Page 49 of The Truth Between

“Take my phone,” she said. “I’ll get another one, and I’ll text this number. I hope that we can get you out of here quickly. Given how old this house is, there might be some public records that indicate whether there are other exits that will help make this even easier so that you don’t have to… I don’t know… walk out the front door.”

I held the device in my hand as if it were a foreign object, something I’d never seen before. This was now my lifeline.

Just then, I heard a noise and thought it was Soren and Parker returning. Aria immediately tensed up while I froze, unsure of what to do. I should have expected that this would happen, but my body still didn’t know how to act.

“You need to get out of here before they come back,” she said.

I nodded quickly and moved toward the staircase that would take me upstairs. Each step that I took caused my heart to pound, and I could only pray that Soren didn’t realize what I’d done.

When I finally reached the guest room, I stopped for a moment and glanced over my shoulder to look down the hall. Seeing nothing, I quickly slipped into the room and closed the door behind me.

30

SOREN

Igestured for Parker to enter my office and closed the door behind us. His showing up without contacting me first had me on edge, and I wasn’t in the happiest mood about the intrusion. Plus, he’d interrupted the time I was trying to spend with Iris.

“You were messier this time around. Made it more difficult to clean up everything,” Parker said as he took the chair across from my desk.

I sat down in my chair and stared right at him.

“I did what I wanted to do, and he deserved every second of what I put him through.”

“I’m not judging how you killed him.”

“It sounded as if you were,” I replied.

For a moment, Parker just stared at me, probably wondering where this conversation was going. I was wondering the same thing.

“This wasn’t the reason why I stopped by.”

Finally, we were getting to the reason. “Aria needed to stop by her dorm to get something, so we were already in the area and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to stop by for a couple of minutes before I took her home. We need to talk about Iris.”

I folded my arms across my chest, trying to maintain my composure. “Okay.”

“Is everything going fine with her still?”

“Yes. She’s still tied up in the basement.”

Parker nodded. “Excellent. I need you to deliver Iris to me by the end of the week.”

It took everything in me to not launch myself over my desk and attack him. The fact that he came to this decision without mentioning a word to me pissed me off, not to mention what he was requesting me to do.

He must have noticed my silence because he continued on, “She needs to pay for what she’s done. Trying to find out information about us and rock the foundation of our organization. We can’t allow this to get out and we’ve killed people for less.”

I kept my mouth shut, trying to think of a way to protect Iris. There was no way I was going to let him harm a hair on her head, the Chevaliers be damned.

I thought about all the ways I could keep her safe. Options like taking her far away from here, hiding her in a secret location, or maybe even faking her death were on the table. However, none of them seemed like they would work long term. If Parker found out I lied, he wouldn’t stop until both Iris and I were dead and buried.

Shit.

Instead of focusing my attention on why Parker was doing what he was doing, I shifted tactics. I wanted to appear to be ambivalent to his next moves, to hopefully remove any suspicions that he might have in regard to me and my relationship with her.

“What are you planning on doing to her? And what do you need me to do?”

Parker leaned back in the chair and grinned. “Torture is definitely on the table.”

My blood boiled. There was no way I was going to just roll over and let this happen. But I needed to keep my cards close to my chest. While I wanted to open up a negotiation with Parker to save her, letting him in on my feelings for her would be detrimental.

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