Chapter Sixteen
Kodee
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WE LEFT THE GIRL SITTING on the couch, thumbing through my hardback books, her pretty face screwed up in concentration.
Together, the three of us headed into the room we had designated purely for work. The door was always locked, even while we were all in the apartment. It was a security thing, just in case someone else came in and wandered into the room by mistake, perhaps looking for the bathroom. Of course, we never had anyone other than us in here—except for our current situation—but it wasn’t worth taking the risk.
Keeping the door locked wasn’t only about not wanting anyone to find out what we were doing in here. As I stepped into the room, I surveyed the expensive computers and cutting edge-printing equipment. If the wrong person learned about what was in here and decided it was worth stealing, they could sell everything on for a large sum, if they knew the right people.
“We can’t keep her, you know,” I told the others as we settled into our workstations. I knew what was on the minds of each man here. “She’s not some stray animal that’s wandered in off the street.”
Ryan’s lips thinned. “Who said anything about wanting to keep her? Sooner she’s gone, the sooner everything can go back to normal.”
Dillon snorted. “Normal? What’s normal about any of us?”
“You know what I mean,” Ryan replied with a scowl.
“Is that what you want, too?” I asked Dillon. “For things to go back to normal?”
He shrugged. “I just wished I’d listened to you both in the first place and not gone to the Capello brothers.”
“You still haven’t told us what you wanted that money for,” I said.
“No, and I’m not gonna tell you, either.”
But I didn’t miss the way his gaze flicked over to Ryan. I frowned internally. Did Ryan know about his reasons? I didn’t think so. But I did know Dillon well enough to understand that he was a stubborn son of a bitch and, if he didn’t want to tell us his reasons for needing the money, then he wouldn’t.
“I do feel like shit about all of this, though,” Dillon said suddenly, surprising me.
“You do?”
“Yeah.” He gestured toward the door. The room was soundproofed, so we didn’t need to worry about Rue overhearing our conversation. “Are we actually going to hand her over to the Capello brothers when the time comes?”
We looked between each other, jaws locked, lips thinned. Unease twisted in my guts.
Dillon nodded down at the blank passports on the table in front of him. “It’s not as though we’re not capable of providing her with the means to get the hell out of the city—out of the country, even. We could give her some money and tell her to get started someplace else. She could get thousands of miles from here and be fine. They’re not going to bother looking for one girl. I don’t know what she knows, but surely nothing is going to be that important.”
I shook my head. “No. We can’t put all our lives at risk for a girl we’ve only known twenty-four hours. We need to do what the Capello brothers want and forget all about this. We don’t know for sure that they’ll do anything to hurt her. She might give them what she needs, and they’ll leave it at that.”