Love and Let Die (Masters and Mercenaries #5)(78)

“I don’t know this.” Her arms crossed stubbornly. “I only know that you’re going to get us killed. Why are you doing this? Can’t you see it’s not worth our lives? It’s not worth our business.”

There was part of the problem. “It wasn’t supposed to be a business, Chelsea. It was supposed to be a way to stay alive. It was supposed to be protection, but you’re in too deep. You’ve gone places that could cost us more than our lives.”

“I did it for us. Information is power. We decided it a long time ago. If we couldn’t get out of this world, then we had to rule it. I figured out how to do that, Charlotte. We needed power to be safe.”

“We were never safe.” Except she’d felt that way last night. Even this morning, she’d felt safe walking away from a problem and leaving it in Ian’s hands.

“We were a hell of a lot safer than we are now. Now we have nothing and it’s all because you can’t keep it in your pants.”

She stared at her sister. When had she become the bad guy? She’d given up Ian for Chelsea. She’d done her duty.

“That’s the way you talk to your sister?” Simon said, frowning Chelsea’s way. “That’s the way you talk to the sister who sacrificed for you?”

“Stay out of it, Weston,” Chelsea shot back. “You don’t know anything.”

Simon wasn’t giving in. “I know enough to see a spoiled brat in front of me. I thought at first that you were just scared and on the run and that you probably needed someone to protect you, but that’s not your story at all.”

Chelsea sighed. “No, that’s not my story. I’m a powerful woman.”

“No, you’re a f*cking scared little brat who’s willing to ship the only person who ever loved you out to a torture chamber if it means keeping your precious power. I’ve known men like you. They’re cold inside. They’re dead. Something disconnects and they can’t form bonds anymore so they treat the people around them like chess pieces, and they don’t tend to cry when their pawns die. They just find more.”

Chelsea flushed, her fists coming down on the table. “My sister is not a chess piece.”

“You’re treating her like one,” Simon said. “You hide behind her. You let her take the rap for the things you do and you don’t tell her everything, do you? Because you’re smarter than she is. You know better. She’s just a woman, but you’re something more. No one can touch you. Not really. You let whoever gave you those scars win. You let him turn you into a monster.”

Her sister slapped Simon right across his handsome face, but the Brit didn’t move an inch. “Go away. I am not telling you again.”

“And I’m not leaving you alone. I think I kind of like your sister and I owe my boss the world, so I’ll protect his woman when he can’t. Tell her the truth. Tell her about your connections to Nelson. You didn’t stop talking to him, did you?”

Betrayal bit through Charlie as Chelsea went stark white.

And said nothing.

Simon smiled, but it was a humorless thing. “It made sense. Once I started looking into The Broker, I knew it was you and not Charlotte. Charlotte did stupid shit like stopping terrorist plots and giving a million dollars to animal shelters. That was what you wanted her to think the ‘business’ was about.”

“The f*cking poodles weren’t going to protect us,” Chelsea bit back.

“So you contacted Nelson because he knew the business and you wanted in. Tell me, did you contact him as Charlotte?”

“Chelsea?” She waited for her sister to tell her it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t have been working with Nelson.

A long moment passed. “He didn’t want to talk to me. He always had a thing for Charlotte. She never saw it. If she hadn’t fallen for that Neanderthal, Nelson would have protected us. He had power.”

“What have you done?” At least she knew what kind of evidence Ian would find on her.

Chelsea stepped back. “I was just asking questions. Charlotte, I think he’s bigger than he seems. I think he’s connected to some very important people. I’ve started to see patterns that don’t make sense to me, and they come back to him. If I could get something on him, if I could make him work for us again, we could maybe figure out what’s happening and then we would be in such power.”

Her sister had gotten in far deeper than Charlie had ever imagined and she’d dragged her along. Everything she’d sacrificed was meaningless because her sister had just ensured she could never be redeemed in Ian’s eyes. And she’d placed them in a situation where Charlie couldn’t start a new life.

“You’re a lot like your father,” Simon said.

Chelsea stopped, her body going still. “I am nothing like him.”

“You ruined your sister’s life over power and money. I would say you inherited a lot from him. Did you think about taking over the syndicate yourself?”

“I am nothing like him.” Chelsea said it in an almost disbelieving voice. She turned and walked away.

And Simon stayed.

“I thought you were watching over her.” Charlie wanted to be alone, to let the hollowness sink in. Ian was lost. He would believe what he wanted to believe. He would believe whatever would allow him to go back into his comfortable shell and never come out again. Chelsea was lost, too. Charlie had done it to her. This was her fault. She should have insisted that her sister go to school, but she’d been so alone.