Page 60 of Six of Hearts
I thought back over all the bills I had to pay for the month. I was no stranger to working the system a little bit, especially when I was trying to make a paycheck do way more than it could.
I was a master at due date extensions, payment plans, and even the lesser-known ‘I paid it online, if you don’t see it, it’s because there was a problem with your system.’ Typically, when bills got seriously past due, the bill collector would send an important-looking piece of paper warning that if the bill wasn’t paid by a certain date, the service would be interrupted.
I gave it a look over, thinking that might be what it was, but those always had a return address on them because they wanted to be paid, and they weren’t typically mailed certified because they didn’t need to be.
I was stumped.
I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and tucked it into the corner of the envelope and slid it across the envelope’s mouth. I pulled out the contents, and a chill ran down my spine. The top document was a blank piece of paper apart from some typed letters dead centre on the page.
‘He MuRdErEd HeR iN hEr BeD aNd yOu’Re NeXt!’
I tossed that page down to the table to see what was under it, and I was horrified at what I found.
There were half a dozen pictures of some woman who looked a terrifying amount like me, lying in the middle of a large, lavish bed.
Her blond hair was a mess across her head, and her eyes, though open, were totally vacant. She was dead. There were the remains of a dribble or foam at the corners of her mouth, and there were a couple of patches of dried blood just below her nose and streaming down her chin.
My stomach turned and my mind became instantly dizzy. I dropped the pictures and bolted for my bathroom, only just barely managing to make it as what I had consumed of the Santa Claus frappé came spewing from my mouth.
My head was pounding and I had no idea what to do or think. I sat on my chilled bathroom floor simply trying to wrap my mind around the situation and figure out who could have sent me something so terrible.
The note referred to a male. My dad left me when I was a child, and I didn’t have any siblings.
If I did have cousins, I didn’t know them, and I almost exclusively hung around women, making the rare exception for boyfriends or siblings of friends, but that was it.
The only men in my life were the men in The Dad Squad; my men. But there was no way the note was referring to one of them. I knew them.
They were wonderful parents, and wonderful lovers, they wouldn’t kill someone.
Well… they could, but they would never. Gabriel was a police officer, and could easily cover up a murder, and then Liam could make it so the DA’s office didn’t look into it. Ethan had access to tons of cars that could be used to transport something secretly, and Noah was a structural engineer for the city, and Ronan was the C.E.O. of a construction company, they all knew the city like the back of their hands and could easily dispose of a body.
Last, but certainly not least, Julian was a hunter with his own cabin in the woods; the horror story writes itself. I thought about how much the woman looked like me. Was I one of their type in a fatal attraction kind of way? I shook my head.
“No,” I said aloud. There was no way.
My men weren’t murderers.
I shakily stood up off the ground and hobbled into the living room.
I could feel my stomach start to churn again as I looked down at the pictures, but I quickly gathered them up along with the note and tossed them into my shredder. I allowed the buzzing to cut up the horrendous thoughts in my head.
My guys didn’t murderer anyone. I knew that for a fact.
That didn’t stop my dreams that night from taking me to dark and scary places. I dreamt of myself on the bed, dead. I dreamt of one of my romantic nights with the guys going south suddenly, when they pulled out some sort of blunt object to whack me over the head with.
I even dreamt of finding one of my poor babies in pain, bleeding and warning me to run.
By the tenth time I’d woken up in a cold sweat, it was 3 o’clock in the morning, and I decided I best just throw in the towel for the night. I wouldn’t be getting a relaxing, dreamless sleep; that ship had sailed the moment I opened that package.
“Aria? You okay? You seem a little out of it.” I shook my head and looked up to see Liam looking down at me.
How I got to his home was anyone’s guess. I must have fluttered through my day on autopilot, not realising it until Liam’s hands were on my waist and his warm eyes were staring down at me in deep pools of concern.
“Um, oh, yeah, just worried,” I responded, being severely more honest than I intended to.
I really wanted to believe with my whole heart that none of my men were killers, but I couldn’t help but remain a little cautious. No other packages had come for me, and I was keeping a close eye on all of my surroundings to see if anyone was following me; the sender had to have gotten my address from somewhere.
“Worried?” Liam asked. “About what?”
