Page 7 of Brazen Defiance (Brazen Boys #4)

Walker

W e’re all waiting for the car to come back.

Not that any of us have said that specifically, but we’ve been in the kitchen since noon, none of us doing much of anything.

I’m adding unnecessary shading to a sketch, RJ has his tablet out at the counter, and Jay’s just sitting on top of it, tossing an apple from one hand to the other.

“Has anyone gotten an ETA?” I ask, more to break the silence than anything.

They both shake their heads.

“And I’m assuming no one got messages last night from either of them?”

More head shaking.

“Do we think they can’t, for some reason?”

RJ taps on his screen a few times. “I don’t know. The storm was huge, so maybe their tower was knocked out for a while. But anything sent would have come through by now—they’re all up as of about two hours ago.”

“So, it wasn’t just me that didn’t hear anything?” Jansen asks, the electric hum about him amplified today.

“No,” I say, happy when a little of that nervous energy melts out of him.

“Good. That’s good.”

RJ and I share a look when Jay goes back to watching the back hallway, our new curtains a sunshiny yellow instead of green, making Jay look a little less ill than yesterday. But he isn’t. He’s not getting any better, and Clara’s absence, even overnight, has amped him up higher than ever.

Another hour passes, the three of us holding silent vigil in the kitchen.

Jay spins without warning. “Should we text and find out? I feel like they should be back by now.”

“I have no idea how long these things take, do you?”

RJ shakes his head while Jansen’s face crumples. “I just need, I don’t know, confirmation. That they’re coming back.”

“Do you really think Trips and Clara are running away together right now?” RJ asks.

“Well, no. Not really. Maybe not on purpose. I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right. And I don’t think it’s me. I think it’s something else.”

Sighing, I go to contradict him, to pull him back down to reality, but RJ’s nodding along, so I hold my tongue.

“I have the same feeling, Jay. It’s like I’ve missed something important. I’ve been looking into the Westerhouse family since they left, but I can’t find much of anything. Do you guys know anything about Trips’ family that I don’t?”

I think over what I know, which is surprisingly little. “Their family runs on deals.”

“And bad tempers, political connections, and violence,” Jay adds.

“They have more money than any of us have ever seen,” RJ finishes.

“That’s not much to go on,” I say.

“No, it’s not,” he agrees. “Clara mentioned that Trips’ dad uses the same cleaner as the mob guys in Chicago,” he adds with his brows furrowed, immediately tapping on the tablet.

“That’s weird,” Jansen says, taking a bite out of the apple he’s been tossing around for more than an hour.

“People cleaners,” RJ clarifies, dropping that bomb into the silent kitchen.

People cleaners. As in dead bodies. As in, we just let our girl go willingly into a building with a man who deals with bodies often enough to need someone to call for that. And often enough that Trips knows about it.

“That’s not good,” Jansen whispers, having come to the same conclusion I did, his eyes wide.

“The O’Malley’s, that was it,” RJ mutters, his focus drilled into whatever it is he’s digging up.

I close my eyes, my pencil smooth in my grip as I try to quell the surge of emotion that shoots through me.

It’s one thing when she’s rushing into chaos, and I know she has a plan to clean it up.

It’s another thing entirely to send her to Trips’ house for literal days, not even knowing the extent of the danger she’s in. That they’re both in.

When I open my eyes, Jansen has his phone in his hand, staring at it like it might be either a bomb or a bouquet. “Is it even safe to message?”

“I don’t know.” And I don’t like it.

Glancing at the clock for the umpteenth time, my fist grows tight, the pencil snapping in two.

Damn it.

RJ hisses in through his teeth, his nostrils flaring.

“I’ve got something. Fuck, I haven’t been this deep into the dark web in a long time.

But I found the O’Malley’s. They do body clean ups—wet works—and they have tons of anonymous testimonials.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: ‘Quick and effective service. Families of the problem have no clues to follow, and the cases have run cold, saving my clients millions. Cannot recommend more highly.’”

Jansen sets his apple on the counter, that single bite all he’s taken. “Trips said his dad got rid of whistleblowers. He’s a corporate fixer. The nasty kind.”

“And that’s what it sounds like they were used for by this anonymous customer.”

“But who killed them? The O’Malley’s just clean the bodies, right?” Jansen bursts out.

I swallow. “I think that’s what Trips’ dad is hoping he’ll do, going forward. Don’t you think? They have his brother as the face and charm, while Trips would be the threat.”

Jay pulls his hair up into a ponytail. “No wonder he wants to get out of the family business.”

The back door clicks, and he’s off the counter and bounding down the hallway before I get to my feet. RJ and I follow, but plow into him halfway down the hallway, Trips and Clara standing just inside the door.

I can’t figure out what has him stalled out, but then I see both their faces.

Clara’s dark eyes are hazy, her lips drawn in a tight line, her skin ashen.

Trips has the bag they took slung over one shoulder, his hand clenched tight in a fist, his knuckles taped and bandaged.

His face is stony, but not with his typical fury.

No, defeat is written across his face like words on a page, it’s so clear.

Before I even think about it, I open my arms, and Clara sprints to me, her face pressed against my chest as I hold her tight.

“What happened?” RJ asks, Jansen still frozen looking between Trips and Clara.

“My father, mostly. The rest is me being a goddamn idiot.”

Clara’s fingers dig into my back, like she’s trying to crawl inside me, and I know, without a doubt, that I don’t want to know what happened. I just want to scoop up my girl and disappear.

RJ puts a hand on Jansen’s arm, breaking his trance, and Jay steps close, placing his palm against her back. “Beautiful?”

She makes a tiny whimper that has my heart cracking in two, then pushes away, just a bit, from my chest.

“I think we need to talk.” She glances over her shoulder at Trips, and if possible, he looks even worse.

But he nods and stomps past us, leading us to the living room.

He throws his bag on the ground, but stands in front of the TV, not taking his usual seat.

And when we get there too, Clara takes it, and none of us say a thing.

If she needs the distance, we’re not going to fight her on it.

When Trips doesn’t say anything either, that’s when I know it’s bad. Really bad.

The three of us line up on the couch, like kids getting chewed out by their parents, and Clara just stares at her hands, the color and size of them looking odd. Redder than they should be, with slightly swollen fingers. What the hell happened? They weren’t even gone for a full twenty-four hours.

They both speak at the same time, then after a glance, Trips cedes the floor to Clara. And that’s when I know it’s life altering.

She twists her fingers, then shifts so she’s sitting cross-legged. “Last night didn’t go well,” she starts.

“Beautiful, I need you to get to the point, because I’m freaking out,” Jansen says, honest as only he can be.

She swallows. “Trips’ dad forced us to get engaged. He’s forcing us to get married. He knows what we’ve been up to, complete with pictures, and he’s threatening us all.”

A ringing in my ears accompanies the silence like the echo of a gong.

Trips tosses a ring box on the coffee table, the sound of it hitting like a gunshot in the silence. “And I almost killed Clara last night. She’s going to sugarcoat that shit, but yeah. I almost fucking killed her.”

I can’t process this.

But RJ’s on his feet, circling the table. “Can you explain what you mean by that?” His voice is calm but strange to my ears, something about it not computing in my frozen brain.

Trips stands there, hands clenched, not shifting his weight, like a challenge. “I lost my shit. She followed me. When I came to, she was passed out in the snow, blue and non-responsive.”

RJ takes the challenge, and in a series of moves faster than I can parse, he has Trips pinned on the ground, blood pouring from his nose, his arm twisted behind his back at an angle that should be impossible.

“Stop,” Clara says, a whisper we all turn to, her gaze still on the rug at her feet. “Stop. Trips wants you to punish him. But that’s not what I need. It’s not what he needs. So just, please, stop.”

RJ’s panting, the anger across his face unfamiliar, painful. Some part of my brain locks the image in my mind to analyze once I can process whatever the hell is going on here. But the rest of me is still playing catch-up.

I reach across the table, picking up the ring box, the hinge creaking as I force it open, a tinsel covered showstopper of a ring inside.

A socialite’s ring.

The ring of a rich man’s wife.

A ring for Archibald Clarence Westerhouse, the third’s wife.

RJ’s harsh whisper cuts through the hum in my ears. “You were supposed to keep her safe. That was the only job you had.”

Another image gets locked in my brain. This time, Trips with what I swear are a few tears stuck to his eyelashes as he struggles to breathe through whatever that hold is doing to him. “I know. I fucked up. I fucked all the way up,” he says.

Clara folds in on herself, pulling her knees to her forehead like she can’t bear to see what’s going on around her. “You weren’t the only one. So, stop. Please. What’s done is done. What’s past is past. If we’re going to fight for our future, this isn’t the way to do it.”

Jansen inches to his feet, slower than I’ve ever seen him move, and slips around the coffee table, kneeling in front of Clara, prying her fingers from her shins and into his hands. “I’m not giving you up,” he says, and she peeks through her legs at him, a watery smile on her devastated face.

But she says nothing back, and that tells me this is the end.

And my heart shatters.