Page 188 of The Reluctant Hero

“When did you start?” Gabe’s attention shifts to Jake with idle curiosity.

“As soon as I saw her,” Jake chuckles at something she does and closes out the app to focus on us instead. “Her beautiful eyes cut me to the bone with the way she saw me. It left an impression. You understand, of course.”

Gabe blinks at the assurance and has to look away as he nods.

“How is she supposed to relax here if she knows she’s being watched all the time?” Mikael interrupts the meeting of the minds before Jake can push harder and do more damage to Gabe’s mental health.

“If I had known I wouldn’t get the phone taken away from me by several possessive, second-tier stalker prudes, I would have found out about her harassment sooner,” Jake tells him with a dark glare. A real one this time instead of the show he puts on for other people. “Imagine it. Her perfectly safe with us and content instead of hiding out and terrified.The cameras stay.”

“Enough of the blame game,” Ace falls back into his seat. “We all know who’s at fault, and we’re gonna beg.”

Do we have time for that? The way she’s acting I don’t think any of us will be able to break through to her. She sees right through most of my manipulations, Mikael and Ace are practically wrapped around her little finger, and Gabe is clueless about how to handle her. That leaves the ball in the spastic hands of Jake.

“What did you guys talk about?” I ask him as a bill soaks up the sauce left on my plate. My eyes track to her food. The dish is mostly full because she picked at it. I normally would have teased that it was toorichfor her just to watch her puff up. Now, the joke is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

“Our histories, like we planned,” Jake says calmly.Toocalmly. It has the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

“And?” Mikael whispers, ready to get slammed into the ice with her reaction. We’re all tense as we wait for her judgment of our pasts.

“She was angry for us,” he looks around as his brows go down thoughtfully. “Sad that we suffered. No pity. No remorse for our actions. Thanks for the reminder. I want to see what she did to Blake.”

To say I’m surprised at the nonchalant explanation would be an understatement. I don’t know what to say. What woman would listen to any of our stories and not feel pity? Or fear? She should be running from us as fast as she can.

“Did she talk about anything else?” Gabriel frowns darkly. My brows furrow at the odd comment.

“No,” Jake answers in his own frosty tone. “She stayed quiet. Even when I told her about Ace tearing the gang apart.”

“You told her that?” Ace gapes at him as his face pales. “How could you thinkthatwas a good idea? Are you tryin’ to keep her away from us? You ain’t helpin’ for shit!”

If he went into full detail, I’m fucked. The pointed act of tasting everything she could ingest takes on a horrifying new meaning. Does she think I’m going to poison her?

I think Jake is ignoring him for a second before he straightens in his seat with wide eyes.

“Because I thought your rage matched hers. I was right and very wrong. She is more methodical than I could have ever dreamed,” he whispers and stares at his phone as if he just won a free vacation to his favorite beach. “I’d suggest sleeping lightly tonight, gentlemen.Verylightly. How much time did she spend with him? And no one saw anything?How?”

I snatch the phone from him with a scowl and find myself looking at a file. An emergency intake form. The list of Blake’s injuries is definitely eye-opening. One-half of his body is basically as mushy as Jake claimed that guy’s ribs were. He’s still in surgery. We’ve had her for several hours by now. There’s no way he’s going to be able to function well after this.

“Jesus,” I whisper, impressed despite myself. “She did this?”

“Give me that,” Ace yanks the phone from me and reads for himself.

“That’s my girl right there,” his smile is feral as he scrolls. I didn’t realize there was more. “He had something she wanted. When he didn’t hand it over, she broke bones.”

“Exactly,” Jake smirks at him and turns to Gabe. “We’re missing something here. Something more than an arrest and a divorce. Even the cheating didn’t have her this angry.”

“We’re past an ex threatening and bullying her,” Mikael agrees. “This goes way beyond property theft, too. But if it isn’t any of the above, what tipped her into violence againsthimspecifically? A combination of it all?”

“He seems so boringly normal,” Jake shrugs, and I agree. He’s a run-of-the-mill scumbag, not high-powered, with a million guys at his disposal. “For an idiot that buys property through shady means for a golf course, of all things. He hasn’t even finished it yet. It’s been six years in the making.”

“It has to go back to that,” I mutter, but it doesn’t feel exactly right. If he’s bullying her to keep her quiet like I suspected in the beginning, she’s blown that out of the water. So, why isn’t she singing about it? Even with the photos missing her word would have a lot of weight if she took it public. Instead, she’s getting revenge. What the fuck did he do to her? Did he visit her in the police station?

The thought makes me swallow hard. With as many connections as he has the corrupted cops would look the other way if he did something there. No one knows we have our own people put in place. She would have been a sitting duck regardless.

“The affairs?” Gabriel asks with a disgusted turn of his lips.

“This is personal in a different way,” Mikael mutters as he looks through Jake’s phone.

“That friend was in a set of photos, wasn’t she?” Ace asks and glances at Gabe. “Maybe it starts there.”

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