Page 140 of G.O.D.S Omnibus
“Baby, it was our only shot at making our deaths believable. Mr Z wasn’t going to stop until one of our teams was dead. We betrayed him, so he had to send a message,” Laughn explains.
“So why not tell me?”
“How could we have told you? You ran off to meet with him and didn’t tell any of us,” Davis snaps. My eyes meet his, and the fire burning in the depths of his deep-brown eyes makes my breath shudder.
Chester’s hand falls to my knee, his fingernails digging into my skin, and I place my hand over his to help calm him down. “Because I was doing what I thought was right,” I throw back.
“Ditto,” Davis replies. “We needed your response to be real, and we didn’t want to put you in any danger if the plan blew up in our damn faces.”
I smirk at him. God, I have missed his snarky quips. Dragging my gaze from him I scan over the rest of his team, greedily drinking in the sight of them all alive and well. “Where have you been staying?”
“When I was in hiding, after you went to foster care, the loneliness was debilitating. So, the guys built a bunker in the backyard, with a tunnel that leads into the morgue,” Trace reveals.
“So that’s why Laughn crawled out of a damn dead-person fridge.”
Creed snorts at that.
“While my brother was balls deep inside of you,” Laughn drawls.
“We had an agreement,” Boston snaps, looking around the table.
“What agreement?” I ask, brow raised. “To not fuck me while you were all lying to me?”
“Blame Brennan. He broke it first,” Kai says with a laugh.
Boston turns his attention to his brother, looking like he is ready to climb across the table and snap his neck. Brennan stays silent, his denial that it ever happened holding strong.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, not this shit again. I will fuck whoever I damn well please,” I snap, and Chester mumbles to himself. “Sorry, I will fuck any ofyouI damn well please.”
Boston’s brows dip low on his forehead, not understanding what’s transpiring between Chester and me. “Not him too,” Boston mutters, shaking his head.
“Yes, him too. I thought you were all dead! Did you honestly think I would sit around and twiddle my thumbs, just waiting for you to rise from the dead? Honestly, who I’m sleeping with should really be at the bottom of the priority list of shit we have to deal with. How about we start with an actual plan to take down Mr Z because I’m sick of waiting for theright time. There will never be a right time. Or how about the fact that my mother is still alive? Or that my friends are part of Olympia? Or that I plan to be friends with Colt, whether any of you like it? And once the shock that you’re all alive wears off... then I really think I might have more to say onthatmatter.”
“How about we start with an apology? We thought that by not telling you, Mr Z wouldn’t hurt you if he found out. Look at the consequences for lying to him about you and our involvement in what we did to make you disappear,” Trace says.
“Whatyoudid. Not us,” Davis snaps, pointing at his brother.
“You didn’t run to him and tell him the second you knew, did you? No. So he didn’t care how involved you were. In his eyes, you were guilty,” Trace throws back.
“Can you two just stop?” I practically scream at them. I don’t need them at each other’s throats. “What the hell are we going to do now? If he finds out you’re all alive, he will not spare any of you. We need a plan.”
“I might have an idea. We know we can’t kill him outright—even he knows that. If anything happens to him, all his teams will fire back. It’s what they have been told to do. We need you to spend more time with him, play the role of a loving daughter. We require access to his computer to find out what he has planned and who he is working with. Not even Marlow has been able to hack his system from the outside, so we need you to do it from the inside,” Brennan says.
Amongst all of this, Case has been awfully quiet. I look over at him and he just stares at me, as if he is committing the way I look to memory.
“And how do I do that?” I ask, shifting my gaze to Marlow.
“I will create a virus that will attack his system long enough for me to gain access. Once I’m in, the security he has in place will be mirrored by mine. I will then have access to everything he does from that point forward.”
“Okay, so at this stage, killing him isn’t the only objective.” I frown, patience not being my strong suit at the best of times.
“It never has been. We need to study his network, weed out all the bad eggs, and make sure that in the event of his death, no one comes after you. Everything we do is to protect you. Any smart man would have a fail-safe in place, and his mind knows no bounds. At least this way, we will know for sure. If we’re lucky, his phone will be linked to his computer, giving us full access.”
“Just tell me what you need me to do.”
Creed leans into my side. “What we need you to do is go back up to your room so we can have our way with you,” he whispersin my ear. I snort and push him away. Looking up, I find Boston shooting daggers at Creed.
“In your dreams,” I whisper back. His reply is nothing more than a growl that sends a shiver down my spine.
