Page 117 of Bad Little Bride

My mind continues to pose question after question, so at first, I don’t notice we’ve already reached our room until we are stepping into our private space. Enzo lowers me to my feet, the scent of fresh lavender and eucalyptus wafting through the room.

Just as the bathtub comes into view, Grandma appears, dipping her head with a smile and silently continuing past, the soft click of the door indicating her exit.

The spa-size tub is steaming, fresh petals floating along the top, jets bubbling along the edges, and when Enzo’s fingers wrap around the silk of my gown, I eagerly help shrug it off, not waiting for his extended hand but stepping up and into the bath with excitement.

I wince, the water near scalding, but it only stings for a second, and then I’m submerged to my shoulders, not bothering to pull my hair up, but rather letting it float in the water around me.

“I’m grabbing some snacks from the bar for now and I’ll ask Fredrick to send up some lunch for when we get out.”

I nod, closing my eyes and settling my head back on the cushion sweeping over the side. Enzo is back as quickly as he left, the water sloshing slightly as he joins me, but I’m far too relaxed to look up at him.

He shifts around slightly, and then something cold presses at my lips.

“Open up, baby.” His husky tone washes over me, and I shiver, doing as he says without caring to know why.

I bite into the soft offering, the sweet tang of fresh berries exploding across my tongue. “Raspberry?” I guess.

“Yes. Now, open those eyes. You eat, I talk.”

My eyes fly open on command, and I happily take the small bowl of fruit that magically appears in the minibar fridge each morning—knowing what I do now, I would bet it was Enzo’s doing, even if only by request.

Enzo stares at me, waiting until I’ve eaten three berries, and he hands me a fourth before speaking.

“A few years ago, when my businesses, both the legal and underground operations, peaked beyond understanding, I was hired by a man well-known to our world to track down a woman no one else could seem to find. She disappeared ten years prior without a trace from her home in the middle of the night, and there was not a single piece of evidence that anyone could find to figure out how it happened or where she had gone. The property cameras were hacked and set on loop, but the most telling part was how not a single camera in the entire town recorded a second of footage for a four-hour period that night.”

“How is that possible?”

“If you’d have asked me then, I would have said it wasn’t, even if ten years ago the security systems weren’t a fraction of what they are now. Now I know better after seeing what a good tech guy can do with a few clicks. Someone managed to take out the entire city’s surveillance that night, giving them just enough time to get the woman off the grounds, out of town, and the people who helped her escape back to where they came from.”

“And you know who that person was?”

“I suspect.” He frowns, opening his mouth and accepting the blueberry I drop onto his tongue. “That’s for another time, though. So, this woman that no one could find, I found. I tracked her down to Costa Rica in half the time I was contracted for. I let the man who hired me know I had found her, and the next thing I knew, I was ambushed.”

“By the woman?”

“By the man who paid me to find her.”

My brows pull in confusion, and I tip my head. “I don’t understand.”

“The man who hired me did so because he heard my team was like no other that came before us. We had a one hundred percent success rate, in both businesses, and if no one could penetrate our security measures, that in turn meant we knew exactly what to look for and how to identify other people’s, so he knew we were as good as we claimed to be.”

I run his words through my mind, slower and reading between the lines, factoring in the ambush that was already waiting and the timing in which they attacked. “Oh my god.” It hits me. “He didn’t hire you hoping you would find her, he hired you to make sure shecouldn’tbe found…because he was the one who was hiding her all along.”

“Exactly.” Enzo dips his chin. “Too bad for his men, I had twice as many at every position and they never made it within five feet of me. The moment the final body hit the dirt, the woman stepped out of the house with a gun to her head and pulled the trigger before we could say a word.”

“What? Why?” I fold my legs under me, the water sloshing around us. “Why didn’t she want to be found?”

Enzo pointedly looks to the bowl of fruit, and I flick my eyes to the ceiling, tossing two berries into my mouth, rolling my wrist to keep him going.

His lips twitch briefly and he continues. “Because she was the mistress of the man who hid her…and when he sent her away, he sent her with his legitimate child, born of him and his wife.”

“Katana.”

“Yes. His one and only heir.”

“That doesn’t make sense, why would he hide his daughter away from her mother, and with his mistress, no less?”

“Because her mother never would have allowed him to sell her off as the ultimate power play.”

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