Page 72 of The Gilded Cuff
He gave Cody a commanding glare. It was stern, but layered just beneath were softer emotions—love, concern, the determination to protect. He was forever shocking her with his tenderness. Emery wanted the world to see a stoic, reclusive man with no weak spots, no vulnerabilities. But he gave himself away in every breath, in every touch and look for those he loved.
“Come on, Sophie. Wes is waiting on us.” Emery slid an arm around her waist, his grip possessive but gentle as he tucked her into his side. She craned her neck over her shoulder, glimpsing Cody as he shut his eyes and seemed already to be sleeping.
She looked forward again, leaning more into Emery’s sheltering hold. She had to figure out how to get Wes alone to tell him what she’d learned. How on earth was she going to do that without Emery noticing? Bile rose in her throat at the thought of deceiving Emery. She swallowed the unpleasantness back down. It was wrong to lie to him, knowing what she knew, but telling him could potentially be so much more hurtful. The last thing she ever wanted to do was hurt him.
***
“You told me you were going to take care of him,” the cold voice whispered over the phone.
Antonio clutched the steering wheel and glowered at a family walking past his car. The little children wheeled small luggage bags, laughing and shoving each other as they followed their parents toward the airport entrance for departing flights.
“He should be dead. I timed it perfectly.” He had. The entire night had gone off without a hitch, until he’d arrived at the airport early this morning, ready to catch a flight to Colorado when his client called him. It seemed Emery had survived the blast in the brewery.
The man on the other end of the line snarled. “Perfect or not, you failed. It seems the bodyguard got the hacker outside before the explosion. Emery jumped through a window into a vat of water. So you failed, completely.” There was a deadly pause. “You know how I feel about failure.”
Antonio resisted the urge to shout back at his client. He’d never had a problem carrying out a hit before, but these damn twins were his undoing. It was still a mystery as to how the boys had escaped twenty-five years ago. He had come back to the abandoned mansion that night to find one of his two accomplices dead of a gunshot to his stomach, the two boys gone, and the second accomplice missing as well. The puzzle had only grown when the next day he’d learned only one twin had found his way home. The other was gone…and he hadn’t been the one to kill him, which meant that boy might still be alive. His boss had told him to leave Emery for now, and to concentrate on finding Fenn. It had only taken him twenty-five years and the invention of the Internet to track down one little boy. A boy that had grown into a rather dangerous man.
“I’m tired of you fucking this up. You’ve got one more shot before I call in someone else. Twenty-five years is a long time to mess up something like this.” His client’s voice was smooth again, dangerous. Antonio smiled grimly. He was dangerous, too, especially when his reputation was on the line.
“I have a flight to Colorado in an hour. Fenn is going to be in a bull riding competition tomorrow night. I’ll take care of him.”
Silence on the other end.
“Mr. Lockwood?” he queried. Surely his client hadn’t hung up.
“You will stay here. Take care of Emery. He’s more of a threat. He’s the one who remembers. Fenn would have come home if he knew his identity. You can always take care of him later. I want Emery gone, and take out that damn reporter. When he dies, she’ll suspect foul play. Remove them both and make it look like an accident. I don’t want any police interest.”
Another group of people paraded past Antonio’s car, heading to the terminal. He wanted to finish this damn job and leave. It had been one hell of a disaster. His client had been displeased. Very displeased, and that wasn’t good for his business.
So Antonio focused on watching Emery for any signs that Fenn had contacted him, or revealed where he was. Apparently that had been a vain hope. If he hadn’t come across a ten-year-old picture of Rookie Rider of the Year for bull riding last month, he might never have found Fenn. At eighteen years old, Fenn had become a real expert at the rodeo. And since Antonio discovered Fenn was going by another name he was able to track his movements by the competitions he entered. It was almost laughable. The eldest child of one of the wealthiest East Coast families in America was living in an old run-down trailer in rural Colorado.
“Finish the job, D’Angelo, and I’ll double your final payment.”
“Consider it done. By tomorrow night Emery and the reporter will be gone.”
The line went dead.
Antonio flipped the phone shut and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Even though the money was a nice bonus, it had long since ceased to be about the money. Emery and Fenn had made a mockery of his life’s work.
It was time to end this.
***
Sophie’s hands trembled as she logged on to her laptop. The small pocketknife rested on her thigh, looking oddly harmless. No one would have guessed it held secrets that could crush or bring back the soul of a tortured man. Emery’s redemption could be at this very second on the flash drive.
She had to work fast. She’d only been able to tell Wes in a few brief minutes that he needed to occupy Emery for an hour while she checked out the information.
Jamming the USB drive into the computer, she immediately opened the files and scanned over the folders. Her heart stuttered to a stop when she saw one titled “FL.” She clicked it open and started sorting through the PDFs until she saw a birth certificate with the name Fenn Smith. It was classified as a replacement document for a lost birth certificate.
“Fenn Smith,” she murmured, reading over the details before moving on to the next documents. There were pictures. Hundreds of them. All of them had the same person, a boy who looked exactly like the one from the photo of the night Emery was found by the police. She clicked photo after photo, watching this other boy grow into a man. Her breath hitched as the reality of what she was seeing sank in.
It was Fenn. He was exactly like his brother, a living, breathing copy of the man she cared so much about. Fenn’s long unruly hair nearly reached his ears, calling for a woman to run her hands through it. It was tousled, a wild reflection of Emery’s more tame style. She stopped to gaze at one particular picture, of Fenn leaning back against a paddock fence, wearing faded worn blue jeans that hugged his legs enough to show his lean, muscled figure. Brown cowboy boots crossed at the ankles, a Stetson tipped back on his head, and a rakish grin stretching his lips wide. He was so alive, so vibrant. The build and shape of his body were a perfect mirror to his twin’s. Their faces had the same chiseled beauty that had her body melting and her brain fogging with desire.
Fierce tears stung her eyes.
And then there were two. She couldn’t stop smiling.
Fenn was alive.
