Page 26 of Sweet Revenge
Elisa scrunched up her nose, but she didn’t say more about the bloody sight that had greeted her in the living room. I’d been pretty proud of her distraction technique. The girl had come a long way in the last few months.
“It wasn’t me.”
Again, her statement caught me off guard. It took me a moment to reason through what she was talking about. I turned and looked at her for a moment, raising an eyebrow, silently begging her to elaborate.
“I didn’t call anyone,” she continued.
“Oh. Yeah. I know.” I took a deep breath, wanting to leave it at that.
Of course, that wasn’t good enough for her. “You do?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Because I would never betray you.” She took the conversation in a totally different direction than I had been expecting. “I know you thought that I had stabbed you in the back when I took the Black Rabbit file, but I only took it so that Ragno couldn’t get it.”
“I know, baby. We don’t need to rehash all of that. I never meant to imply that I thought you’d purposely betrayed me now.” I tried to be reassuring, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.
“You just think I’m stupid?” she asked. Her tone was more surprised than angry at the accusation.
“Of course, I don’t think you’re stupid. Accidents happen sometimes. It can happen to anyone. Like you. Or… me.” I took a deep breath and shook my head. I really didn’t want to talk about what I had figured out must’ve happened.
“What are you talking about, Daemon?” she probed. “Are you saying you think that you accidentally told someone our location?”
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “I definitely didn’t do that, but I know now that it was stupid of me to let anyone at all know where we were. The mistake I made was trusting someone who clearly didn’t have my back.” Anger washed over me. I inhaled through my nose and let it go slowly, trying not to get upset. I needed to stay calm at the moment. If I lost my cool, I’d do something rash and end up in a similar situation to the one I’d just left.
“What do you mean? I thought the only people who knew where we were are your brothers.” She arched an eyebrow over an icy blue eye.
Nodding, I confirmed, “That’s right. Only my brothers.”
“And your brothers would never betray your trust, right?” She turned her body toward me a bit and waited.
“I guess one of them must’ve told somebody.” I tried not to jump to conclusions, but the facts were all laid out for me. “If only three people knew where we were and then suddenly your father knew where we were, well, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to determine how that happened.”
Elisa giggled at my silly joke. “I think you mean a brain scientist. But seriously, why would any of your brothers do that? They all always seem like they think the world of you, that they want you to be the don.”
“I have no fucking idea.”
The statement settled between us for a few minutes because there was really nothing more to say about it. “So we’re going to Boston?” It wasn’t exactly a question. She was just confirming how I’d come to that decision.
“Yes. I can’t trust my brothers, so I may as well go somewhere else,” I concluded.
“You have even fewer friends in Boston than Chicago, you know? Do you have any friends at all in Boston? Everyone I know in Boston wants to kill you,” she reminded me.
“I wasn’t exactly thinking of building a summer home there, but I figure if I can’t trust my brothers anymore, I may as well pay yours a little visit.” There. I’d stated the plan. Sort of.
And I got the reaction I’d expected that prevented me from stating the plan before. “My brothers?” she echoed. “Oh, Daemon, that’s not a good idea. Listen, my brothers hate you with a passion. And they’re not nice people. Other than Drake, of course, who isn’t even in Boston. The others will tear us apart.”
“I know that, Elisa, but I’ve got it all sorted out. It’ll be fine. Listen, we can’t go back to my brothers. They had to have figured out where I was from the FaceTime. They are the only ones who know I built the cabin except for some construction workers who were paid off and nameless. There’s no way in hell your dad tracked them down. It makes much more sense that one of my brothers stabbed me in the back, though I still don’t know why. Your brothers might be complete assholes, but at least they are a known quantity.”
“Could it have been an accident?” she asked, her tone so innocent I wanted to kiss her. “Maybe they didn’t mean to let my father know.”
“I have no fucking idea,” I repeated. “At best, it was a simple mistake. At worst, they all three want me dead. So we go to your brothers for help.”
“But they won’t help,” she reminded me. “Not willingly anyway.”
“I don’t expect it to be willingly.” I smiled at her. “I’m perfectly comfortable with forcing them to help us.”
She let out a loud sigh. “Growing up, they were always awful to me. Just like our father. Even when they didn’t have to be. Especially Alex. They all wanted to be so much like our dad that they ended up even worse, if that’s possible.”