He turns to meet my eyes, his hard and gray. “And what exactly is your plan, then, coming here? Is it any different?”
When I don’t answer—because getting rid of those two is exactly my plan—he continues. “Despite what you think, I don’t want anything to happen to you. I wouldn’t be standing here today if it weren’t for you. And you and I have saved tens of thousands of lives together. Maybe more. What I have built here? Fuck the media. Alliance is a powerful organization that does incredible things. Yes, I make a lot of money because of it. Yes, there are . . . hiccups . . . Bad seeds, like those two. But I won’t let them tear down my legacy to this country. I need Scalero and Porter dealt with before they can hurt anyone else. I wish I’d figured that out sooner. Save everyone a headache.”
“They do need to go. But they also need to answer for what they’ve done.”
I reach for my phone and Bentley’s eyes widen in a flash of panic. Holding the screen out for him, I press Play on the video. Royce’s voice breaks into the quiet peace of the vineyard, and understanding fills Bentley’s eyes.
“I made copies of the video. Several. You’ll never track them all down before they’re released, I can promise you that.” In this case, I’m bluffing. My dad has the only copy, and I’m sure he went straight to the bank to secure it in his safety-deposit box. “So if you’re lying to me and they’re out there looking for Ivy, you might want to stop them now.”
He doesn’t make a move for his phone. “What exactly do you want from me?”
“You’re going to tell me where Mario Scalero and Ricky Porter are right now.”
“There’s no need for the theatrics.” He gestures to the ended video. “We want the same thing.”
I don’t think he understands, exactly. But he will.
“Give me their location, and I’ll do the right thing.”
He sighs. “And then?”
“And then I’m going to walk away, and this arrangement of ours is over.” I can’t do this and live a normal life. “You’re going to forget about me, you’re going to forget about Ivy, and everyone wins.”
“It’s not that simple, Sebastian.”
“It is. Because if you don’t, and if for some reason something should happen to either Ivy or me, then everything I’ve done for you over the past five years will fall into big hands. Names, dates, locations, purposes. Everything.” While I may not have listened to my father’s warning when Bentley first invited me to work for him, I did hear it. And it ate at me, an insipid voice that grew louder and louder, until I couldn’t completely ignore it. And so I began documenting critical details, figuring that if something ever happened to me, my father could see firsthand that I was doing good, that his disappointing son was making a difference, was saving lives. Maybe he would finally approve of me.
Never did I think I’d be using that information as leverage against Bentley, and yet here I am, doing exactly that.
Bentley’s eyes narrow. He thinks I’ve betrayed him. He’s right, but I don’t really have a choice.
“As long as nothing happens to either of us, that information will never see the light of day,” I promise.
“How can I believe—”
“Because unlike you, I can be trusted.”
Bentley chews the inside of his mouth. He’s always been good at knowing when he’s cornered, with no way out. It rarely happens. “I’m not going to walk away from this unscathed, am I?”
“No. But you’ll walk away because you finally did the right thing.” I meet his gaze. “Where are they?”
He grits his teeth.
FORTY-FIVE
IVY
“This isn’t exactly like the picture!”
“No, it’s better.” I start pulling apart my tattoo machine to clean it.
“She’s right,” Ren, a twentysomething-year-old blond guy with a giant smile and a bad habit of flirting with anything female, says? winking at me.
Bobby studies the rottweiler riding a bike in the mirror, then glares at me.