“I know what he’s doing,” I said. “He’s going to kill Ilya Muratti.”

twenty-five

I found him in the weapons vault tossing boxes of ammo into a duffel that already held two pistols and a revolver.

“Are you planning to take out his entire staff?” I asked softly. “Or just the man himself?”

He didn’t turn, but I saw his shoulders stiffen.

“Dammit, Cole, you can’t do this.”

“The hell I can’t.” He ground the words out, raw and rough and so filled with pain they seemed to drip like blood. “It’s the only goddamn thing I can do.”

“No.” I took a step toward him, then another. When I was standing right behind him, I pressed my hand gently to his back.

I’d expected him to flinch away from my touch, and when he didn’t, I closed my eyes, the motion like the physical manifestation of a sigh of relief. Maybe I haven’t lost him yet.

“Please,” I said. “Turn around and look at me.”

At first I thought he would ignore me, but then he turned slowly, his eyes finding mine. They were cold and determined, dangerous and wild.

I shook my head. “You can’t.”

“You saw the photos?” His words were clipped, harsh. They were full of anger, but it seemed directed more at himself than at Muratti. “Saw the fucking hell I shoved you into?”

“You? You think this is somehow your fault? Dammit, Cole, this isn’t your fault any more than what happened to Bree was on your shoulders. It’s nobody’s fault except Muratti’s and the prick photographer who trespassed on my property.

“And,” I added, because I was on a roll, “if you think I did anything with you that I didn’t consent to one hundred and twenty percent—that I didn’t enjoy at least twice that much—then you are a fucking idiot.”

Some of the tension left his body then, and he sagged back to lean against the table on which the duffel bag lay.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“Don’t go to Atlantic City,” I said, then tossed the envelope onto the table before handing him the stone. He took it, and as he did our fingers brushed. As always, I felt that shock of connection. More important, I saw in his eyes that he felt it, too. “Don’t kill him, Cole. Not even for me.”

He ran his hands over his head, then drew in a long breath. He had changed out of the tux he’d worn to the wedding and now wore jeans and a simple gray T-shirt that accentuated the muscles in his arms and chest. Even without a gun, he was deadly. With one, he was unstoppable.

I intended to stop him anyway.

“Talk to me, dammit,” I said. I wanted to shake him. To slap him. I wanted to kick some sense into him. But the moment was charged—hell, he was charged—and every ounce of reason in me told me that I needed to talk him down. That raging against a man who could so easily give in to rage would be like pouring gasoline on a flame.

After a moment, he held out the small green stone, his thumb rubbing it in slow, even strokes. “Jahn gave me this,” he said, without preamble and without looking at me. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“He left each of us a letter and a gift. More of a token, really. Something personal. Something that held some meaning for him.”

“Why was the stone important to him?” I asked.

Now Cole turned his head and looked at me directly. “He bought it on his honeymoon,” Cole said. “His first honeymoon,” he added wryly. “His wife said he fretted too much. That he needed something to absorb the stress.”

“But that’s not the whole story.” I’d known Howard Jahn. The man had about a million layers. And if he was giving a worry stone as a legacy, there had to be a deeper purpose.

“He knew me better than anyone,” Cole said. “Anyone except you,” he added, and something that had been cold and shriveled inside me began to bloom and grow. “He knew about my temper. About the crack my mother smoked. About the way I could snap. He knew about the gangs, and he knew what I’d done. More, he knew what I was capable of doing. And he believed that I could hold it all in. That I could control my temper rather than have my temper control me.”

“Smart man, Howard Jahn,” I said. “I knew there was a reason I always liked him.”

I saw the flicker of amusement in his eyes. Just a hint of an instant, but it gave me another thread of hope to grasp.

“He told me that one day I would find a woman who fit me. Who soothed me. Who’d help me cling to control. I’d find her one day, Jahn said,” Cole continued. “But he gave me the worry stone to use until then.”

He’d turned away as he spoke, looking vaguely at the wall of weapons—pistols and shotguns, Tasers, and who knows what else. But even though he wasn’t touching me or looking at me, I knew that he was talking about me—that I was the woman Jahn had promised. And that simple knowledge filled me with a bittersweet joy.

That, however, wasn’t the end.

“Go on,” I whispered. “Tell me the rest.”

He turned to me, and his face was no longer closed off. I saw love. I saw adoration. And—god help me—I saw pain.

“You do that for me, Kat. I love you—god, how I love you. But it’s more than that. You’ve done more than slip into my life. Hell, you’ve clicked into place. You fit me perfectly.”

I clutched his hand, tears spilling out of my eyes because there was no way that I could hold so much emotion inside.

“You make me feel whole,” he said, his voice cracking with an emotion I couldn’t identify. “And all I’ve done is fuck it up for you.”

Something dark and cold wrapped around me, then squeezed tight, making me work for each breath. “No,” I whispered. I knew he was thinking of those awful photos. “God no. You didn’t fuck anything up. And even if you had, killing Ilya Muratti isn’t going to change a thing.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It will.”

“Bullshit. The only thing that will change is that your juvie record will be unsealed.”

“Goddammit, Kat. You don’t have a clue.”

“Because you’re not telling me.” I had to hold myself back to keep from shouting, I was so damned frustrated. “What do you know that I don’t? How the hell did Muratti even get those pictures?”

“Because I fucked up. Because my brilliant plan to keep you and your father safe took a fucking nosedive.”

I shook my head, not understanding.

“Muratti cut through the layers of paper and corporations,” Cole said. He pressed a finger to his temple and rubbed, as if fighting a massive headache. “I was right that he wouldn’t push back against Stark—I was even right that when he found out about me it would deflect attention from your dad. But he pushed harder. Went further. And somehow in checking on me he found out about you. And along the way, the son of a bitch realized that you’re Maury Rhodes’s daughter.”

The words knocked me back like a blow to the chest. “No,” I said lamely. “How?”

“On paper, it looks like you came out of nowhere, Kat. That’s hard to trace, sure. But it’s also suspicious. And a man like Muratti has both curiosity and resources. He can find what needs to be found.”