Page 17 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)

Darragh

R owan’s finally managed to get us into Grandda’s laptop. “There’s a lot to go through,” he says. “I’ve had a go at it already. But this is what I wanted to show you first.”

He clicks open on a file – a video – and pushes play. I go very still as I watch a tiny, two-dimensional version of myself throw Dario Fabbri off that Toronto condo building roof.

“Where the fuck did he get this?” I ask. I don’t recognize the video. Don’t recognize the angle. It looks like it’s been taken from inside an apartment, the camera aimed out a window that faces the Fabbris’ condo building.

“From what I can gather, the apartment this was filmed from isn’t occupied,” Rowan answer. “It’s owned by an investor who resides in Hong Kong. They have a number of security cameras running inside the unit at all times. Including this one.”

“So, what then? Some rich fucker in Hong Kong was reviewing the footage one day and saw this? And sent it to my grandda, to, what? Fucking tell on me?”

“A good man would have sent that footage to the police,” Rowan says. “A smart one would have looked for a better deal first.”

“Callum paid him off to destroy the footage?”

“It looks that way.”

“Why’d he keep the fucking file himself?” I mutter. I push play again, getting a smug little thrill at the sight of Dario going sailing over that safety barrier. That thrill gets hot in my belly when I remember that Valentina was there. In this video, I’m not even aware of her yet.

Not aware of the fact that she’s about to split my skin with her nails.

And in turn, split open the entire careful chaos of my world.

“But here’s something else,” Rowan says. He switches from the video player to what looks like an email provider’s page open in a browser. “Not only did Callum not delete that file, he sent it to someone.”

“Who?” I demand, already scanning the sent folder. Rowan selects a message with a subject line that reads “we need to talk.” There’s nothing in the body of the email but the attached video file.

“It’s an email address I recognized,” Rowan says. “It’s linked to the corporation that owns the cottage beside the one you purchased.”

But that cottage belongs to…

“Callum sent this video to Vincenzo Titone.”

“When?” I ask, even though my eyes have already found the date at the top of the email. It was sent after I arrived in Halifax.

After I told Grandda that I was marrying Valentina.

So not only did he cut me out of his will, but he went to my future father-in-law with this shit, to destroy my chance at a marriage to Valentina before it even began.

Dario may have been a slimy piece of shit not fit for the bottom of Valentina’s shoe, but despite his lies and betrayals, he was still the son of one of Vinny’s most loyal allies.

Vinny had hard evidence that I not only killed Dario, but that Valentina and I both lied about it.

Which normally, I wouldn’t give a fuck about. I’d lie to Vinny Titone as soon as I’d shake his fucking hand.

But this had consequences. My engagement to Valentina ruined, and an engagement to Sal Di Mauro slapped together, all in the span of two fucking weeks.

“What the hell did they talk about?” I ask. My temples ache. There’s no reply to this email. No more clues.

“I don’t know,” Rowan says. “There’s no other correspondence between them that I can find. But Callum didn’t change his will until after he sent this video.”

“So they cooked this shit up together. To keep Valentina and me apart.”

“Probably.”

It takes everything in me not to pick up the fucking laptop and hurl it across the room.

But we might need that later, so instead I turn to the shelf of booze.

I throw bottle after bottle against the walls, the floor, revelling in the symphonic violence of the sound, the glittering flight of broken glass like the ocean’s spray.

Or the spray of Georgian Bay.

I don’t smash the last one – a bottle of very fine whiskey indeed. Instead, I open it up and take a gulp, letting the liquid burn me all the way down.

But I don’t really want to drink right now.

Not when there are much better drugs in this house.

“Valentina!” I shout her name as I storm from the office.

“Hello?” comes her faint response from upstairs. Sweet relief at the sound of her voice, gushing fast and hot as blood. She’s still here.

I take the stairs two at a time. She’s not looking at the books, and she isn’t in the bathroom. Maybe she’s on the third floor.

But the door to my old bedroom stands slightly ajar. And as if every instinct I’ve got is primed to sense exactly where she is, I know that’s where she’s ended up.

I go inside.

She’s lying on my bed. On her back, with her hands folded demurely across her belly.

Like a nun.

Or a corpse.

“What are you doing in my bed?” I ask between harsh breaths. I’m breathing much harder than I should be.

I told her she could take a nap, sure. But I figured she would do it on the couch or something.

“Is it alright?” She’s looking at me, and she seems sincere enough in her question. Yet she makes no move to rise.

“It’s alright,” I reply. It’s just bizarre to see her there. I don’t think anyone’s touched that bed in close to fifteen years. And now, Valentina’s in it. My past and my present are melting together. There’s something almost eerie about it. Like it’s happening in a dream.

“I just wasn’t expecting to find you here,” I go on. “You’re reminding me of that old story. The one about the bears who come home to find a pretty young girl asleep in their bed.”

She looks startled, her mouth dropping open.

And then that perfect fucking mouth forms itself into a perfect fucking smile, and Jesus fucking Christ, someone needs to shoot me in the head.

Put me out of this lovesick fucking misery.

Because I don’t know how I’ll ever get over this.

Get over seeing her in the bed my grandda built me, smiling at me like…

Like she likes me.

“What are you smiling at me like that for?”

“I’m smiling because I had that exact same thought last night!” she says. She shakes her head as if she just can’t believe it, still holding onto the dreamy delight of her smile. “Goldilocks. I felt like Goldilocks.”

“That’s the one.”

“I was lying in bed beside you,” she says. “And I kept thinking that I needed to get up and find another bed. One without a bear in it.”

“And did you?” I ask, jerking my chin to indicate the bed she’s occupying now. She slides her shoulders up and down on the mattress, the lying-down version of a shrug.

“I guess I just thought that I wanted to see the world through a young Darragh Gowan’s eyes.”

The sound that crawls out of me then can’t quite be called a laugh.

“Not a pretty sight, I’m afraid.”

Not unless I’m looking at her.

“Yeah. I figured,” she says. The smile is gone now. “I remember you once told me that you were never a child.”

“That’s because I wasn’t.”

She rolls her eyes. “You expect me to believe that you were born a fully-formed man?”

“I was born addicted to opioids.”

She sits up at once.

“I didn’t know that.”

“How would you?”

The only people who ever knew about it before are dead now.

My mammy, who lost custody of me for a good long while.

My da, who maintained custody, and who was supposed to stay away from her, but didn’t.

My grandda, estranged from his only son, who couldn’t do a fucking thing to help me until he eventually found me sleeping rough just before my fifteenth birthday, nearly a year after their deaths.

Most people think I avoid drugs because of the way my parents died.

But it has just as much to do with how I was born.

“Darragh…” Her eyes are searching my face. There’s sorrow in them.

And, fucking hell, there’s pity.

And the pity isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is the way I want to submit to it. The way I want to get down on my knees before her and lay my fucking head in her lap like a dog.

Or a child.

If I did it now, would she push me away? Or would she stroke her fingers through my hair? Let those long nails of hers scratch – so fucking gently – against my skin?

I want it. I want it so much it leaves me terrified and searching for something safer. Something that doesn’t make me feel like I’ve actually got a heart, and it is breaking.

Something like her anger.

“We need to find out what’s happened to Vinny,” I say abruptly, my voice cold. Cruel.

The sad softness in her gaze vanishes.

“What do you mean?” she asks warily.

I think of the video. The wedding. The will.

I’m full of vengeful rage once more. And I’ve never felt more at home.

“Because I haven’t seen a single announcement or article anywhere actually saying that he’s dead,” I reply. “And if he’s not, then I have got some goddamn work to do.”