Page 89 of Knocked Up by my Best Friend's Brothers

“They can’t prove we did anything,” Vince laughs. “Hell, right now, I’m told they’re freaking out, trying to figure out where you are. And Alexandra is right there by their side, comfortingthem.”

“She’ll be on the security cameras,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “You think you’re the only one with a hacker on your payroll?”

My blood runs cold. “What are you talking about?”

I didn’t use my own credentials to swipe in last night. I used multiple keycards. But even so, if the Hawthornes check the security footage, they might pick me up from at least a couple of angles. I was careful, but I wasn’t hiding from them specifically. What Vince is insinuating, however, is downright terrifying.

“Oh, we know all about your buddy Spike,” he says, then grabs my purse from the side table and takes out my phone. “Alexandra planted a little spyware thingy in your phone during that brunch date with Teagan.”

“No.”

“We knew what you were trying to do.”

“Teagan—" I’m about to get up and lunge at him, fury taking over and blinding me altogether, but he straightens his back and raises an arm to keep me at bay.

“Take one step and I will knock you on your ass, you self-righteous bitch,” Vince snarls. “Sit the fuck down. No one’s touching the Hawthorne girl. We’re not stupid. You and Spike, however, are fair game.”

“What did you do to Spike?” I ask with a trembling voice, the horror drowning my rage as I sit back down on the edge of the bed. The helplessness is overwhelming as I realize they knew what we were planning. They knew about the software and thelaunch we did last night. My brain is rapidly firing signals back and forth as I try to prepare for every possible scenario.

“I did a lot of things to Spike,” Vince grumbles, gazing out the window. It’s cloudy and gray, a perfect metaphor given my current situation. There’s a storm coming. I can almost smell it. “But I will give you this one thing… Your friends are loyal. Too loyal for their own good.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand. You just need to know that you made it so much worse for yourself the minute you decided to hit us with your cyber-hacking bullshit,” he snaps.

“What happened to Spike?” I ask again.

He gives me a hard look. “I think you should worry more about yourself. When Alexandra returns, she’ll want to take her sweet time with you.”

“You’re fucking monsters.”

I try to keep my tears from flowing, but I still feel them rolling down my cheeks as I understand the depth of their atrocities. I’m starting to regret getting him to open up like this. I’m learning things I might’ve been better off not knowing.

“We are. And you should’ve just kept your head down. You should’ve just died with the rest of them,” Vince says. “Because now, I have not only to clean up after you, but I also have to destroy everyone and everything you love.”

“Wait, you said you weren’t going to hurt the Hawthornes,” I reply as he is about to walk out the door. “You said you weren’t going to touch Teagan!”

He smiles, one foot in the hallway. “She’s going to suffer, but she’s going to live so she can pick up the pieces. Your boyfriends, however, are a different story. For their audacity to come into my office and threaten me, I’ll make sure I’m the last face they see before they die. And I’ll make sure they know what I will do to you once they’re gone.”

“No!” I cry out, but it’s too late.

The door shuts. The key turns in the lock.

And I’m left to my own despair once again, with no way out. I cradle my belly and pray to all the gods that we survive what’s coming.

29

Nathan

“Icannot believe you played along with Christa’s plan,” Cassius concludes once a teary-eyed Teagan tells us about the events of last night.

We’re still in River’s office. Still scrambling to find Christa. At least we now have new information to work with, more than twelve hours since we last saw her.

“It made sense. It makes sense, even now,” Teagan insists. “I got home last night, and I left my phone on silent and crashed. Cass, I had no idea she’d gone missing. I texted her to let her know I was okay, and that was that. I figured we’d catch up this morning.”

“Instead, she’s gone,” River scoffs.

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