Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
“Maybe I better come along,” he says dryly. “Savage loves revenge a little too much, even someone else’s.”
“I’ll take Savage,” I say, sliding an arm around Harper. “Let’s go to the hospital.”
Blake nods and makes a call to alert his team. “Savage already handed off Grayson to Smith. He’s meeting us downstairs.”
Harper and I head for the door, and I help her pull on a jacket. “I’ll take you shopping today,” I promise softly while Blake takes a hint and steps outside.
“I’m not worried about shopping,” she says. “Though at some point we have to talk about my apartment and my things.”
“I’ll make sure I get in touch with the service we talked about today.”
She inhales and lets it out. “Yes. That’s—yes, okay.” She cuts her gaze.
I catch her chin. “What is it?”
“I’m excited about our new life, I am. It’s just—it’s daunting to realize that everything that was mine when I left is gone. It’s like I spent years of my life building nothing.”
“We can sell this place. We can pick out a place that you want, that feels like ours, not mine.”
“No. Eric, I love this apartment. It’s stunning.”
“I want you to feel like it’s yours.”
“It will in time. This has all just been a whirlwind. A crazy whirlwind. I’m starting over. And I need to start over. This is the right decision and a happy one, but I can’t revel in that until this storm has passed. I feel like the happiness is hiding in the clouds, just out of our reach. And a tornado is waiting to erupt and just destroy everything.”
“Hiding in the clouds, within our reach.” All the sudden, numbers blast through my mind and I count out the digits in that first message, before my lips quirk. “You’re brilliant, baby.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You are.” I kiss her and open the door to find Blake waiting. “I know what the first message means.”
Chapter one hundred
Eric
The answer was right in front of me the entire time, and my mind was too damn muddled with Kingston nonsense to see what was right in front of me.
At this point, Blake and Harper are standing in front of me with expectant gazes. “It’s a birth certificate number from Chicago, Illinois,” I say and text Blake the way that number breaks down. “I just sent you the exact certificate number.”
“And you know this how?” he asks.
“How I know is simply how my brain works,” I say. “Harper said something completely unrelated, and I went there. There is no other way to explain to you how I came to that conclusion, but I did. That’s a birth certificate from Chicago, Illinois.”
Blake stares at me as if I’ve grown three heads, but Harper—Harper just accepts what I’ve said and moves on. “Who was born in Chicago?” she asks. “Not you, right? And I’ve heard Isaac talk about being born in Denver.”
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” I say, draping my arm around her shoulder. “Now Blake gets to do his magic and find out.”
She twists in my arms to look at me. “Is there another sibling?” she asks again. “Have you ever gotten the idea that’s possible?”
“Never,” I say, “but they tried to bury me. My mother didn’t let that happen. They could easily have succeeded with someone else.”
“What if—what if that sibling is the one coming after you or both of you?” she continues. “Or he bribed Isaac? I could keep going. There are so many possibilities.”
“All of which I’ll be discussing with Isaac,” I assure her. “But there are other possibilities. Mob connections. The secrets Gigi might know but didn’t feel safe sharing don’t have to be as direct as another sibling.”
“You really believe this is Gigi?” Blake says. “She’s sending the messages?”
“She told Harper that I inherited my mind from her. She very specifically told her that.”
“And maybe she wanted me to repeat it?” Harper asks.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s what was throwing me off with the message until now. I was looking at it with normal logic. But it wasn’t written by someone who thinks like everyone else. It was written by someone who thinks like me.”
Harper reaches for her purse and grabs her phone. “And if you got your genius from her, that means her. I have to reach Gigi.”
“Her phone is dead,” Blake says. “And it’s not pinging at all.”
“Damn it,” Harper grumbles, and I slide my arm around her again. “Let’s get to the hospital and let Blake work.”
“Yes,” Blake says. “Let me work. I’m damn eager to dig into this and figure out what the fuck this is we’re dealing with.”
“I’ll grab my bag,” Harper says, darting away.
A few minutes later, Harper and I are standing beside the SUV we’re going to travel in with Savage and Blake. “I can get the name that’s attached to that birth certificate quickly,” Blake says, “if it’s not sealed like Isaac’s. Assuming I do, I’ll text you the name in case it helps you with Isaac.” He eyes Savage. “Don’t let him kill Isaac.”