Page 68 of Ruthless Touch

I slowly lower my gun and nod a silent thank you to him. He’s right. I shouldn’t be focusing on how much I hate having my brother involved in this problem. I need to focus on the men who deserve my rage tonight.

“All right. I’m fine. You’re right. Tonight, I need to keep my eye on the target.”

Alaric gives me a tiny smile and nudges my arm. Out of everyone in my family, he understands what it’s like to be the second son to a father who can’t seem to see anything but the first son.

“Good. Now that we’ve cleared that up, who’s getting killed tonight?” my father asks as he comes around my desk.

“Marcello Angeloni and his man Franco. They’re the ones who got a hold of her.”

My brother, still needing to feel like he hasn’t lost his ability to enrage me, leans against the wall and asks, “How did they get her anyway? I thought you had her tethered to that penthouse of yours upstairs. Did she sneak off away from her captor, Gideon?”

I turn to bark at my brother to shut the fuck up, but my father surprisingly beats me to it. “Enough, Alex! If you don’t fucking stop busting your brother’s balls, next time I’m going to let him follow through when he pulls his gun!”

Stunned, I glance over at Alaric to see he’s shocked at my father’s outburst at his favorite too. When I turn to see how my brother is taking this rare pushback, I see he looks like he swallowed something disgusting.

“Now Gideon, can she tell us anything that can help us know if it’s just Angeloni and this Franco person we need to take out? I think it would be a good idea to talk to Aria before we start,” my father says as he makes his way toward the door.

I want to say she’s resting, but part of me wants to see her and make sure she’s okay. By the time the four of us get up to the penthouse, I’ve decided we aren’t all going to walk into my bedroom and loom over her with our questions.

Before I open the front door, I turn to the three other men and say, “I’ll go in alone. She doesn’t need to feel like she’s being interrogated.”

“No, I’m going in with you, Gideon,” my father says.

Jesus, everything is a battle with him and my brother. Instead of fighting him, I simply nod. Nevermind the fact that he’s never actually had a conversation with Aria. I’m sure meeting him for the first time while she’s laid up in bed recovering from being beaten up is exactly what she’s going to want tonight.

Sasha meets us at the door and gives me a quick run-down on how things have been up here. “She’s feeling a little better. I think the pills are helping, but she only slept for a little while.”

Pulling me off to the side, she looks around me and then asks, “What the hell are they all doing here? Now doesn’t feel like the right time to have Aria meet your father, Gideon.”

“As if anyone wants that,” I say, rolling my eyes. “We just need to ask her a few questions. Keep my brother busy out here and don’t let him touch anything.”

With a devilish smile, she says, “And if he happens to walk out onto the terrace, casually push him off the side?”

The simple thought of that makes me smile. “You wouldn’t get an argument from me if that happened. My father might lose his mind, but I’m fine with it.”

Aria is sitting up when we walk in, closing the door behind us. I walk over to the side of the bed and sit down next to her, taking her hand in mine as I can barely look at her with all those bruises on her face.

“We need to ask you a few questions, okay?” I say softly, forcing a smile so she isn’t frightened.

She looks at me like she doesn’t understand, and as much as I want to explain to her why I acted the way I did before, that will have to wait.

“Okay. What about?” she asks me, her eyes big and filled with uncertainty.

“We need to know who did this to you.”

Aria immediately turns away from me and stares down at her hands in her lap. When she doesn’t say anything, I touch her arm to get her to look at me. But she won’t.

“It’s okay. We just need to know the names. If you know who they were, I need you to tell us.”

My father takes a step toward the bed and sits down on the edge. In a voice I’ve never heard him use with anyone but my sister, he softly says, “I know. This is hard, and you don’t even know me. I’m Gideon’s father, Helix. I wish we could have met in better circumstances, but we have to work with what we get. We can’t let whoever did this to you get away with this, Aria. Any attack on someone we love is an attack on all Rules, so if you can tell us who hurt you, we’ll get them back for what they did.”

She lifts her head and looks at him before turning to face me. Her eyes full of tears, she says, “It was Franco and Marcello. They grabbed me off the street. They wanted to know things about you. I didn’t tell them anything. I swear, Gideon. I don’t know if there was anyone other than them there when they did it, but the two of them are the ones who beat me up.”

I lift her hand to my lips and kiss it tenderly to silently thank her. “You did great, Aria. Now rest and I’ll be back soon.”

My father stands from the bed and smiles at her. “Don’t worry. We don’t let anyone hurt our women. We’ll find those two and take care of them.”

When he leaves, Aria holds my hand tightly to keep me there with her. “Gideon, I want to believe I’m yours, but why didn’t you say anything before? You made me feel like you didn’t care.”

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