Cruz mumbles an “Mmmkay,” and I don’t waste another second, slipping out the door and gently closing it behind me.
I trudge down the hallway, bypassing Grayson’s open door to see him wide awake and watching something on his phone, probably porn. He looks up as I pass. “You okay?”
“Go to sleep already,” I tell him, walking straight past his door. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Look who’s talking,” he mutters under his breath, though something tells me that I wasn’t supposed to hear it.
Laughter bubbles up in my throat and I instantly feel guilty for it. I shouldn’t be laughing today. If anything, I should be lying in bed with Cruz, crying my eyes out until the pain goes away. It’s not fair to be here enjoying my life and enjoying the boys I share it with while something so horrible just happened.
I let out a sigh and continue down to the kitchen. I make myself a glass of ice water and lean against the counter as I sip it. If I were smart, I’d be drinking a glass of warm milk in the hopes of actually getting to sleep, but I can’t stomach it, not tonight.
Once my ice water is long gone, I stare across the kitchen, not moving, just wishing I could do something to fix this. I feel so lost. I should be out there trying to figure out who the hell this was and how they pulled it off. I should be creating a list of all my enemies and working out a way to keep myself and the guys safe from them.
It’s been months since I was pulled into this fucked-up little world. I should have my shit together by now. I should be soaring, but instead, I’m drowning. The current is pulling me down and the harder I swim, the more I seem to sink. There’s no winning here. I’m a lost cause. The guys would be better off without me.
I let out a heavy sigh and push up from the counter. I have to do something. I can’t just go and lie in bed for the rest of the night, staring up at the ceiling while wishing it could all go away. I need to fix this. I need to be proactive and claim back what’s mine, and where better to start than inside my enemies’ heads.
My feet drag down the hallway until I get to the big door that I constantly refuse to go in. My father’s private office. I can only imagine the kind of shit that went down in here, though to be fair, when he was running Dynasty, I don’t think he had to deal with the kind of shit that I’ve been dealing with. I had a warning of my bad luck, where his just showed up unannounced in the middle of the night and killed him before he even got a chance to fight.
I push through the big door and take a quick look around. It smells old and dusty in here, making it clear that this room very rarely has visitors. Moonlight streams through the window, and while it’s enough to see where I’m going and ensure that I don’t trip and fall, it’s not enough to scour every piece of paper in the room without giving me an epic headache.
Walking deeper into the office, my eyes scan over the shelves of books as I remember a brief conversation that I had with Tobias King, telling me that if I wanted information on someone, perhaps here was the best place to start. And considering that there are sixteen folders, each with a family name sitting on my father’s shelf, I’d assume that’s the best place to start.
I step right up to the shelf and brush off the light layer of dust over the folders while trying to decide who to start with. Royston Carver’s stands out to me, but considering that he’s already dead and obviously not someone who can actively jump out of his grave and trash his own damn house, his name is clearly off the table.
I scan down the line of names. Beckett. Danforth. Luca. Rhodes. Scardoni. None of them jump out at me until my gaze sweeps over Harding.
Michael Harding.
He’s a snake. There’s simply no other way to describe him, and up until now, he’s been flying underneath the radar. I don't know what he’s involved in or who’s side he’s even really on, but something tells me that he’s the kind of guy who could easily be paid off.
I pull the folder off the shelf and take a seat at my father’s desk before turning on the small lamp.
My hand trails over the folder, brushing away dust that’s built up over the last eighteen years, and the second I open the hard case, it’s clear that these folders were used as often as possible by my father. There are papers falling out, small handwritten notes, receipts, and information.