Page 161 of Dukes of Peril

My eyes fly to Remy’s, widening in realization. “Leverage.”

“Huh?”

“Leverage,” I repeat, grabbing Remy’s upper arms. She had to have left it for me. She must have known if anything happened to her, I’d find that box. “That’s it. Remy, she gave me her leverage.”

Sy rubs his face–partiallyto wake up, the rest out of frustration. “Is there a reason you didn’t tell us about all this when you found out?” The question is directed at me and Nick. Remy is on the other side of the clock room, video chatting with a sleepy and irritated Tristan Mercer.

“Yes,” Nick says. He’s alert, but his face is still puffy from sleep, a long line from the pillow pressed into his cheek. He looks at me because we both know the answer to Sy’s question. We’d come home from talking to Tristian that night fully planning to tell Remy and Sy. Instead, we found a party at the tower, and the night ended with Sy hurting me and leaving. Nick sighs. “But that ship has sailed, and is sort of irrelevant to the fact our house has been wired to blow.”

“Yep.” Tristian’s voice echoes against the walls. “That’s a bomb, alright.”

“Jesus,” Sy mutters, coming more awake by the moment.

Tristian continues, “It’s like we talked about last time–remote detonation. I mean, we’ve all heard the rumors that Lucia has this place wired up. We all figured he planted them underground, but it’s kind of genius. Guy’s got us crawling through the sewers when we should be checking our roofs.”

Nick moves toward Remy, grabbing the phone, face set into a hard expression. “Remote detonation? Like the kind someone could set off with a phone?”

Groggily, Tristian says, “Yeah, possibly.”

I gave you what you need.

My mouth goes dry, face growing clammy, and from the laser intensity of Nick’s meaningful stare, he’s coming to the same conclusion.

He asks Tristian, “You remember that phone Leticia Lucia asked you to rig up for her? Could it have been used for something like this?”

Tristian sighs, aware that his fuckup from all those years ago is still wreaking havoc. “I don’t see why not.” When he shifts, the phone moves, revealing what looks like Dimitri Rathbone’s bare ass behind him. “Keep us posted on this. If you need help, you’ve got it.”

“Not sure how much you can do, but thanks,” Nick says, hanging up. He tosses the phone back to Remy and runs his hands through his hair. Sy paces the room, while I try to process everything.

“So you have the passcode to this phone,” Sy says, putting the pieces together. “And from what Mercer told you, he programmed it so that she could detonate specific locations as needed.”

“Yep,” Nick says. “Leticia Lucia was hardcore.”

“No wonder Tate fell for her,” Remy says, eyes fixed to the phone’s dark screen.

“But to what end?” Sy asks, always trying to pull on all the threads. The motive. The reason. Thewhy.

“For leverage,” I say, forcing the words through the lump in my throat. “This isn’t Leticia’s bomb, you guys. It’s my father’s. To get away from him–to live her life freely with Tate–she had to find a way to use his own weapon against him.”

Because she understood this game better than I did. To gain her freedom, true freedom, she’d have to be willing to take our dad’s life. Or at the very least, make him think she would.

It’s the exact thing he’s done to me.

“Smart,” Remy says, drawing me from my thoughts. “Fucking psycho dads, Forsyth’s biggest export.” He looks at the guys. “Promise me we won’t be like that.”

Nick glances at me, eyes on my belly, then up to my face. “If we knew what Leticia did with that phone detonator, I’d feel a lot better.” He approaches me, blue eyes boring into mine as he cups my cheeks in his big, warm palms. “Think, LB. You sure you don’t know where she might have stashed it? That floorboard beneath her bed… it didn’t have anything else in there?”

Shaking my head, I wrack my brain. “There wasn’t anything else down there, and let’s be real, Nick. She would have kept something that important–that dangerous–as close as possible. If she had it on her when she fell from the cliff, then it probably–” My lungs snatch the words back into my throat, eyes snapping up.

The Barons would have gotten it.

Nick’s eyes meet mine, but I’m already springing into action, zipping across the room.

“What–” Sy asks, but I don’t stop.

“This whole fucking time,” I mutter. Nick’s hand reaches over my head, shoving open the door. Just as urgently as I’m moving, he dashes past me, jumping down the five steps of the loft in one leap. He waits for me at the bottom with outstretched arms, grabbing my hips and lifting me down.

“Son of a bitch,” Sy yells, Archie darting out between his feet. “Please don’t tell me you have more secrets you didn’t share.”

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