Page 91 of Amber Gambler

“I’m failing you.” His gaze roved my face. “I don’t have the answers to protect you.”

“Hey.” I cupped his cheek, allowing my fingertips to touch his dark hair. “This isn’t your fault.”

“I’ve spent so much time forgetting, I can’t remember anything with clarity until the moment I saw you.”

“You’re good at the whole flattering thing.”

“You woke me up, Frankie, when I had been asleep for so long.”

“Again with the flattery.” I chuckled to hide my pounding heart. “You’re going to make me blush.”

“You’re mocking me.”

“No.” I cradled his face between my palms to hold him steady when he would have glanced away. “I’m mocking myself.” I ran my thumb over his bottom lip. “I don’t know how I ended up here, with the Viduus.The Viduus.It blows my mind that a legend come to life looked at me and saw, I don’t know. Anything worthwhile. I’m just me. Frankie. No one important.”

“You’reyou.” He nipped the pad of my thumb, and heat stirred in my belly. “That’s more than enough.”

A faint knock on the door dumped ice water over my head. I expected Matty. What I got was Carter.

“Am I interrupting?” She swallowed a wicked laugh. “I can come back in five.”

A wrinkle creased his brow as he withdrew, but I wasn’t about to explain the jibe at his stamina.

“You didn’t have to come all the way out here.” I read unease in the set of her mouth. “You could have called.”

“I wanted to do this in person.” She slid a yellow bag off her shoulder that blended with the jacket of her pantsuit. “You need to see this.” She removed a laptop from what turned out to be a backpack, one with charging plugs built in for the electronics it was meant to hold. “Are you sure you want Kierce present?”

A prickle of concern stung me between the shoulders. “Should he not be?”

“Nothing personal,” she told him, booting up the laptop. “There’s footage of a sensitive nature.”

That she would spare my siblings and me humiliation bumped her even higher in my esteem.

“I understand.” He rose with one last glance at me. “I’ll wait in the hall so I don’t disturb Josie.”

After he shut the door, Carter joined me on the bed, dropping her computer onto my lap.

“How bad is it?” I wasn’t sure I could stomach what I was about to see. “Who else knows?”

“Just watch.”

Had the frame not been shot above a table in the restaurant—full of people—I would have balked at her rough handling of the situation. Then I almost balked again. This time because the person of interest had not been my sister, but they were caught in a compromising position, nonetheless.

Armie and Lyle sat on opposite sides of a booth. Probably planning my murder. That wasn’t the surprise.

No.

That was Harrow, who sat beside his uncle, nodding along to whatever Armie had been saying.

Ready to tear a strip off his hide, to demand answers, I realized I was wrong yet again.

The shocker wasn’t Harrow. Or Lyle. Or their clandestine meeting with Armie.

It was their waitress.

Audrey Collins.

“What the actual fuck?” I tasted metal when I swallowed. “Audrey Collins worked for Armie?”

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