Page 71 of The Senator: Raphael

He knows.

This is the secret he’s been keeping from me. He lied to me. He looked me in the eye and lied about the one thing he promised he would do. All the trust and faith I put in this relationship, along with my heart, crumbles.

“You knew they were following me, and you said nothing?” she shouts furiously.

A few feet from me, Matthew looks like he’s trying to decide whether to jump between us or not. I wouldn’t let him. I deserve everything she’s hurling at me. I deserve her rage because I caused her fear. I should have told her.

“I didn’t know they were following you,” I admit in a calm voice that doesn’t match how I’m feeling right now.

“But you knew something was going on,” she points out.

Dave stares at me with a blank expression, but I can see his jaw twitching a bit. He knows we screwed up by keeping it quiet. He helped me set up more security with my father’s men, but it wasn’t enough.

“Yes. I was tipped off about the possibility that two men related to your case had gone dark. Just two people, not the entire organization. They’re notallafter you,” I try to explain, realizing that this is not reassuring at all. Two men or a hundred, it’s still a threat.

She scoffs and shakes her head. I can see the terror building in her eyes as this information sinks in. She paces between the couches in the living room while biting her nails. I’ve never seen her lose control like this. She’s always so calm, but this is too much even for someone as strong and rational as her.

She stops in the middle of the room and shoots her gaze at me. “Where is the second one?” Her voice is shaky.

“What?”

“You said there was two men. Only one is following me. Where’s the second one?” She puts her hand on her stomach like she’s about to faint.

“We don’t know yet. I’ve got people coming to help us determine what’s going on and which of the two is following you.”

“What’s going on? You put me and my family in danger, that’s what’s going on!” she hollers angrily.

An icy chill expands in my chest, and I lower my gaze. She’s right. She is freaking right, and I don’t know if I can do anything to fix this mess at this point. As usual, I put my career first and this time I fucked up.

“Silver, please,” Matthew’s stern voice of warning annoys me.

“Shut up, Matthew! Shut the fuck up, or I swear to God I’ll kill you,” Silver hisses, pointing a finger at him. My best friend has the decency to close his mouth. “You’re the one who suggested this. You put me in this situation and now I have to deal with it. You don’t give a shit about me or my family. We’re just collateral damage in his run for presidency. So, please, do me a favor: Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

The silence that follows is almost deafening. She’s right. We all thought we could handle this, but we had no idea how big of a deal this is. We don’t even know what they want with her. Scare her? Kill her? It’s insane to think they could get away with it. She became a public figure like me when she showed up at my side. Her death wouldn’t go unnoticed, not even if it looked like an accident.

The door swings open and Sven comes in, followed by five other leaders from the security team. They glance around the room and look worried, either because they have more information already, or because Silver looks like she’s ready to kill someone.

“We have some question for you,” Sebastian, the head of the team, says to Silver.

He’s in charge now. That’s clear from his confidence, his tone, and the way he invites Silver to sit down and she indulges him.

“We have a couple of pictures of the guys we suspect are following you. Can you take a look and point out which one you saw?” he asks, sitting on the couch next to her.

She looks at him, then at me, then at him again. Disbelief and fury morph her face. “You have pictures? You have fucking pictures of them and said nothing? How much do you know and when did you plan on telling me?” She spits this last part at me.

Sebastian doesn’t flinch at her outburst. He just stares at her for a while, assessing her, and then opens the folder in his hand. “There was no reason to suspect they’re here in Los Angeles. They just disappeared from New Jersey. People like that vanish all the time. They’re criminals, they get killed, or they just want to fly under the radar because they fucked up,” he explains so matter-of-factly I want to punch him in the face.

He’s used to these kinds of situations. Hehasto be cool and collected when tensions are running high. But I can’t stop being protective around Silver. Matthew looks at me like he knows what’s crossing my mind. He shakes his head in a subtle plea to not make things worse.

“Or, you just missed all the red flags about this case and fucked up.” Silver’s cold remark hits Sebastian square in the face.

His lips curve in a small smile and he nods stiffly. “Or we fucked up,” he confirms. “Do you recognize which one followed you?” He shows Silver the mugshots.

She glances at the pictures and frowns. “Neither.”

We’re all a bit shocked. We expected she would at least hesitate or second-guess herself.

“Please, look again,” he insists. “Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize a person from a picture but try and isolate some feature of his face and tell me if it’s the same person.”

---