bottom with a thud. I grab my coat off the hook near the door, ready to leave for my date with Evie. If I leave now, I will make it to hers on time.
“I’ll see you later, Mum,” I yell, hearing her banging away in the kitchen, preparing to feed a small army.
She pops her head around the kitchen door, smiling. “Have fun. Give my love to Evie, would you?”
Chuckling, I nod. “I will, Mum.”
It’s strange to feel this excited about seeing someone. I have been excited about going on holiday, getting in a brawl, Christmas, birthdays, but never about seeing a person. It felt empty at work today without her there. I couldn’t explain why since she has only ever been professional whilst there. Yet, she still brings a lightness and colour to the office that was never there before. Even Paisley hadn’t brought that when she worked with us. Evie, however, has somehow brightened the place up.
It shows in the red sofa she talked Jaxon into ordering so clients would have somewhere to wait. It was getting a cleaner and sprucing the place up with canvas paintings. It was how she made an impression on all of us without even meaning to. Even closed off, her personality shows with everything she does for the company, whether that’s intentional or not.
I hadn’t realised how much of a difference she made until today. It was dull in the office without her.
Pulling open the front door, I stagger to a stop when I see Jaxon walking up. He pauses mid-step, his body tense.
It’s a shock to see him still here. He said he was calling Liam for the status on the memory stick then heading home.
For him to be here, something has happened. If he can’t wait until tomorrow to fill me in, it has to be important.
“What did he find?” I ask when I see his gloomy expression.
His expression doesn’t change as he looks me dead in the eye. “We should talk in the office.”
Fuck, it’s bad.
I try to shrug the tension from my shoulders. “Whatever it is, spit it out,” I order.
“In a rush to get somewhere?”
“I’m going to Evie’s for dinner, but I can stay if you need me,” I tell him, watching him closely. I’ll always be here for family. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. “Did he manage to get into the files?”
“No, he didn’t. This is about something else.”
I shrug my jacket on as I take the stairs, stopping at the bottom to face him. “What is it about then? If you’re here to moan about me and Evie, I told you not to bother. You saw yourself today that we can keep it professional.”
He holds his hand up, stopping me. “It’s not about that. It’s about the Franklin job.”
“What about it?”
“It was a job only we and the siblings knew about. Someone on that job or in the office told Black we would be there, that or he has access to our system.”
“Yeah, we already assumed as much, Jax. But we ruled out our computers being hacked. Liam checked them. So where are you going with this? Do you think someone working that day said something?”
He looks straight ahead. “No. The extra men we hired didn’t know about the job details until that day. No way was something of that magnitude planned in a few hours. Black would have needed to find those guys and then persuade them to do it.”
“He could have already known them,” I point out.
“True, but then we still have the mystery of how the information got into his hands.”
What he’s implying finally clicks and I grit my teeth, shoving him back. “Don’t you dare put the blame on Evie. She’s not like that.”
He flinches. “How do you know?”
I don’t know who he is right now. How can he even think it? He has worked alongside her for months now. He should have seen how loyal she is to our company, to her job. There is goodness inside her, and she is kind. She doesn’t have the heart to play us like that. Not Evie.
“You’ve seen her, Jaxon. She winces when one of us playfully punches the other. She cried when she found that dead cat on the main road coming into work. Hell, remember the time she fucked up the roster? After she apologised profusely, she went to the toilet to cry. I heard her. You could see it on her face that she hated the thought she let