“He’s not fucking joking,” Blake grumbles. “He tried to put a bow on me because he’s a crazy person.”
Savage’s phone buzzes with a message and he glances down at it. “Duty calls. Too bad it’s not a woman.” He eyes Blake, and they exchange a look before Savage heads for the door while Blake focuses on me.
“You okay?”
“I’m alive,” I say. “I’m not bleeding. I’d say that makes me pretty okay. Thank you and your team for all you’ve done.”
“Thank me when I make it count,” he says eyeing Eric. “I want to dissect a few dots I’ve connected, but first things first. You think your father tried to kill you tonight?”
Eric’s jaw tenses. “I just covered this. No. I don’t.”
“Savage told me you did,” Blake argues. “That was your gut instinct right after it happened.”
“And I’m telling you,” Eric states, “it’s not now. My father isn’t stupid enough to send someone that beneath my skill level to kill me. He knows who I am. He knows what I am.” His cellphone rings and he pulls it from his pocket. “Speak of the devil himself.” His lips press together. “My father.” He declines the call.
“You’re not going to take it?” I ask.
“Let him wonder what I’m doing right now.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I say. “If he wasn’t trying to kill you, then why attack you tonight?” I ask. “It makes no sense. That puts us on guard. It keeps me, and us, here. You’d think that they would want me back in Denver with you by my side. That’s how they get to me and blame you.”
“They don’t believe I’ll let you go back to Denver,” he replies. “Now, they have to do this here. They wanted to be sure I was spooked enough to hold onto you here.”
“But how do they get to me or you here?” I challenge, holding out my hands. “We’re well insulated.”
“Baiting me,” I say. “Somehow, someway, he plans to bait me into doing something that backfires.”
“Let them try,” Blake says. “We’ll be there to turn it around on them.”
“In other words,” Eric replies. “You’re not here to tell me that you figured out what’s really going on here, are you?”
“Not yet but we need to talk about the unions, and the possibility of them being connected to the Kingstons.”
“The unions?” I ask. “You think this relates to them?”
“I do,” Blake says. “I can’t prove it yet, but I have enough for me to start pointing my research that direction. And believe me, the union’s involvement is not good news.”
“No, it’s not,” Eric says, pulling me closer, as if he’s suddenly concerned about me standing right here.
I glance at Eric. “What do you two know that I don’t know?”
“The unions are still connected to the mob,” Eric says. “You piss them off, you die. You steal from them, you suffer before you die. We don’t want them coming after you.”
Realization hits me and I can feel the color drain from my face. “The money in the account in my name. It could be mob money. It could look like I stole from the mob.”
“We handled that,” Blake assures me. “There’s no connection to you.”
“That we know of,” I say. “We don’t know much, it seems to me, right now.”
Eric turns me to face him, his hands on my shoulders. “No one is going to hurt you, princess. They’ll have to come through me and that won’t go well for them.”
“I’m not going to cower in fear,” I say, thinking of what the Kingstons did to his mother, to him, what they could do to my mother. “I’m sick of this family, I’m ready to fight.“
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Harper
I hold onto Eric, but not out of fear. No more fear. My mind is chasing Blake’s theory about what’s really going on. “It makes sense,” I say, facing Eric and Blake. “The union being involved makes sense. Isaac tried to get me to take over the union negotiations last week, right before my attack.” I eye Eric. “That meeting you interrupted. That was set-up because of Isaac thrusting a project on me out of nowhere.”