Page 94 of The San Marco Heist

“Exactly.” I slipped in front of him before he got too far and could see the mess in the bedroom. Why did I care? It’s not as if he’d told me two years ago he wasn’t dead. But he’d also kidnapped my brother at gunpoint and had either beaten him or watched while someone else did. This wasn’t the same Noah I’d intended to share my life with. “So I’ll—”

“Scarlett?” called Malcolm.

Noah cocked his head. “Not a good time, eh?”

“I told you, I’ll see you on the island.” I pointed to the door. “Now please leave.”

“Who was that?” Noah tossed the flowers onto the low table between the chairs I’d considered smashing earlier. A lifetime of emotions ago.

“None of your business.”

“Scarlett, were you planning on—” Malcolm’s voice cut off as he appeared from the bedroom, covered in nothing but a towel.

“Malcolm Sharpe.” Noah’s gaze slid past me and a smirk tickled at his lips. “Making yourself comfortable, I see.”

“Scarlett, do you need me to—”

I put up a hand before Malcolm could say anything else. For all I knew, Noah had thrown down the flowers so he had more freedom to grab a gun hidden on his person somewhere. “We’re fine. He came to talk.”

Malcolm sounded as calm as Noah did, but underneath it all, he was likely ready for a fight. “I thought that was why you were going to meet him on the island tonight?”

My eyes remained on Noah, and I kept my body between them. I could practically feel the testosterone surging between the two of them. “Noah, I’ll see you at eleven. We can talk then.”

Noah raised a finger and pointed it over my shoulder. He growled, “I paid you to bring her here, not to fuck her.”

What?

Malcolm was working for Noah? Iwasjust a job?

Chapter 37

Malcolm

“Yousonofabitch!” I strode toward Noah, rounding Scarlett.

Noah’s finger remained raised as he matched my pace, moving backward toward the door. “You and I will have words, Malcolm Sharpe.”

“Screw you, Noah.”

“Don’t forget,” he said over my shoulder to Scarlett, “eleven o’clock. Center of the island.”

I slammed the door behind him and did the safety latch. A thousand plans on what to say to Scarlett flew through my brain, too fast to grab. Would she believe him? What would happen next?

“He… he paid you?” The pain in her few words ate at me. We’d come so far in such a short time, and Noah was trying to undo that.

I spun to face her and saw tears again. “Are they a tool right now?”

She wiped the back of her hand across her face. “How dare you. How dare you accuse me of something like that after… After I find out I was nothing more than your mark.”

Oh shit. I hurried to her, intending to grab her arms and hold her close, but she backed away. “You don’t seriously believe him, do you?”

“Why shouldn’t I? We had questions about you right from the beginning. Why take my brother and spare you? Why send you to convince us and take the Codex back to them? The obvious answer is that you were working with them. You were the inside man.”

I took a step closer and grabbed her hands. How was I going to make this better? Tell her the truth? Keep hiding? “I did work for him, to get the Codex.”

She yanked her hands away.

“I didn’t know it was him. I just knew it was some voice on the other end of an earpiece that I recognized when we grabbed Emmett.”

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