The Empire (Filthy Trilogy 3)

“We need her to just tell us, Eric. She’s scared. I think she’ll tell us.”

“When she’s on the ground, if we can reach her, we can try.”

“Can we just go to her?”

I reject that idea. “We should have stopped her from leaving, but we didn’t. And we need to be right here, in front of the police, and the problem.”

“Can Walker just get someone to confront her? Do they have resources to do that from Europe?”

My cellphone buzzes with a text and I snake it from my pocket, glancing at the message and then at her. “We may not need Gigi. Isaac can tell us when he gets here. He’s about to get on a private jet now.”

“He’s not going to talk to you.”

She’s wrong. He will. I’ll make him. “I’ll handle my brother.”

“Why is he coming here now?”

“We have your mother handled. We’re protecting her. She’s sedated. Isaac is another story. He looks bad if he doesn’t show up and if he makes the police go to him.”

“It’s about you. He’s coming here because of you. Everything is about you. The messages read like one of your tattoos. I was told to look right in front of me and that’s you. Who knows what your ink says to point me that way?”

No one, I think, and yet they managed to give Harper a message on the back of that card that’s on my arm. Who the fuck is giving us these messages? My family isn’t warning me about my family. The mob isn’t warning me about the mob. I go back to my family. “Didn’t you say Gigi made a reference to me getting my brains from her?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. She did.” Her eyes go wide. “You think she could be the one talking to us in coded messages? They didn’t start happening until you got to Denver. Until she had me get you involved. We need to talk to Gigi, Eric. She wants to help you but feels that puts her in danger.”

Help me.

Those two words and Gigi don’t compute. “Help herself by using me and you.” I scrub what’s become a two-day stubble on my jaw, my hands coming down on my hips, mind processing numbers, looking for answers. “I need to sit and I need to think, not talk. That’s not how I come up with answers.” I cup her face and kiss her. “I need you, baby, but I also think independently. It’s a savant thing. It’s a singular process.”

“Yes, okay. I’ll try every way possible to reach Gigi.”

She won’t reach her but I don’t say that. I brush my knuckles over her cheek and I walk toward the couch, where I sit down and somehow end up with a cube in my hand without consciously picking it up. My mind is already working, tossing around numbers, but at the same time, going back to the same place I went to when I was talking to Grayson. What does the message mean? Grayson had asked.

My answer had been “It translates to a saying we had in the SEALs. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying. It means to win, you have to break the rules.”

“And you think that means someone knows what rules you were going to break with Kingston?” he’d asked.

“Don’t you?” I’d challenged. “It’s a fucking threat. They want me to do something for them, pay them off in some way, or they’ll tell Harper.”

It was a threat.

Or was it a warning?

The more I think about the messages, the less likely they feel like they’re from the mob. The mob isn’t warning us. They’d just get in our fucking faces. I stare down at the message on the back of the business card and look down at my hand where the saying is inked in letters and numbers. Someone like me, another savant, perhaps Gigi if I believe her theory that I got my brains from her, could see it. That saying and anything to do with the Navy is about honor, courage, sacrifice, and brotherhood to me. The SEALs are my brothers. Isaac is my brother.

Could Gigi be warning me about Isaac?

Did she pull me into this because she knew he was going to try to kill her son, his father, my father to inherit and pay off the mob? Of course, Gigi would know that I’d never save my father, so she’d need Harper to get me involved. That theory would assume that she knew about me and Harper, but again, there could have been cameras from the cottage. And Harper could have given off signs about me that she didn’t realize she gave off.

Gigi tried to save the family by using me to do it. Isaac thought it was Harper. He came at her and me. Maybe my father did come here for help. Isaac tried to end him. He’ll try to finish him when he’s here. He’ll try to finish me and Harper.

I’ll finish him instead.

I pull out the first message that I have yet to understand, but I need to and now, before Isaac gets here.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Eric