CHAPTER 2 - EMMY
PROBABLY I SHOULD have made more of an effort to rein in Bradley, but I didn’t have the energy. The last week had left me drained. Not only the brush with death—although nearly following a lunatic off the roof of a high-rise was the closest I’d come to carking it so far this year—or even the dull ache from a broken nose, but part of my past coming back to haunt me.
And not just any old part.
Alaric.
We’d been together once, only for it to end in disaster when ten million bucks’ worth of cash and diamonds had vanished from his custody. At the time, I’d been his fiercest defender. I’d put my job and my reputation on the line for Alaric fucking McLain, only for him to disappear as well. And I mean disappear. Poof. Gone. Believe me, I’d looked, and he’d given me nothing—not so much as a postcard—for almost a year. I thought he was dead. Hell, I’d even picked out an outfit to wear to his funeral.
Had I been in love? No, but I’d cared for him a great deal. His moonlight flit hurt.
Boy, did it hurt.
But deep down, I understood why he’d done it. The need to run from pain—mental pain, not physical—was ingrained in both of us, and I’d pulled a similar stunt myself a few years ago before I came to my senses.
What I didn’t understand was why he hadn’t told me about his daughter.
His fifteen-year-old daughter, a girl whose existence I’d only found out about by accident on Sunday. From Bethany, of all people, a woman he’d known for less than a week. Why had he trusted her with that knowledge but not me?
The question had eaten away at me for the whole flight back, and I was still no closer to an answer. Nor had I dealt with any of my emails or read the briefing notes for this afternoon’s meeting. Should I just ask him? Once or twice I almost had, but there was clearly a reason he hadn’t mentioned his offspring, and I didn’t want to make things any more awkward between us. Somewhere over the eastern seaboard, I’d decided the easiest option was to pretend the girl didn’t exist.
The problem was that before I found out about her, I’d offered Alaric the use of the guest house behind Riverley Hall as well as my help in finding Emerald. Finding Emerald again. Last time we’d gone after that damn painting, I’d ended up dodging bullets, so I was as keen to catch the thieves as him. Dish out a little payback, you know? But now I wanted to do it quickly. Get it over with.
Then the painting could go home to the museum, I could get on with my life, and Alaric and Bethany could head back to England and play happy families or whatever. As for the ten million bucks… I still wanted to believe Alaric was innocent, but my belief in him had wavered this week. If he’d lied once…
“Where are we going?” Sky asked. “And why are you walking so fast? Slap a number on your arse, and you could enter the Olympics.”
“I don’t like wasting time.”
“Is that why you spent twenty minutes staring into space after dinner yesterday?”
Guilty as charged.
“Shut up.” Deep breaths, Emmy. Don’t kill the brat. She reminded me more of myself than I cared to admit. “We’re going to meet the people you’ll be working with while I’m in Kentucky. Then I’ll give you a tour of the important parts of the estate and you can pick out a bedroom.”
“I could’ve got a tour with Bradley. Does he always hug people like that?”
“You won’t be spending much time in the hair salon or the movie theatre, which is Bradley’s main focus. And yes, he always hugs people. Why? Does that bother you?”
She hesitated. Too long.
“I’m just not used to it, that’s all.”
Liar. It did bother her. “Lenny doesn’t hug you?”
Lenny was her brother, the two of them bound not by blood but by circumstances. Lenny was also a junkie. As part of the deal with Sky, I’d agreed to pay for him to go into rehab while she was here, and we’d dropped him off at the private hospital before we left London. Which was another reason for my twitchiness. Because who else was an inpatient at the Abbey Clinic? My mother. I’d successfully avoided the bitch for over two decades, and I certainly hadn’t wanted to cross paths with her this week of all weeks.
Sky just shrugged. “Sometimes he hugs me. Not much.”
We reached the gym. I’d messaged Alex, my ex-Spetsnaz trainer, before we left the plane, so he was in there waiting for us. I felt a little guilty for palming Sky off onto him right after she arrived, but I didn’t have much choice. Bad guys didn’t care about my schedule. And Blackwood, the security company I owned with my husband and two others, was in a very different place than it had been when I arrived stateside. Back then, there’d been three of us plus a handful of contractors, and now we had thousands of employees on six continents. Turnover was in the billions. Taking a couple of months off to train Sky myself just wasn’t an option.
“Sky, meet Alex. He’ll teach you how to fight as well as exhausting you on a daily basis. Alex, this is Sky. Watch out for your nose. She’s sneaky.”
He leaned down—and I mean down because he stood at six feet seven—and peered at my face.
“You should have been faster to block. You have been slacking, da?”
I should have known better than to expect sympathy. Alex didn’t know the meaning of the word. I turned to Sky.
“Make him sing falsetto, honey. Go for the privates.”
“I’ll do my best.”
See? That was why I liked her.
“You get the rest of the day off. Report here at five o’clock tomorrow for your first session.”
“Five in the morning?”
“Yes, in the morning. This isn’t a part-time gig. You’ll do mornings with Alex, and in the afternoons, Carmen’s going to teach you to shoot. Evenings are for tradecraft, plus my friend Sofia’s gonna tell you all about plants.”
“Plants? I’m meant to be training as a special ops whatever, not a bloody gardener.”
“I’m well aware of that. You’ll work with Black or me when we’re available, and if we’re not here, someone else will fill in. After a month, we’ll change the evening and afternoon sessions so you work on languages and other skills. But you’d better get used to Alex’s ugly mug because you’ll be seeing a lot of him.”
“What about weekends?”
“This isn’t prison. You don’t get time off for good behaviour.” But I also remembered how frustrated I’d been to have no time whatsoever for fun and relented slightly. “If you perform in line with expectations, we’ll schedule an afternoon off each week starting next month.”
“That’s…that’s…”
“I never said this would be easy. If you want to leave, the door’s right there. But if you want to be the best, you have to train the hardest. Do you want to be the best?”
She swallowed hard and faced up to Alex. “I’ll see you at five.” Then to me, “Who’s Carmen?”
“Diamond.”
I’d been waiting since dawn to hear that voice. Nobody else was in the living room at Riverley, so I flung myself into my husband’s arms and got rewarded with a kiss that took my breath away. I didn’t care. He could have it all. What was mine was his.