Theo steps forward and locks the door behind him, and Ryland tucks his gun into the waistband of his pants. He never bothered to put his shirt back on, and his colorfully inked tattoos shift as he moves.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters.
“What an asshole.” Theo’s face is still dark. I rarely see him truly pissed like this, and I have a feeling it’s got a lot to do with the role Dom played in my kidnapping. I think my men will hold a grudge against him forever for that, and I don’t mind one bit.
“Should we have told him it doesn’t matter?” I ask, looking from one man to the other. “That this is all a lie anyway?”
“No.” Marcus’s voice is hard. “Even if we did tell him, he might not believe us. He obviously thinks we’re fucking with him already, and he’d probably think it was a lie we made up to turn him against Luca. Or worse, he could tell Luca what we suspect. Regardless of whether Dom believes it, Luca would know that we’re on to the truth.”
“Yeah.” Theo nods in agreement. “Until we have proof, we can’t tell anyone shit. It would only blow up in our faces.”
No one else speaks in response, but I know we’re all thinking the same thing as we silently head out of the foyer.
We need to find that fucking proof.
And we need to do it fast.
Chapter 6
We spend the next few days buried in work, doing everything we can to hunt down information about the Viper and Luca.
If it were just up to me, we’d be pretty fucking screwed. As demonstrated by my hunt for my brother, my ability to pry information out of unwilling people is minimal at best. Fortunately, the men have a lot more resources than I do, and contacts who are able to do a lot of digging for them.
They’re careful about who they recruit, and what exactly they tell them we’re looking for, disguising the true nature of our search.
I asked Theo whether the rift between Marcus and his parents will mean that he’s cut off from his family’s money and resources, but he assured me that the Constantines are pragmatic above all else. As long as Marcus is still in the game—or at least, as long as they think he is—they’ll continue to support him, probably in the hopes that if he wins, he’ll forgive them for all the shit they’ve done in the past.
Besides, Marcus has money in a trust that his parents can’t touch, and beyond that, he’s made contacts in Halston’s underground circles—relationships that aren’t just based on money, but on the exchange of information and favors.
I can tell he’s still a little fucked up about finally breaking away from his family, but I don’t press him to talk about it. Instead, I stick close to all three men, letting them know through my presence that I’m here, and that we’re a team.
A picture slowly starts to emerge of the Viper’s rise to power in Halston. He was subtle and slow-moving, never taking two steps when he could take one, never overshooting or making a grab for too much at once.
That’s why he was able to stay pretty well under the radar for so long. Individual people might see him as a problem, but they didn’t have the full picture—they didn’t realize he wasn’t just encroaching on their territory, but on their enemies’ and allies’ territory as well.
But no matter how much we find out about the Viper, Luca’s name stays firmly out of the picture.
“This is insane,” I mutter one afternoon, sitting back on the couch and rubbing my eyes. The skin around my stump prickles as I let out an irritated noise.
I still haven’t bothered getting a new prosthesis made—there’s been too much else going on that took precedence—and I’m finding that I don’t miss it. It was mostly just for aesthetics anyway, and none of my men seem to mind that I’m missing part of my limb. I never feel a need to hide it or cover it up around them.
They don’t wince at it or fetishize it. It’s just a part of me, one that they love and accept as much as any other part of me.
“What’s insane?” Theo glances over at me.
I shake my head. “When I figured out that Luca and the Viper are
the same person, it seemed so obvious to me. So clear. I had no idea it would be this hard to find actual evidence to support my gut feeling.” My lips pull down in a frown. “What if I’m wrong? It’s possible. This is all based on a goddamn tattoo I saw. That’s insane. Maybe Luca just fucking likes snakes.”
Theo sets his laptop on the small table next to the chair he’s sitting in—the same one where I crawled onto Ryland’s lap the night we found out Marcus was still alive. He heaves himself to his feet and walks over to me, using two fingers under my chin to tilt my head up.
His lips brush my forehead, his breath warm on my skin. “You’re not wrong, Rose. I know it. Just because we haven’t found it yet doesn’t mean the evidence isn’t there. It just means Luca is good. He’s smart and savvy. So we need to be careful.”
I lean into his touch for a moment, and when he stands up again, I miss his warmth immediately. “If he kept such a tight lid on shit, where are we supposed to find solid evidence? He probably never let any of that shit leave his house.”
“Maybe not. But we might have a chance to access it anyway.” Marcus’s voice draws my attention, and I look up to see him striding into the living room, slipping his phone into his pocket.
“What do you mean?”