The Revenge (The Insiders Trilogy #3)(74)

If I was going to risk everything, I had to know it was worth it.

He sobered and dipped his head down before lifting those eyes again. “Not hurting others. That’s my main goal.”

That told me nothing.

I had to remember.

He was not my twin.

He was a guy. A stranger.

I shook my head. “I already have a brother, you know.”

He saw it, and his Adam’s apple moved up and down. A light that started to shine in his eyes diminished, and even though his hands were still cuffed to the table, he was able to lean back. He put distance between us with that motion.

“I know. Matt Francis. Chrissy told me about him.” He paused, his gaze darting to the mirror behind me. “She told me about Bailey, too.”

Everything went flat in me. “Don’t say her name.”

He shut that down real quick. A nod. His eyelids clasped closed a second. “Yeah. Okay.”

I knew I should keep the real questions to a minimum, and this next one was as real as they were going to come. But did it really matter? The authorities knew about him. They knew about Calhoun. They knew about me. Not much was still secret, so I had to ask, because it’d been bothering me since he first broke into Bailey’s sanctuary.

“Were you the payment?”

He drew in a ragged breath, his own nostrils flaring.

I leaned forward. “Did he allow our mother her freedom because she gave you up? Or did he kill her because he found that she’d hidden one of us from him?”

Fury lit up his entire face.

He jerked forward. His throat contorted.

His features twisted, sharpening.

One brief second before he caught himself. He forced himself to relax. Then he lounged back. He swallowed. His shoulders loosened.

He rolled his neck, back in control.

And he smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

I waited.

Nothing.

I frowned. That was it? That was his comeback?

My frown deepened, and feeling some of my monster railing inside of me, I leaned farther over the table and showed him my teeth. “That’s all you have? No smart retort? No jab? No insult?” Were his social skills less developed? “I don’t know what your life was like, but I have to ask: Do you know what mine is like?”

He blinked, and I got him.

There was a sense of wonder there .

I leaned back again. Victoria said he was supposed to study me. She said that’s what he had been doing, what Calhoun thought he had been doing.

If he had, he would come back with something. Anything. Even an old insult that Matt might’ve used. A little quip. But I was getting nada from him.

He hadn’t been studying me.

“What were you doing?”

His eyebrows flew back up.

He saw it. He knew I had him, but he didn’t cover it up. He didn’t slam a wall down. Instead, he let me see him, and then he said, “I won’t.” His head lowered closer to the table, closer to me. “Not here.”

Oh yeah.

We were doing the twin thing, already.

I got his message loud and clear.

I nodded, standing up from the table.

I left that room knowing one thing: I needed to break him out of FBI custody.

Bright and Wilson were waiting for me in the hallway. Both were not happy.

“What the fuck were you two talking about?”

Wilson was glowering. “I’ve seen videos of twin babies talking to each other. They make no sense to anyone. A bunch of gibberish, babbling, but each of them knows exactly what the other is saying. I swear, I saw the adult version in there.”

Yeah. Maybe. Thinking back on our conversation, I’d think the same thing.

“He doesn’t know anything.”

“Bullshit.”

Yeah. Bullshit on me. I was lying through my teeth.

I exhaled. “It’s true.”

Bright raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know that?”

I glanced at Wilson. “Guess it’s a twin thing. ”

Bright cursed, reeling backward and walking a few feet away. Her hands were in her hair. She grabbed a handful, bent over, and let out a yell. Letting go, she strode back to me. “I swear, if you are lying to us, if you are lying to the government, we will swoop in. We will hurt you and you’ll never recover.”

My chest tightened up.

She read my face. Her tone grew quieter, more lethal. “You don’t get it, Colello. We won’t come after you. We’ll come after her. She’s the one who hacked everything. She’s the one who found them. We can prove it, and that’s what we’ll do. We’ll take away your little girlfriend, and we’ll never let her near you again.”

Wilson grunted. “You know what kind of place this is. We have these places as prisons, too. Public doesn’t know about them. Public doesn’t have the right to know about them.”

“That’s where we’ll stick your girlfriend. So once again, what does he know?”

I stared at each of them, knowing I had to make a choice.

Fuck.





FORTY-EIGHT

Bailey


I was curled in a ball, sitting in the chair in the entryway, and I knew they were coming back.

Kash called. He had her.

He had her!