Page 66 of The Bad Wedding Date

Charlotte looked out to sea again. “Good,” she whispered.

I couldn’t look away from her, both in surprise and awe. I’d just told her I intended on killing someone her and her family had known for a long time, and she supported the idea. She believed me without a single doubt flickering across her beautiful face. Charlotte held so much strength within her, it was a shame she couldn’t see it for herself.

21

Charlotte

“What now?” I asked Fraser as we walked side by side down the beach, taking in the calm before the storm.

“We think of a Plan B.”

His hands were tucked in the pockets of his jeans, making his biceps pop, but I could only do so much ogling of his tattoos and strength when the constant wave of anxiety kept rolling through my stomach. I’d become an integral part of something I hadn’t even known existed a day earlier. Maybe two things, if you included this weird connection that I felt to the man beside me.

“Any idea when that might present itself? I have work tonight.”

He looked down at me, lines forming between his brows. “Tonight?”

“Yes, and I have to be there, Fraser. Someone swapped my shift with me yesterday so I could attend the wedding. I can’t let them or the residents down.”

When he didn’t answer, I realised he’d had other plans in mind.

“You expect me to quit work now?”

“I don’t expect anything from you. I just thought—”

“That I was going to stop living my life because of Matteo? That’s not going to happen.” I laughed. “Think about it. He isn’t going to come after the Grants’ daughter, is he? Especially not when we’re now attached by law to his godson. If he’s so much of a snake and a coward, won’t it make sense for him to just leave and go back to where he came from? He’s not likely to take you on again after you nearly killed him.”

“Hewon’t.” Fraser turned to face me, forcing us both to a stop on the sand. “But his men might.”

“You really believe that?”

“I’m the person they’ve been trying to track for ten years. I’m the reason Matteo left England. I’m the reason he’s wasted six figures and more on private investigators and underground mobsters who think they’re smarter than me. There isn’t anyone he hasn’t used to try and track me down. If he’d known he was standing next to the man who’d taunted him for so long yesterday, it might have killed him there and then.”

“Why have they been tracking you for so long?” I scowled.

“It started years ago when the guys and I first decided we were going after him. Wade, Dean, Joey, and Ray… they love my mum like their own. That’s how it is when you grow up how we did, everyone looking out for everyone else’s kids. Matteo’s abuse of power hurt them almost as much as me, so we sent photographs of him here and there, letting him know he was always being watched. We sent letters, threats, anonymous videos. We called his phone at the weirdest times of the day; told him he didn’t have long left until he was exposed. We wanted him to live in fear—for paranoia to become his best friend. We knew he couldn’t take the threats to anyone without exposing himself. We always made sure to mention his assaults in anything we sent to him.”

“You were the ones who made him run away.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “That wasn’t my intention. I needed him close by to finish things. Not long after he’d gone, I heard through the grapevine that someone I knew of was working for Matteo, trying to track down who had been behind the threats.”

“Do you think he had any idea it was you before last night?”

“Not until he woke up with my hands around his throat.”

“That’ll do it.” I glanced at the ocean. “This is so surreal.” I looked back at him. “I’ve not even known you for a full twenty-four hours, and here I am with you, wearing someone else’s clothes, with my whole world turning upside down.”

“You’d be amazed by what can happen in a single day.”

“Not my days.”

“Nothing stays the same forever, Charlotte. Someone was always going to come along and change the way you looked at things. That person just happens to be me.”

“Could be worse, I suppose,” I said.

“How?”

“It could have been Tristan.”

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