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“What’s happening?” She stares at Caleb and then at Mathew and Riley. “He’s not going to kill her, is he? He can’t. Please.”
“Shut up.” Mathew glares our way and the fury in his gaze makes my blood run cold.
Oh, no. I’ve seen that look before.
It’s been years, but it’s hard to forget the first time you watch your fated mate’s face go from laughing to murderous in a fraction of a second and for them to stand up from the table, cross the restaurant and kill someone.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him kill, but it was the first time it had happened out in the open, outside of ‘work’ situations. It was the moment I realised how dangerous he really was.
There’s only one thing that I know that makes him like this: when he’s confronted with people who knew him when he was still held by the Hearts.
The fact that he’s asking her to explain herself and he hasn’t killed her yet means that he doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t want to have to kill her. But he will if she’s a danger to him, or to us…
Riley, what did you get yourself into? Was I really so wrong about you?
“What do you want to know?” How does Riley manage to look so calm when he could kill her in moments? She must know that he’s not joking.
“Are you working for the Hearts?” His voice is cold, and Riley’s face goes white as a sheet as she covers her mouth while shaking her head. Even from this distance, the caustic note in her pheromones reaches us.
“No. Fuck no.No way in hell.” Her words are like venom as she spits them out.
My body runs hot and cold, relieved at her answer but still nervous about why Mathew would be suspicious of her in the first place.
“Any of the other Suits?” He looks to relax only a fraction.
“No. No way.” Then she glances back down the hallway, anger and upset in her gaze. “You think that some of the people I met with tonight were part of the Hearts?”
“I know for sure. Someone recognised me.” Mathew turns around and I don’t know why until I realise I’ve got my arms around him tightly.
Trying to wrap him in my pheromones, trying to cleanse him of all the bad memories, trying to cleanse him of the bad scents that haven’t touched him in a decade.
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
Someone recognised him. No, not just that.
Someone recognised him and was confident enough of their safety to confront Mathew with his past. That’s what set off the fight.
Fucking hell.
“Timothy checked them.” My voice breaks. How can we have been so careless?
“It was someone we hadn’t met before. So we didn’t have any real information on them.” He grips the back of my jacket and leans his head on my shoulder.
I wrap protective pheromones around him, trying to soothe him, trying to show him I’ll always protect him, that nothing bad will happen to him as long as I’m around.
Then I glance at Riley, who looks at us in confusion, looking even more confused than she did before. “Did you have any idea?”
She shakes her head. “No clue. I would never do business with anyone from the Suits Syndicate. Nofuckingway. I’d kill myself before I’d ever consider taking a job from them.”
Mathew slowly lets go of me, looking at her. “How did you meet them?”
“I’ve never met any of them in person before. They were acquaintances of acquaintances. They heard I was going to be in the area and they wanted to meet, see if we could maybe work together in the future.”
She eyes Mathew. “If I’d known that they were connected to the Hearts, I would have killed them before the meeting could even start.”
Mathew sighs. “None of us knew. We’ve done business with some of them before and they’re clean. But the people they took with them were connected to the Hearts. Which is troubling.”
Which means that Timothy, his team and I will be doing a lot of work in the coming days to figure out where the hell things went wrong. Because, once again, the Hearts have gotten much closer to us than we thought and we didn’t have a clue.