I am just disappointed about the idiot I’ve been portraying the past twenty minutes.
“Thank you,” I whisper, pulling his coat in closer.
It smells like him, which is both comforting and exciting. He has a different scent than Brandon. His spicy aroma often reminds me of pumpkin spice lattes and freshly baked bread. Brandon’s scent was woodsy and natural like it was plucked straight from nature. It was a smell I often craved before… you know.
I’m still lost as to why Joey smelled like Brandon the night of his summer party. We hung out only minutes earlier. The drinks he’d been downing before I arrived were clear on his breath, yet, I didn’t detect an ounce of alcohol in the air when he slid into Brandon’s bed. All I could smell was Brandon’s aftershave. That’s why I wrongly believed I was safe.
I guess Joey could have put it on to deceive me. In all honesty, that makes his switch in personality even more confronting. If he went to the effort to make himself appear to be Brandon, that means his assault was premeditated. That’s so much worse than believing he had read my friendliness in the wrong manner. It breaks my heart believing he purposely set out to hurt me. We were close. He was my friend. I loved him even before he was given my daddy’s heart, so why did he do what he did?
When tears prick in my eyes, I shift my head high and to the right to ensure Julian doesn’t see the sheen threatening to spill down my cheeks. My sudden shift in visual has me stumbling onto Katarina being ushered into the backseat of a pimped-out SUV. Her protective detail isn’t surprising. Not even Henry’s suffocating presence stopped men eyeballing her with desire, however, the man guiding her into the four-wheel drive most certainly raises suspicion. I can’t see his face, but not even his tall height, bald head, and massive biceps are behind the massive spike in my heart rate. It’s his unique neck tattoo. I’ve seen it twice in my life. Both times it was on dead men.
2
Brandon
My heart thuds against my chest as I stare down at a tiny slip of paper sitting solemnly on my dining room table. Half of me wants to snatch it up in an instant, whereas the other half wants to throw it into the fireplace with the hope the still-warm ash will ignite it as well as it set ablaze my panic. My fireplace usually gives my home a welcoming vibe, but all it’s doing today is making the conditions extra muggy. I’m so hot, I am five seconds from ripping off my shirt, and we’re tiptoeing toward December.
My eyes dart to Phillipa when she asks, “Shall I, or would you like the honor?”
I snatch up the paper, answering her question without words. Melody isn’t technically mine anymore, but her safety is most certainly my responsibility, and I don’t give a fuck if her fiancé believes otherwise.
My hands shake like I’m in the middle of a snowfield without gloves when I unfold the thin slip of paper. Even only being partially opened can’t hide the single string of text scrawled across the middle. The handwritten black ink is similar to the script on the note Tobias handed me over a year ago, but it’s a fourteen-digit number instead of the filing code I didn’t want to discover.
I flop back my head and lock my eyes to the ceiling, relieved it’s nothing close to the coding system Tobias used for his private files. Although I could swear on Joey’s grave, I’ve seen a set of similar numbers before.
Mere days ago.
When recollection dawns on its familiarity, I head to my soft leather briefcase I dumped on the entryway table when I arrived home twenty minutes ago like I had a rocket strapped to my back. Phillipa watches me with wide, curious eyes when I tug out a similar-size scrap of paper from my briefcase. The handwriting is different, and this sequence of numbers was written with a blue pen, but the similarities between the numbers reveal a pattern, and it has my stomach twisted up in knots.
“For every check written, two check digits, a bank identifier, a branch identifier, and part of an account number is imprinted on the bottom. Is it the same with wire transfer payments?”
Phillipa looks lost to where I’m going, but she nods her head, nonetheless. “If they used the same bank and branch, you’d