The shrill ring of my phone tears through the silence and I jump before scrambling to answer it. Seeing Eli’s name across the screen, I slam it to my ear. “Did you know?” I demand.
“Babe…”
“Did. You. Know?”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “Yes. We didn’t know at the time, but after the attack, we put the pieces together.”
My heart shatters. “I can’t fucking believe this. Not only are you all sitting over there and watching me fuck my boyfriend like dirty perves, but you were keeping this from me too. How could you? You were supposed to have my back.”
“We do have your back, that’s why we put in surveillance in the first place.”
“Let me guess?” I say with a breathy scoff. “Keep me distracted in the ballroom during a fucking wake while you send Kairo upstairs to bug the whole fucking mansion. Fuck you. Fuck you all.”
“O …”
“No,” I snap, pushing my way out of the car and storming through the internal door into the mansion. “Where are they?”
“Babe, they’re for your protection.”
“Where the fuck are they, Elijah?”
I hear his grumbled cringe through the phone. I very rarely use his proper name but when I do, he knows that I’m not fucking around. “Everywhere,” he says. “Pool house, your bedroom, both the main pools, the mansion living areas, kitchens, bathrooms. Every room has been hit.”
Everything sinks within me knowing just how wild I allowed myself to be with Colton yesterday. I was vulnerable and I completely gave myself to him and to think that those douchebag Widows were sitting back and watching the fucking show makes me sick. How could they do that to me?
“I want a list and I want it right fucking now. Every last one, Eli.”
“Okay,” he finally says. “I’ll send you a list now.”
I end the call without a goodbye and find myself pacing the foyer, way too on edge to even begin calming myself. I wait all of two minutes before my phone dings with an incoming text and I glance down to find Eli’s text, but not only is there a text from Eli, there’s about twenty from Nic.
How the hell did I miss those coming in?
I delete every single one of them. I don’t need to read them because I know exactly what they’re going to say. Not one of them could make up for what he did. Maryne’s life is on his shoulders. He did that. The DeCarlo brothers pulled the trigger, but Nic gave the go-ahead and for that, he’s just as bad. How will we ever be okay?
I scan over Eli’s list and just as he had said, there’s a camera in nearly every single room of the house. I start looking over the foyer and find the tiny little camera hidden in the frame of one of Charles’ expensive artworks and realize that this is going to take all fucking day.
I grab the little camera and rip it off the frame before looking over it closely. These things look fucking expensive and for my sake, I hope they were. I hope they cost Nic a fucking bomb.
I mouth ‘fuck you,’ to the camera before dropping it to the ground and crushing it beneath my shoe, listening to the satisfying crunch as it smashes against the marble flooring.
One down, a million to go.
I get busy, going from room to room and tearing down every last one. They’re tiny and hard to find. On the downstairs level, they’re mostly hidden in plain sight—potted plants, photo frames, even a fucking fruit bowl. Upstairs and in rooms which don’t have a 20-foot ceiling, they’re generally hidden in the air conditioning vents.
I step into the private kitchen and instantly hear Colton with the boys in the adjoining den. From the sound of it, they must be chilling out with pizza and video games, so I leave them to it. It’s not as though I’m in such a great mood right now anyway. I still have a job to do.
I scurry around in the kitchen and after a minute of searching, I find the stupid camera at the top of a cabinet, giving the boys a wide view of the kitchen. I clench my jaw and start climbing up onto the counter, listening as Charlie lets out a confused laugh. “Bro, what the fuck is your girl doing?”
There’s a short silence as they all stop what they’re doing and focus on me. “I, uhh … I’ve got no fucking idea. I wasn’t expecting her back for hours.”
Ignoring them, I stretch up onto my tippy-toes and reach the camera with a grunt before dropping it straight onto the counter and crushing it. A string of angered curses come flying out of my mouth but I continue on, moving into the living room.
“Babe?” I hear Charlie calling from the den. “What the fuck are you looking for? What was that?”