Page 42 of Filthy Rich Daddies

For now, that variable remains unknown. The only certainty is support. Still, hope flickers, persistent as a lighthouse in a storm.

I rest my gloved hand on the window, watching peaks approach. Somewhere ahead, a woman who reprogrammed my future with a single smile nurses a headache and a secret. We are minutes from rewriting the story she thought was hers alone.

“Drive faster,” Tic instructs the chauffeur.

I echo silently,yes, faster. Because my heart is already there, pacing a chalet hallway, rehearsing words of reassurance. If she wants lightened burdens, I will carry them, cradle and all.

16

COLIN

Outside the Tahoe windows,Colorado whips past in quick-cut postcards—snow-crusted pines, elk crossing signs, the kind of mountains Bob Ross would paint on Valium. My internal CPU renders only one frame. Thalassa’s face when she answered Tic’s call. Not that I saw it, but my imagination has been running wild since he told us.

Sobs in 5.1 surround sound. Cue protective subroutine—find girl, shield girl, destroy enemy. Except, we’re the enemy.

Sort of.

We climb the last switchback. Pine Summit Resort peeks out—brown-timber chalets nestled like gingerbread afterthoughts under six feet of powder. The driver kills the engine, and our doors pop open. Alpine air blasts our sinuses.

I crunch across snow in sneakers not rated for Antarctic cosplay, adrenaline fueling each step because caffeine has lost its effect on me. I can’t feel anything but worry right now.

The chalet’s door swings open before we knock. A woman fills the doorway—gold goggles jammed into platinum hair, stancewide like she’s bracing for a SWAT breach. She does not greet. She scans. Her bright blue eyes are red-rimmed from zero sleep, yet lethal.

“You came anyway,” she says, blocking entry.

Tic smiles. “You must be Arabella?—”

“I am. I told you not to come.”

“I’m not great at taking orders. This is Dean and Colin, my brothers. We need to see Thalassa. Is she awake?”

Her breath comes out as a large fog. She’s pissed, clearly. “Are you here to cause trouble?”

“We only want to help,” Dean says gently. “Whatever she needs, we want to provide it.”

Her jaw flexes as she eyes him. “And if she tells you to leave?”

“Then we go.”

She takes a moment, like she’s weighing whether to believe us. “One wrong emotional spike and I call security, Just Desserts, and the Army. And you better hope that at least one of them will stop me from castrating all three of you with an olive fork. Slowly.”

“Understood,” Tic answers. He raises one gloved hand. “Like he said, we’re only here to help.”

To my surprise, she finally steps aside.

The chalet is expansive and quite nice. Reminds me of a few vacations we took in the Alps when I was a kid. Arabella leads us to her bedroom, while their roommates either ignore us or stare.I have no idea how she’ll explain who we are, and right now I’m not sure I care, outside of how it’ll affect Thalassa.

Dean leaves a stack of NDAs on a table before we enter the bedroom. “Arabella, there’s a hefty payment available to each of your roommates if they sign those NDAs. Will you see to it?”

“This will keep them from talking about Thalassa?”

“For the rest of their lives.”

“Done.”

She closes the door behind us, and Thalassa sits on her bed, blanket burritoed to her ears. The bruise shading her left cheekbone blossoms in ugly tech-support purple. A matching bruise rings her wrist where the IV once anchored. Heavy socks peek from under the blanket. Hollow eyes—hazel and usually hyperlinked with jokes—are now a glitchy shadow.

My guts invert. I will end the Red-Bull-sticker kid—the one from her hospital file.