Page 38 of High Stakes

“Wait, wait, wait,” Silas says, and holds up his hands. “They were with you on the mission? Since when are you working with them?”

“No.” I clench my teeth and take a deep breath. The thought of a betrayal still makes my insides boil. “They were in the room with the Irish.”

Silas blinks owlishly at me, stunned silent for once in his life. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Correct,” I push off the wall I was leaning against, and begin to pace the length of the garage. “We didn’t have the room bugged, so we have no clue what they were discussing.”

“Does Emelia know?” Silas asks quietly.

I shake my head once. “I don’t know. I assume not because they won’t need to tell the record keeper things that they keep strictly off the records.”

A loud, metallic clang pulls my attention over to Hayden, who is trying to do God knows what with the tailpipe of hismotorcycle. “Sorry,” he mutters and beats it back into place with the wrench in his hand.

Each ring of metal against metal makes my eye twitch and the anger inside me rise to the surface. “Hit it one more time, Hayden, and I’ll cave your skull in with that wrench.”

Silas chuckles and pushes slowly to his feet, only wincing with the first step. “What about Hector?”

Hayden stands as well and drops his tools back into the box against the wall. “We could tell after nearly losing her that he was attached, more than any security detail should be. I told him that if she wanted it, we would share. We are nice, respectable men after all.”

Silas raises a brow and gives Hayden a look. “Share her or him?”

Now it’s my turn to raise a brow. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the snark from bubbling out. Silas doesn’t back down though. He stares at Hayden in silence, patiently waiting for a response.

Hayden sighs and shoves his hands into his pocket, fishing out the serrated blade he always keeps there. His lethal fidget spinner, he likes to call it. “That was just a bonus,” he finally admits and looks at Silas. His eyes are dark and serious. “If she wants it, she gets it. I left it up to her and made no comment about it. What they did between them must have sealed the deal to lead to the other night.”

Silas shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “What are we going to do about the Irish?”

“Well, we aren’t going to be taking any orders from them. That job was void the moment they blew the engine out of that plane,” Hayden snaps quietly.

I nod my head in agreement. “We need to do some more digging into Tobias and O’leary. I want to know what they’re up to behind closed doors.”

“That, I can do,” Silas says with a smile. “I’ll take a look into that tonight after my date with Emelia.”

Hayden flexes his shoulders and meets my eyes. Fuck. He isn’t going to let this go.

I watch as Hayden twirls the knife between his fingers, momentarily mesmerized by the fluidity of his motion. “There’s something else.” I clear my throat as Silas looks over at me. Hayden stares a hole directly through me as I square my shoulders. “Do you remember the hotel heist we did?”

“The one where the fucking crazies blew up the entire building? Yeah, I remember that. I doubt I’ll ever forget that shit show. Why?” Silas asks warily as he takes in my serious expression.

“That was Emelia’s family hotel.”

“Holy shit. Does that mean…?” his voice trails off.

“Her parents died in that fire and she knows that we were involved. I cleared the air and she knows that we had no part in the explosions.”

Hayden pockets the blade and steps forward. “Tell him the rest of it, Declan.”

Silas takes one look at the scowl on Hayden’s face and then turns back to me in confusion. “What did you do?”

“That job wasn’t an anonymous one,” I say carefully, trying to figure out how to put it into words without sounding harsh. “I took a payout from some very powerful people to get us started.”

“What he means,” Hayden says, his voice low and dangerous, “is that despite our protests and feelings, he went with someone he knew we would not agree with and then kept it from us.”

Silas closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “You went through the fucking cartel for money.” He says it like a statement, not a question.

I nod silently and wait for the yelling, but it never comes.

Silas opens his eyes and there’s a slight smirk turning up the corner of his mouth. “I already knew that. Declan, dude, I’m a hacker. I know every fucking porn site you’ve ever subscribed to.”

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