Page 11 of Broken Empire
I love you – S
I read the message over and over, mind whirling. Every time my eyes landed on the very last line, my stomach twisted with a mixture of doubt and panic.
I love you.
Whoever sent the message obviously thought Shay and I were officially together, as that’s what it had looked like to the outside world for the last few weeks. Only Shay and I knew the truth about our budding relationship, and only we knew that we’d never told each other that we loved each other. I felt it—of course I fucking did—but I’d never found the right moment to say it out loud. Not with all the crazy shit that had been going on.
There was just no way Shay wrote and sent that message to me. Someone else did. Someone who wanted me to believe that Shay had left me high and dry.
That fact, combined with the two phone-hacking texts that had obviously been sent to separate us, made another fact crystallize in my mind.
Something terrible had happened.
4
Killian
I gulpeddown my double espresso and rubbed my forehead, trying my best to concentrate on the Notes app on my phone. I’d been sitting in a late-night coffee shop for the last hour, writing down ideas on people who might have a vendetta against Shay so I could figure out who’d taken her away from me tonight.
It wasn’t going well.
The most obvious suspects were members of the Vandenberg and Riordan families. By now they’d all know that she was free and living her best life after escaping their grasp, and they’d probably also suspect—courtesy of their lawyers—that someone she was close with was more than likely responsible for their downfallandCooper’s sudden death. They were all in prison awaiting trials for various crimes, though, so none of them could’ve done anything to Shay tonight.
I knew they could’ve arranged for some of their old foot-soldiers to do the dirty work for them, but the more I thought about it, the more that didn’t make sense. Any men or women who worked for either one of the crime syndicates would’ve abandoned them and moved onto greener pastures by now, because there was no one from either family who could pay them anymore. So even if Ari Vandenberg or Glenn Riordan contacted them from prison and demanded they do a job for them, it was unlikely that any of them would accept.
Even if theydidaccept the job, it still didn’t make sense that it could be one of them. Whoever manipulated me and Shay this evening with the fake texts was obviously someone close to us. Close enough to know about Cori’s art show invitation and close enough to know that Connor was always getting into stupid situations with girls. Close enough to gain access to their phones and imitate them as well. Shay never had any reason to suspect that the text with the change of address didn’t come from Cori, because it sounded exactly like her, and the text I received from the fake Connor seemed just like him as well.
But who could it be? Who could possibly want us apart? More to the point, who did we know who would have a reason or desire to harm Shay?
I tapped my fingertip on the phone screen, heart thudding as I mulled over the endless questions. Perhaps it wasn’t actually a matter of closeness, but more of a matter of access. If someone was able to hack Cori and Connor’s phones, they’d be able to see all their past conversations with me and Shay. Then they’d be able to figure out how to emulate their mannerisms and speech patterns, and they could use that to craft reasons to separate us for the evening. They’d obviously seen the art show as the perfect opportunity.
That meant two things.
One, they’d been planning this for a while. It wasn’t just a last-minute thing to fuck with us.
Two, the person—or people—responsible had access to the most elite hacking services in the country. Connor’s phone and both of his computers were swept for bugs daily, seeing as he was working in a high-level position at a Knight network, so whoever hacked and cloned his phone was insanely good at their job.
The Vandenbergs and Riordans were powerful—or at least they used to be—but they weren’tthatpowerful. The sort of service that could hack into rich, well-connected people’s phones would have to be government-owned. That meant the person responsible for fucking with me and Shay tonight had access to high-level government stuff.
My chest tightened as the truth dawned on me.
It had to be the Schöneberg Group.
They were the world’s most exclusive society, and their ranks were rumored to include high-level government employees along with multitudes of other extremely powerful people. I’d only seen the members of the Manhattan chapter so far, including my own family members, but that was enough for me to know how wealthy and influential the organization was.
They would definitely have access to elite phone-hacking services, and that instantly shot them to number one on my suspect list.
But why would they want to take Shay from me?
The most obvious answer was that they’d found out we’d been looking into them. I had no idea how they could’ve figured it out, though. We were both careful to hide our faces from any security cameras when we walked through the halls of that secret floor at Kingsford Tower, even when we were running to the elevator to stop ourselves from being seen by the late-night cleaner in the conference room. We hadn’t left any other traces of ourselves behind, either.
Also, if the Schöneberg Group had figured out we were looking into them… why would they only snatch Shay and leave me alone? Was it just because of my status as a Knight and the fact that I was on their upcoming tap list? Did that automatically grant me immunity? Or was there some other reason they’d decided to take Shay tonight?
Whatever the case, I had to figure out where they’d taken her and get her the hell away from them as soon as humanly possible. By now, I was ninety-nine-percent sure that the organization made my mother disappear twenty-one years ago, and I refused to allow history to repeat itself.
I stood and reached into my jacket for my wallet so I could leave a tip for the coffee. As I fished it out, my hand brushed against something flat and familiar, and my pulse quickened.
Shit.With all of tonight’s chaos, I’d completely forgotten about the envelope I found on my windshield earlier tonight.
