Page 47 of Silent Betrayal

“That’s right,” I say with a smile. “We’re all yours today.”

“Woo hoo, weekend!” Max cheers, throwing his fist in the air.

“Good, because I think it’s time you all tell me the truth.” Her words make everyone pause, forks hovering mid-air as we all turn to face her.

“I’m not upset with you guys. I kept secrets before, too. I know you’ve been worried about my recovery. But I’m healed now.” Her eyes flick to Dom and Atlas, and a blush spreads across her cheeks. “So, I think it’s time.”

“Okay, Sweetheart, I’ll tell you, then I get a reward,” Max teases with a smirk.

“No!” The rest of us chorus at the same time, making her laugh and him scowl.

“You can’t bargain away something weallneed to tell her for time with her,” I say with a shake of my head.

Dom leans forward, his voice steady as he speaks. “We’ll tell you now. Like you said, we weren’t exactly hiding it, but we needed you to recoverfirst. Some of it involves you, and I needed to know you were in a good state of mind before we brought it up.”

She nods, encouraging him to go on.

“The seven of us run a private investigating business,” he says, revealing one of our biggest secrets to her as we all watch closely for her reaction. Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. She clearly didn’t expect that.

“The twins are actually twenty-two. They’re undercover. Gideon and Tucker are undercover too; those aren’t their real jobs.”

Somehow, her eyes grow even wider. I place my hand over hers and give it a reassuring squeeze. She turns her palm to hold mine, and I slide our joined hands onto my thigh under the table, silently showing her my support.

“Twenty-two?” she looks between the twins with a shocked expression.

“Upset you aren’t robbing the cradle anymore?” Max asks, and Jasper whacks him on the shoulder with a scowl.

“Uhh… no.” She lets out a small laugh. “So you thought I was seventeen while I thought you were eighteen?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I guess the truth works out better for us anyway,” she says with a shrug, making the twins smile.

Dom picks up where he left off. “I come from a family of cops, so it was expected I would take the same route. But when I was in training, I quickly learned that being an officer came with too many rules and regulations, and I like to have control of my life. So a PI seemed like the best choice. There was a team hiring, and I joined them. But I messed upmy first case, focusing my attention in the wrong direction. After that, they didn’t want to work with me.” He pauses to take a sip of his coffee.

“The team I was with didn’t want to work with me after that, so I decided to go at it on my own. I did that, a bit unsuccessfully, for a couple years until I was twenty-three. That’s when I met Atlas in a bar one night, and somehow we started talking.”

Atlas continues the story next. “I was a bit lost at the time, having just left the army, and was looking for a new path. So when Dom told me he was a PI and asked if I’d be interested in joining him, I thought it was something I could help with. I had plenty of useful skills from my military years, and it seemed like it would be nice to be in control for once. We could decide what cases to take and what hours to work.”

“Since we got along so well, and money was tight, we decided to live together. Although it was really just moving from one short-term rental to another,” Dom tells her.

“Or hotel rooms, in some cases,” Atlas adds.

“We met Tucker about six months later when we were on assignment. He was working for another PI who was trying to steal the case from us. When we realized Tuck hated his boss, we poached him.”

“Best decision I ever made!” I say with a smile, remembering the exact day they’re talking about.

“It was probably another four months after that when we realized we were in desperate need of a tech specialist,” Dom tells her.

“Ben?” Mina asks, looking at him.

“Yep. They posted online, saying they needed someone for their team, so I applied. One day later, we met, and they offered me the job on the spot,” Ben says with a smile.

“And two months later we met Gideon.” Mina’s gaze turns to him, clearly eager to hear how he joined our rag-tag group.

“Yes, well… I moved here from England in my early twenties. I… needed to get away from my parents. They weren’t bad people, but they are typical British parents, keeping their emotions close to the chest all the time, expecting me to do the same. Not allowing me to step out of line or do anything that wasn’t in their plan for me. I couldn’t handle the restraints anymore, so, one day, I packed up and left.

“I had a bit of money that I’d saved away, so I was able to rent a room for a few months while I tried to figure out what to do. One of my roommates was obsessed with this Sherlock Holmes television show. After a few weeks of watching it with him every night, I grew intrigued by the idea of problem solving crimes. As Dom said, not like a police detective. I wanted to be able to choose what cases I worked on. I also had no interest in making the arrests, I just want to solve the puzzle.

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