Page 11 of Hell In A Handbasket
She doesn’t come from the world we do. Not in the most technical, obvious sense. So me ordering someone’s death and her ordering someone’s death… they hit differently.
“Archer agreed to this?”
“Cato said he’s pissed, but Mayet’s willing to go.”
“And because she’s willing to go, he’s gonna follow, even if he’s unhappy about it.” I drag my gaze back to Christabelle and consider what to do.
ShouldI do anything at all? God knows, Archer spentmostof his life without me and Micah watching over his shoulder.
“Fuck.” Exhaling a noisy sigh, I drag my hand over my face and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Cato’s feeling weird about it? His sensors are pinging?”
“He’s not sure how he feels about it. Just that it’s a weird request by a woman whokindacomes from a rival family, who wields too much power, and wouldn’t take no for an answer when Archer pushed back.”
I slide my tongue across the front of my teeth and consider. Plan. Divert a fucking plane, maybe? Call in a bomb threat to toss Sophia’s plans off kilter. Whatever her intentions are, she’d have them scheduled to the minute. So a single missed flight, a delay in transfers, a slow-moving cab… these could be the difference between success or failure.
“I wanna trust her,” I grit out. Swallowing, I set my coffee down and look his way. “I do. She’s come through for us in the past?—”
“Nothing comes for free. Not with these types.”
I reach into my pocket and snag my phone—Call her? Call Archer?—but before I get the chance to so much as unlock the screen, the device chirps, andunknown callerflashes above the red and green icons.
Wary, I swipe to answer and put the call on speaker. “This is Felix.”
“Felix. This is Sophia Solomon.”
Heavy as a fucking boulder, Micah slams his hands to the iron table, plates and cups rattling in response, and leans over my phone. “What the hell are you up to, Solomon?”
“Your brother and Minka are in danger.” Thetap-tap-tapof a computer keyboard ricochets through the line. Mortar shells pounding in my veins. “I’m gonna send you coordinates as a safety precaution, but I wanted to let you know some shit’s going down right now, and it’s getting a little outside of my control.”
“The fuck does that mean?” I shove up from my chair, the legs scraping along the ground until the sound alerts Christabelle and brings her to a stop.
She wipes her face and tucks her hair back. I see her in my peripherals, even as my mind circles around the rest of this shit show.
“You’re sending them on a mission today, Solomon. Don’t think I didn’t already hear about it. So explain to me how the fuck they’re following your orders, but now you’re telling me they’re in danger?”
“I don’t control the whole world! Just specific elements within it. I needed Mayet to run a case for me. It’s important. But while I’ve got them headed one way, my ear is to the ground—always—and now I’m hearing things. I’m sending reinforcements to contain the fallout, but I’m starting to think not even my army is big enough for this mess.”
“Yourmess!” Micah snaps. “This isyourmess, Solomon.”
“What’s going on?” Christabelle moves to the edge of the pool, still ten feet from where I stand, and places her hands on the concrete lip. But when she boosts herself up the way she’s done every single day that I’ve known her, her protruding belly scrapes along the coarse exterior.
“Here, Darling.” I stride across and grab her hands, bringing her out of the water and holding on until she’s steady on her feet. A puddle pools on the ground between us, droplets sitting on her long lashes to make them look a million times longer. Most startling of all is how her stomach presses to mine, and my baby violently kicks, like it somehowknowsI’m near, and it may, just like in every fucking nightmare I have these days, reject me the way my brothers and I rejected our father.
It would be appropriate, I suppose. That another Malone father fails, and the woman and child he wants to own are better off as far from him as possible.
“What’s happening?” Christabelle searches my eyes, fear flickering in her beautiful silver stare as she reads my mood. Worry for Archer and Minka. Terror for the child who might already hate me. “Felix?”
“Kill the mission.” Micah snatches up my phone and circles the table, then grabbing a towel from the pile that never seems to end, he tosses it to me before moving away again. “If you think something bad is going down, you end the mission and divert your enemies. How the fuck do you not know that?”
“Their flight has already left Copeland,” she counters dryly. “So unless I turn an entire commercial plane around, which comes with nothing less than federal attention and a helluva lot more heat than we’re ready for, then there’s nothing I can do until they land.”
“So, how long until they land?” I wrap the towel over Christabelle’s shoulders, then I turn and bring her toward Micah. “Who’s meeting them there? What protections have you put in place?”
“I’ve scrambled all foreign transmissions, so no one besides us and the proper authorities will be able to track the plane. And I have a driver collecting them from the airport. The airport is small. Regional. And the driver is highly trained. One of my best. So he’ll make damn sure they’re safe.”
“So what’s the danger?” Micah cuts in. “You’re calling us just to gossip?”
“I’m calling because your brother is an obsessive fool who can’t leave his wife to travel on her own.”
