried to jerk free from my grip but I held her there. Pissed at her for not fighting—for not being strong like I needed her to be.

“Snap the hell out of it, Trace.”

Her nostrils flared, but at least she didn’t shrug.

She tried to jerk away from me again but I held her firm. She started kicking at my shins. I ignored the slices of pain radiating through my bones and yelled, “Who are you?”

“What?” She squirmed under my touch.

“Who. Are. You?”

“An Alfero,” she whispered.

“What do Alferos do?”

She said nothing.

I shook her a bit. “Damn it, Trace! What do Alferos do?”

“We fight!” she yelled and tried to push at my chest. “But I can’t. My heart, it’s broken. It’s so damn broken, I feel like I can’t breathe.” She hiccupped and struggled against me.

“Then breathe in me.” I released her and took off my soaked black t-shirt. “Breathe in my atmosphere because then at least I know you’re breathing. At least then I can hear you inhale and exhale. Trace, I can’t fix what’s been broken, and I’m not trying to take his place. God knows I can’t, no matter how badly I wish I could.”