Page 52 of Bound By Blood and Lies

A very small number of people knew about tonight. I stare at the men who have been with me every step of the way through this process.

“Don’t you dare fucking look at us like that,” Riggs snaps and his voice cracks through the room like a whip.

“Do you fucking blame me?” I fire back. “Why is it every single time we get a lead it falls on its arse?”

“Roman…” Felix says sharply, with a clear warning in his voice.

“Fuck that!” Riggs explodes. He takes a step forward towards me as anger burns across his face. “If you think for one fucking second that I don’t want to find Fae and Robyn, then you’re fucked in the head.”

He taps his temple aggressively as he speaks and his chest rises and falls hard before he shakes his head.

“They are like sisters to me, goddamn it. And if you’ve somehow forgotten, my last sister got fucking murdered by these monsters!”

The words land like a punch straight to the gut. He’s right. I know he’s right. Riggs would never betray us. Fuck, none of them would. And if they did, they couldn’t hide it from me.

“Fuck,” I mutter, dragging a hand hard across my face.

This doesn’t make sense.

“Who knew?” Felix demands.

“Everyone in this room,” I respond.

“And your dad,” Riggs spits.

“And that makes about as much sense as what I just accused you of,” I snap back.

“Why?” Riggs shoots back immediately. “Makes a hell of a lot more sense to me.”

I shake my head as frustration grinds through my chest. “Why would he give someone to us who pushed us in the direction of Ackworth and then warn him we were coming?”

Riggs goes quiet as the logic settles in. The room falls into an uneasy silence. Atlas pulls out his phone. The quiet tap of his fingers against the screen becomes the only sound in the room.

“Phones,” he says, as he moves to sit on the bed.

One by one, we pull our mobiles out and hand them over. I don’t need to ask what he’s doing. Atlas has been paranoid about digital surveillance since the first week we moved in together. He moves through them methodically, checking something on each device before setting it aside. Every time he finishes one, his face tightens slightly and his shoulders rise a fraction like he’s bracing for something.

“Well?” Victor finally asks, and Atlas looks up.

“Nothing,” he mutters, and his expression turns faintly apologetic as his eyes flick toward me.

“Where were you when I called?” I turn back to Felix.

“I was driving to Fae’s,” he says, cracking his neck.

“And you?”

“All three of us were in the underground,” Riggs answers.

My gaze snaps toward Atlas. Every mission we’ve planned has started there. Every time we thought we were being careful and private, we’ve been sitting down there talking, drinking, laughing like no one could ever hear us.

But what if someone did?

“We need to check if it’s bugged,” Atlas says, and I nod immediately.

“Okay, let’s circle out here. Check every room, take anything electronic and meet back at the underground.”

Felix’s order breaks the tension in the room and we move, falling back into the familiar rhythm of a search. Doors open, drawers are checked, cupboards are pulled apart as we spread through the house in different directions. Footsteps echo across the marble halls and up the staircases as the quiet order of the place begins to unravel under our hands. Every room we enter looks the same. Tidy, controlled and stripped of anything that might tell us where Ackworth has gone. Laptops, old phones, anything electronic gets collected and passed along as we move; the growing pile of evidence proves just how quickly a house can turn from a home into a crime scene.