is his. I wasn’t ready to talk to her about her security, conscious of her life having already changed in so many ways since we met. I’ve found it hard enough to admit to myself that I might be a target. I didn’t want to her know, let alone have to admit the possibility that the danger might extend to her.
Bottom line, I was hiding things from her again.
Ducking the hard conversations.
And now she’s gone. The desk might be covered with why. The question now is who?
‘Jared’s going through the CCTV footage from here,’ Rhett shoots back. ‘Pierre and Jon are at Wolf tower going through the stuff from there. Her phone is off but we’re onto the network to see where and when it was last used.’
I hear but I can’t comprehend, my mind awash with a million thoughts as I begin to sift through the intel I’d paid to be collected over the preceding months. Including the latest instalment I’d refused to acknowledge.
Idiot.
I trace my finger over a photograph. Place Massena in Nice, a well-known landmark and familiar to me, stands as a backdrop to a couple holding hands. The man I know, the woman I do not, though I can easily guess her part. So much time and energy has been spent wondering how Emile might’ve met Rose or her mother in the US, when in fact it had happened in France.
There are other snapshots of proof. Employment contracts. Wage slips. Details of her mother’s immigration to the US.
She was here, long before Rose was born, I think, flipping over a business card that, it seems, belongs to Carson Hayes. A fist with vice-like grip twists my innards.
‘She’s with him. With Carson Hayes.’ My low growl reverberates through my insides. ‘I saw the way he looked at her. I know the way he hates me. He has to be behind it.’
I turn to find Rhett’s hand on my shoulder.
‘Listen there are a dozen things that might’ve happened. Don’t go off half-cocked at a rustle in the wind.
Without answering, I rip his hand away as I make a path for the front door.
I feel like someone has punched a hand into my chest and pulled out my heart while I wasn’t looking, the tattered remains discarded to rot on the ground. And I know I’ve brought this on myself. I know I should’ve told her about her inheritance, about the secrets I’ve kept—all of it. And now I look like a monster who proposed for power, not for love. And worse than that, as the final pieces of the puzzle slot into place, I realise the link between my life and hers.
The reasons Emile left her a share of the company.
Money touched with blood and innocence.
If she never wants to take possession of it, I will forever understand.
I stride out into the hall without giving Rhett or the mess I leave behind another thought, snatching up the car keys from the table. My shoes crunch against the gravel, the car alarm chiming as I approach it. I climb into the driver’s seat, my head whipping around as the passenger side slams.
‘You’re a hot-headed arsehole,’ Rhett asserts, yanking on his seatbelt. ‘But you’re not going alone.’
‘I don’t think it’s wise. The way I feel right now, I might kill him.’
‘That’s precisely the reason I am,’ he mutters. ‘Put your fucking belt on.’
The tyres spray gravel as I swing around the turning circle and head for the gate.
‘All right, Lewis Fucking Hamilton! I’d like to get there in one piece,’ Rhett complains, invoking the Formula 1 racing driver’s name as he hangs onto the interior door handle. ‘I’d also like to know why we’re using my car.’
‘Because yours isn’t in the garage.’ The gates are already swinging open as I approach them.
‘Watch the fucking paintwork,’ he yells as I scrape through.
But the Range Rover’s paintwork is not my concern as I swing out onto the road, my destination Fontvieille on the coast.
I only have thoughts for Rose
ROSE
‘Where are we, Ben?’
‘Nowhere anyone would think to look for you,’ he says, closing and locking the door behind him. In his hand, he has a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses—plastic glasses—and a loaf of bread. A boule, not a baguette.
I’m still sitting on the stone bench where he left me, though I have investigated the place in the time he’s been gone . . . doing whatever he was doing.
‘I don’t mean where we are exactly. Just, what is this