Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(59)

He turns and walks back up to his oil truck, gets inside, and drives off. It snorts diesel exhaust as it rolls away into the distance. I turn back to Eve.

“Yeah,” she says, reading the sign into the phone. “Hurry. I know, I’m sorry.”

She hangs up, and huffs.

“My assistant is coming.”

“Good. Just pray a cop doesn’t roll up. I’m not supposed to be here. A parole violation would ruin my day.”

“Oh. Great.”

I shrug.

Half an hour later, we’re sitting on the Firebird’s bumper and her assistant rolls up in a f*cking Plymouth Voyager, I shit you not. At this point, I don’t care. It could be a goddamn Volkswagen Beetle, as long as I can get out of here. Eve makes arrangements for a tow.

I look back at my car. My Dad’s car.

Now it’s personal, motherf*cker.

I crawl into the back of the van. Eve gets in with me, instead of riding up front, and settles against me, her arm around mine.

“Hey now,” her assistant says.

Eve snorts. “Alicia, this is Victor.”

“Hello,” she says, peering at me in the mirror. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“It’s all lies.”

She smirks. “I hope not. Guess I have to ride you all back up home, huh?”

“Yeah,” Eve yawns.

“I want pancakes.”

They both glare at me.

“What happened?” Alicia asks.

“Somebody punctured the master cylinder on my car. They wanted to catch me off guard. Make it look like the brakes failed.”

“You’re sure somebody did that on purpose?”

I nod. “Had to be. It’s a one in a million shot to…” I trail off.

“Victor?” Eve says, rising as I sit up next to her. She waits, biting her lip.

“My father died in a car accident,” I say, calmly. “His brakes failed and a milk truck from a dairy farm up the road hit him at an intersection.”

The whole car is quiet for a while.

“Victor,” Eve says, very softly. “Did I ever tell you what happened to my mother?”

“No. I never asked. I didn’t want to… I thought it would be painful.”

Eve stares at nothing and murmurs, “A car accident.”

I lean forward, fold my hands in my lap, and stare down at the floor. Fury burns in my lungs like hot smoke. I scrub my hands through my hair.

“I need access to Amsel’s personnel files. You can do that, Eve.”

“Yes. I just need a computer.”

She chews her lip. She always does that when she’s thinking, or upset. It’s cute. I pull her close to me and she starts shaking. She was in that trough between the adrenaline release and the crash, and now it’s hitting her hard. She squeezes me back, her eyes shockingly wide. Her assistant keeps eyeing me in the rear view mirror.

“Are we going back to the house? I’d like to go home today. I haven’t seen my family in over twenty-four hours.”

“We might be in a lot of trouble,” I say, calmly. “I think we should stay away from the estate.”

“Come with me, then,” she says, without missing a beat.

I shrug. Eve doesn’t protest.

Her eyes close, and she sleeps on my shoulder. She didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s for sure. After a rush like that, it’s natural to crash out. It hits me, too. After a few minutes of violent shaking as that I almost died realization settles in, I start nodding off along with her. The next time I open my eyes, Eve is still asleep, it’s mid afternoon and we’re caught in traffic. In the suburbs. This Alicia must live a ways away from the estate, closer to the city. I’ve never been overly fond of this place. It’s got all the crowding and congestion and stale air of the city and exactly none of the personality. It feels like a ten minute drive takes about two hours, and then we’re pulling into a driveway in front of a cookie cutter house in a newly minted subdivsion that wasn’t here when I went away.

Eve stirs, holds my hand as we step out and stretch. Her assistant leads us inside.

Then the kids show up. They must be four and five, a boy and girl, tending towards chubby like their mother.

“These are my kids,” Alicia says, hesitantly. “Hunter and Ashley.”

The kids seem fascinated by Eve. They crowd around her.

“Are you mom’s boss?” the boy asks.

“Um,” Eve says, visibly nervous. Kids always rattled her nerves. “Yes.”

“Shoo, kids, mommy has work to do.” She turns to us. “I have a home office. We can access the personnel files from there.”

The home office turns out to be an unused third bedroom, half packed with school supplies and kid desks. Eve locks us in and Alicia sits down to bring up the corporate VPN, and switches seats so Eve could log in. I stand behind her as she waits for it to connect.

“What are we looking for?”

“Pull up your father’s personnel file.”

It takes her a minute to find it.

Of course, it’s blank. No commendations, no write ups, no notes, no evaluations, nothing. Fortunately that’s not what I’m looking for.

“Nothing here,” Eve notes.

“Everything is here,” I say, pointing to the screen with my finger. “Look. He came on board when I was…” I do some quick math in my head. “Nine.”