“Mix-up?” I squeezed the needle tight. “This isn’t a fucking mix-up.”
He cut me off with a hard tone and a look of fury. “I’m aware, Izzy.” He stuck his hand out. “Give me the needle.”
“Why?” I stared at the dirt on the ground and licked my cracked lips. “I’m only one day sober at this point—”
“Eight years and thirty days.”
My eyes whipped up at him—how did he know the exact number? He glared back at me.
“No.” I shook my head, my dirty matted hair waving back and forth as I sat there. “They stole that.”
“I know you think so, dollface.” His words sounded like coddling, but the tears sprang to my eyes anyway. “I hacked your phone. You did good recording something. But I heard you. And I’m so fucking sorry.” His voice cracked, and then he cleared his throat, like he might cry, like he was broken up about all this, like he cared. “But no one gets to steal that from you. Your sobriety is yours. If someone takes it, it doesn’t count.”
“Who says?” I whispered, my heart splintering at his rationality.
A small smile formed on his lips. “Me. And I can write it in anything across the fucking globe if you like. I’ll put it on every website and into every book printed because I believe it and you should too. It’ll be the damn ‘Izzy clause.’”
I pushed myself up off the floor and continued to let the tears fall as I gripped the syringe. “I’m furious, so fucking mad, I want to tear them all apart, and I’m sad too. And I don’t do well with all these emotions.”
“Then start over. And start over from the very beginning.” Cade held my gaze, carved through the mess of my broken soul, and got to the root of the matter. “Your first heartbreak you felt deeply. It doesn’t make that emotion wrong, Izzy. You need to feel it. Start over and feel everything this time.” Cade waited a beat. “They did this to Lucas too. You can’t let them win. Just give me the needle.”
Jerking from his statement, I think he saw the rage, the fury, the madness in me. I wanted blood. “Who did this to him?”
“Needle.” His hand was out, and I practically punched him with my closed fist, letting him pry it from my grip. He pushed the needle, and the liquid in it squirted out onto the floor immediately. Then he was rushing me, lifting my chin, checking my neck, my cheeks, my lips. His hands smoothed over every bruise, every cut, with a gentleness I didn’t know he had in him. There was fury in his eyes but a frown on his face as he said, “They hurt you, dollface.”
It wasn’t a question but a statement.
“I’m fine.” I took a steadying breath and gripped his wrists to pull them away from my skin. I couldn’t have him baby me now. I wouldn’t survive it if he did. “Please tell me who did this to Lucas. What happened?”
“I think they meant it for your drink. I searched the security footage. It’s why there was Rohypnol in his system. We’re figuring it out. I’m getting you out of here, and we’ll figure it out once we’re gone. Alteo let me in, but it’s a quick in and out. I have a team outside that’ll take you—”
“I’m staying,” I blurted out, shocking myself. But the words rooted themselves deep in me and I couldn’t let the idea go. “They hurt me and my friend. They stole our sobriety and they’ve been at this for years, Cade. I wasn’t digging for nothing. They’re rigging the election. And they want something more—”
“It doesn’t matter.” He gripped the back of my neck and pulled me close. Every touch of his was softer, though, like he was scared I would break even as he pointed a tattooed finger at me. “You shouldn’t have been on that computer, and you shouldn’t have been hacking without my knowledge, Izzy. You’re leaving.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I’m not. We need to find—”
He eyed my baggy T-shirt and let me go so that he could pace back and forth, pulling at his hair. “We don’t need to find anything. Izzy, you’re out of your mind.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I found their hacking, Cade. And they hurt my friend.”
“You went flying into the dark web like a kid who was let off their leash at the zoo. I tracked your IP address. You tapped information and touched every single thing you could. Had I been paying more attention to what you were doing and less attention to—” He stared at my lips as he stopped talking. “Damn, your mouth is bleeding. We need to get you out of here. They want to know what you know. They think you’re the only one who knows.”
“But now you do too.”
He nodded darkly. “I’ll deal with them. I need to walk you out now, or I’ll fucking carry you.”
But we were too late. In filed five men, and I saw the way Cade’s jaw flexed, how he walked over to me and put himself in front of me. He may have been my enemy once, but now I knew he was my protector.
Alteo mouthed a, “Sorry,” to him, and Dion glared at both of us. But the other men who’d walked in didn’t acknowledge us at all. They kept their eyes forward with hands on their firearms.
The last one to walk in must have been in charge. I knew it by the way the men fanned out around him, and he looked down at me as if I were a puzzle he was trying to figure out.
He straightened his suit and tsked at the sight. He was clean-cut—some might even have called him attractive with his strong jaw and dark hair with silver highlighting his temples.
He extended his hand to Cade, and I was surprised when Cade stared down at it but made no movement to take it in his own. The man’s brow furrowed. “Cade Armanelli, I’m sorry we’re meeting this way. My associates let you in without a proper introduction. I’m Aleks Mustafa. I’m sure you’ve heard—”
“I don’t need an introduction, Aleks. I didn’t come here for one,” Cade said loud enough for all the men to grip their weapons tighter. His voice held malice and frustration. It wasn’t a tone to have when one was in a small room loaded with guns.
“I understand.” Aleks’s voice was consoling. “I didn’t mean disrespect.”
“Didn’t you, though?” Cade murmured quietly. “These accommodations the best you could do for a woman you took?”
Aleks smiled and nodded as he turned to his men. “Alteo, I said to get her accommodations.”
“We did, Dad,” the other man murmured.
One deep breath was all that was needed for the men to take a step back, like they were scared he would lash out. “Alteo, you’re my son. Would you expect my accommodations for you to have been in the dirt?”
“No, of course not, sir.” He shook his head rapidly. “We thought she was just an employee at Stonewood. Not an Armanelli tie, I swear.”
“And why would an employee of Stonewood need to have a stay in the first place?” Cade inquired.
“Well . . .” Alteo’s eyes darted from his father to Cade, his father to Cade. When he realized his own father wouldn’t vouch for him, he scrambled. “She shouldn’t have tried to pull information from us. We have nuclear weapon locations, confidential files tied to—”
“You were trying to rig an election,” I blurted out.
All their eyes flew my way. Dion’s narrowed, Alteo’s widened, but Aleks’s were the ones I held. I saw the hunger in them, the need to shut me up, and the coldness there too. He’d do anything to get out of this.
“Sweetheart, you know not what you found.” He chuckled. He was a snake circling his prey, ready to kill with a venomous bite. He sought out my weakness.
“I know what I saw.”
He glanced at Cade. “I haven’t properly met her. I was on my way. I’m sorry for this whole mix-up, but we had to be sure she wasn’t going to spread such an accusation. You understand?”
Cade didn’t respond. I only saw his muscles tense.
“Alteo informed me she’s been in cybersecurity a while. A little paranoid bird, huh?” He waved me off, smiling at Cade as though they could be friends. “I’ve looked into her history, and we saw indications that she indulges in drugs, has a record—”
“‘A record’?” I whispered. “‘Sorry for the mix-up’? I was drugged and beaten when I got here. I—”
The man didn’t let me finish. He acted surprised and appalled with a gasp. “Alteo, is this true?”
“Father, but you said—”
“No.” Aleks looked at another large man and shook his head in disappointment. “Take him away.”
“Sir, please. Wait—” Alteo struggled against the other man, yelling as they dragged him out. Aleks and Dion remained.
Aleks’s sharp gaze shifted to me. “I’m sorry for the poor arrangements. Please accept my apologies.”
I chewed on my cheek. This wasn’t my place. Cade would have to side with me or this man. He knew the truth. He had to. We all stood there in silence so tense a knife wouldn’t have been able to cut it.
Was I supposed to forgive him? Is that what they wanted?