Page 107 of Diamond In The Rough

“You have a crowd?”

I cross to the couch in the middle of his room and sit on the edge. “Just Felix. What’s up?”

“Tiia Ailani Hale.” She taps at her keyboard, proving she sits at her desk wherever she is. “August fifth birthday, nineteen ninety-three. Two siblings. One is a twin.”

My heart slams against my diaphragm, aching and deep. “We know all this, Soph. My guy ran the background check. You said you wouldn’t do it, so I moved on.”

“Yeah, but I caught a few free minutes, and you’d already given me the pertinent info to get started. Tiia went to Brown University straight out of high school. Double major in Art History and?—”

“Soph…” Felix scowls. “We already know. You’re wasting our time.”

“Yeah, well…” Soph clears her throat. “It gets worse. Your guy Harrison caught nothing odd about this family? Nothing at all?”

“He didn’t run the family. He ran Tiia. We got her name and DOB. We caught the stuff about her schooling, and how her parents are married. Nothing popped.”

“Her parents are dead, Malone. There’s no happy family there, waiting to welcome the kids home for Christmas. Did you catch the bits about her hearing?”

“What ab—” I drop my hands and wait for my vision to clear. “What?”

“Medical records are popping like fizzling candy over here. She’s had testing done for her ear issues, which essentially has her at moderate loss.”

“Which she already told me. I don’t get what the issue?—”

“Explosive trauma. Ms. Hale was present when a homemade ticker went off inside a residential home. The boom was loud, but the firepower was lacking. She caught a little shrapnel and spent a night in the hospital. But her ears suffered the worst of it.”

“An explosion?” Baffled, I meet Felix’s eyes, but he only gives me a boyish shrug of his shoulders. Then I peek to the door, though it’s closed and the woman we discuss is four flights down and sitting with two others. “She was in an explosion? What the fuck? She said she’d had a cold that turned to a nasty ear infection.”

“Medical records show a moderate improvement over the last twelve-months. But the damage was severe, so it’s possible she’ll never get back to normal.”

My mind swirls. It spins and leaps and searches for the bridge that somehow connects the Tiia I know, and the one who might’ve been in an explosion a year ago.

“I don’t understand, Ace.” I set my hands together and massage my left palm with my right thumb. “She’s just… I mean… she lied about the cold thing, I guess. But an explosion? Antiquities dealers who live in the East Village don’t hang around people who blow things up.”

“Yeah… But your girl ain’t an antiques dealer, bro. She’s a Fed, and right this minute she’s undercover in your kitchen, talking with Christabelle Cannon while you dumb-dumbs are upstairs chatting with me.”

Felix spins, so fucking fast. Rage pulsing in his veins as he stalks toward the door. “I’ll deal with this. You stay here. You don’t have to see what happens.”

“Wait!” I kill my call and shove up from my chair. My brain sizzling in my skull, and my hand fisting around my phone, threatening to crack the glass. I grab my brother before he stalks out and slam his back against the wall. “I said wait!”

“We have a threat inside our home! She’s alone with the woman I love.”

“I’m gonna deal with it.” I press one hand to his pounding chest. And the other to the wall. Because without it, I might not remain standing. “I just need a second.”

“Micah—”

“I just need a second!” Turning away and chucking my phone to the floor, the device smashes to a thousand pieces, glass and mechanisms scattering from the rug to the ceiling, pinging off the walls like tiny droplets of rain made of steel. “I told you from the fucking start my instincts were firing.” I twist back to my brother, rage pulsing in my veins. “I told you! You’re the one who said to set that shit aside and fall in love, anyway.”

“She’s a fucking Fed,” he snarls. “A spy inside my home.”

“You told me to love her anyway!”

“A spy fucking with my brother,” he seethes.

“I warned you, Felix! I called it from the start and now…” I slam my eyes shut. Fuck knows, if I don’t, I might embarrass myself. “Now it’s gone too far.”

I fell in love with the enemy.

Like a fucking idiot!

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