Page 60 of Guarding her Gangster Girl

Brie

I slamthe car door shut when I get out at the Solara house, and I’m grateful for the cool night air whispering across my skin, carrying with it the scent of desert sand. I’m so relieved to be back here.

I’m so relieved to bealive.

Nik was the only thing that kept me from completely losing it back there. Her warmth, her strength…

She’s become such an important part of my life in so short a time.

And now Nik is the first to put herself in potential danger once more. She unlocks the door with the key she takes from me, and then she makes Holden and me wait there in the foyer while she does a sweep of the house.

I haven’t said a word to Holden the whole drive over, and he hasn’t spoken to me, either. But he does now. “Brie…what the hell is going on?” he asks, his voice trembling.

“Someone set me up. I guess maybe when they couldn’t kill me via a hit-for-hire, they tried to get the Family to do it for them instead.” I feel a pang of guilt for dragging Holden into this mess. But there’s no time for coddling him.

Besides, Nik has returned, her face calm. “We’re alone.”

And then we stand there, the three of us, looking at each other. The silence stretches until I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt, despite the fact that…

“I’m innocent,” I say, my voice sounding small.

Nik reaches out to put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “We know.”

“Yeah,” Holden says quickly. “Of course you’re innocent. Someone must have set you up, like you said.”

“That’s exactly what must have happened,” Nik says, but she’s still looking at me so intently that I wonder what she’s thinking.

But then she lets me go and turns to Holden. “Please tell me you took the footage with you.”

For the first time, he grins. “Of course I did.” He holds up a flash drive, tapping it against his temple. “I also stored all the different filter passes I made on the original file online. I can keep working on it, right from where I left off. In fact, if Frank hadn’t jumped to conclusions, I’m pretty sure I would have found another layer under that picture of Brie.”

I grab Holden’s arm and drag him toward the home security office. “You need to get on it, right now. Therehasto be something we missed.”

The security office is a testament to Terry’s paranoia. Multiple screens line one wall, connected to a state-of-the-art computer system that would make most tech companies green with envy. As Holden boots the security footage up, I can’t help but think of Terry. He might have been a bastard in many ways, but he knew how to prepare for the worst.

“Holden, you need to work your magic,” I say, gesturing to the main screen where the damning security footage is now cued up. “Therehasto be something you can do to prove I wasn’t there that night.”

Holden slides into the chair and gets to work. Nik leaves us there with a promise to keep the door locked, saying only that she’ll be right back. “So,” Holden says, oh-so-casually, after the door closes behind her. “You and the bodyguard. When exactly did that start?” I give a surprised, awkward laugh, and he shoots me a smile. “I’m happy for you,” he tells me. “We all deserve love.”

“Whoa,” I say, startled. “Let’s not, uh. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ve only known her a few days.” It onlyfeelslike forever.

“I knew it was love the second I met Terry,” he counters, his eyes misting over for a moment. He sniffs, blinks, and smiles again. “And I can see the way she looks at you, Brie, and the way you look at her. Maybe you’re not ready to admit it yet—but you’re on the way. I’m glad for both of you.”

I’m saved from having to reply by Nik’s return, and can only hope she doesn’t ask why I’ve turned bright pink since she left.

“I’ve added some booby traps to the external doors,” she says. “But we should stay alert. The Colombo goons might not bethe sharpest, but the Syndicate have enough resources that they might be able to track us down.”

I nod, feeling a rush of gratitude toward her. “Thank you,” I say softly, meeting her eyes. For a moment, I see a flicker of something that makes my heart skip before her professional mask slips back into place. In this world of money and power, I think I’ve found something uniquely precious in Nik. And I can’t help thinking about what Holden said. The way she looks at me…

Nik clears her throat and moves to stand behind Holden. “So what have we got?”

“I was breaking it down frame by frame when Frank interrupted me back at the casino,” Holden mutters, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “And now I want to go deeper. If there’s anything hinky about this footage, I’ll find it.”

We watch in tense silence as Holden works, the image on the screen flickering as he isolates different sections of the video. My stomach churns as I watch my reflection appear in the glass of the picture frame again, and then Holden keeps layering and filtering, bringing in more and more detail.

It’s surreal, seeing this doppelgänger wearing my face, wearing my clothes. If I didn’t know for sure that I was at the Secret Garden that night, I might even be questioning my own innocence.

Is this how easily a life can be destroyed? With a few minutes of cleverly edited video?

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