Page 45 of No Longer Safe

“Are you okay?” I whispered even though I knew the answer already. Something happened and I desperately needed to know what it was.

“No.” She closed the door softly and as much as I wanted to fight her and push the door back open, I didn’t. I stumbled away from her room and stared at nothing.

“What do you mean ‘he’s gone’?” Carina’s voice came from the stairs and I strained my ears to listen. Ace didn’t say anything as he came into view. His face was stoic but his eyes were murderous. Somethinghadhappened.

“What’s going on?” My voice boomed across the space between us.

Ace locked down the emotions shining in his eyes and Carina gaped at me before she snapped her mouth closed. “Nothing.”

“It’s something,” I stormed across the hall and stopped before my brother. “What happened?”

There was this bad, sick feeling filling up my stomach. I didn’t want to know but I desperately did. I needed to know. Ace stopped his fiancé by putting his hands on both of her shoulders. He leaned forward to plant a peck on her cheek and steered her to Audrey’s room. “Your friend needs you right now. If she doesn’t fill you in, I will later.” She tucked her chin but I could see the defiance swirling in her blue eyes. This wasn’t over.

Silence wrapped around us as my brother led me down the hall and up another pair of stairs. I knew where we were going and I didn’t like it. “Where’s Brian?”

“Brian is on a flight back home,” Ace said through clenched teeth as if he wanted anything but.

“Why?”

“He got a little handsy with Audrey last night.”

Rage filled my vision. “Excuse me?”

Ace pushed the door to the security room open and swept his hand out for me to enter first. There was a wall full of TVs showing real time footage around the estate. My mother had this place locked down tighter than most high-profile places. Father once laughed that she had more surveillance than the White House. The only places she didn’t have cameras hidden were in our bedrooms.

The camera showing our hallway was not in real-time. It was paused on a scene from the night before, right before we came up to change into our suits to go swimming. Audrey was hidden in the shadows of Brian’s doorway. I leaned closer to the monitor to barely see his fingers pinching her cheeks.

“What is this and how did you know to find it?” My brother was one-of-a-kind in many aspects, it was why he was the heir to all of this. It was why our father trusted him with the family business and literally everything else. He knew what to look for and handled it efficiently. My blood roared in my ears as I considered pressing play. I was afraid to. Not because I was afraid of what I would see. No, I was afraid of what I would do.

I tucked my bottom lip between my teeth and turned away from all the monitors. I could watch it later.

“When we were coming up last night, I noticed her standing in the doorway crying. She practically ran to her room.”

I remembered through my drunken haze of memories. Ace told me to leave her alone and let her get some rest. I didn’t think anything of it besides the fact that she and Carina spent the whole day by the pool and it made sense for her to be tired.

“I came up here,” He waved his hand toward all the glowing screens. “To play it back to make sure he hadn’t hurt her. Her face looked really red and honestly, I’ve never seen Audrey cry. She gets angry. She gets even but I have never seen her as upset as she was last night.”

“What did you see?” My body vibrated with an intensity I’d never felt before. He sat down in the wing-backed chair that our mother often frequented and went to press play. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He raised his brows at me and stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll have to kill the fucker.”

“It took everything in me to get him on asafeflight home.”

“Play it.”

When it was over fury like no other coursed through my veins. I saw red. I could hardly stand. He hit her. He fucking hit her. I didn’t know what I wanted to do more, march up to Audrey’s room and worship her in a way she’d never had before, or chase after the son of a bitch and kill him.

When I was finally able to speak, my words came out a lot calmer than I felt. “He’s hit her before.” That pussy ass bitch. He was going to pay for this.

“No,” Ace leaned back in our mother’s chair and shook his head. “He hasn’t.”

“How can you be so sure?” I raged. I needed to get out of this little room. I needed to do something.Anything. I needed blood and retribution. He was going to pay with every finger that touched her. He was going to know fear and pain. I was going to inflict it. I wasn’t usually one to get my hands dirty, but this time I was going to revel in it.

“He told me after he pissed himself when I barged into his room to pack all of his belongings this morning while he was half asleep.”

“That’s why he’s still alive?” I managed to get out between my clenched teeth.

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