Alex and Eve were holding hands and suddenly Eve turned into Alex’s body, his arms wrapping around her. Eve was crying.
Charlie stood up. Fuck. What had happened? What the hell had happened? She couldn’t just sit here. Ian would just have to punish her. She moved toward the conference room door.
“Uhm, I don’t think you’re supposed to leave. Ian was very specific about it,” Phoebe said as she walked back in the office, pushing her glasses up her nose.
Charlie ignored her, moving into the hall. She looked to her left and Grace was locking the front doors as Liam paced by the elevator. They were locking down. Her heart rate picked up, thumping through her chest.
She crossed the space between them, her hands trembling as she opened the conference room door.
“Liam, Simon, and Jesse are with her, Sean,” Ian was saying. “They’re taking her out the back after they get Carys from daycare. Nothing’s going to happen to them, and Li might be a paranoid idiot, but I’m following his lead on this one.”
“I’m leaving the restaurant right now. Have Li text me the meet spot. Not at home.” There was a click and Sean’s voice was gone.
“What happened?” Charlie asked. Grace couldn’t go home?
Ian’s eyes pinned her, making her want to squirm. “I told you to stay in your seat and you are not allowed to talk.”
It was bad. Whatever had happened was really bad, and it was personal. “Please tell me.”
“Why, Charlotte? Why do you need to know?”
“Because I care about these people.” Because somehow through years of studying them, she’d come to love them. They had become her family.
Ian was so cold as he stood over her. All the heat that had been between them was gone, snuffed out utterly, and she could feel the vast distance that separated her from him. “Do you really? I have some questions about that.”
“I didn’t write those e-mails to Nelson. It was Chelsea.” He might never believe her, but she would defend herself.
“And Chelsea is your sister. Your ultimate loyalty is to her. I guess at the end of the day, it all comes down to family, doesn’t it? You’re always going to choose your family.”
But he was her family. “Please don’t believe an assassin over me. Please, Ian.”
“You did. You believed Nelson over me and now my family is paying the price.” He looked over and nodded toward the door. Damon and Baz stood there. “We’ve had a setback. We’re going to need to change some of our plans. How fast can we get to India?”
“I’ll have the jet ready as soon as possible. Let me make a few calls.” Damon stepped away, but Baz stayed, his dark eyes watching the scene playing out in front of him.
“Go back to your seat, Charlie. I can’t deal with you right now.” Ian dismissed her utterly.
She couldn’t accept that. “I want to help, but I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”
Ian’s eyes went to the door, hardening slightly, and when he looked back at her there was an icy will in them. “Avery’s dead.”
“What?” She didn’t quite understand the words. They didn’t make sense so she had to have heard him wrong. Her paranoid brain was making connections that weren’t there.
“I said Avery is dead.” Ian drew out each word as if giving her time to process them separately.
The air left her lungs as the meaning hit her. Liam’s wife, the one who had smiled and welcomed Charlie, was gone? The one who was knitting baby clothes? Liam’s pregnant wife was dead? It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. “How?”
“Her brakes were cut. She lost control of her car and the ER doc pronounced her dead an hour ago.”
Charlie felt her knees go weak, but she forced herself to stand. Fourteen roses. She did a quick count and nausea rolled.
“Ian, what are you doing?” Alex asked.
Ian said something, but she didn’t hear anything else. All she could see was pretty, sweet Avery. Avery had been through so much and she hadn’t deserved to die.
Her uncle was coming after all of them, very likely in conjunction with Eli Nelson.
The two men who hated her most in the world were coming after her, and they were obviously playing for keeps. Fourteen yellow roses. One for each of them. They would kill everyone. They would take out Ian and his brother and their friends and wives and likely even their children.
A sob caught in her throat. They might not know about Jesse. He didn’t have ties to Nelson. He’d barely been on the payroll for more than a few months. She would be surprised if they knew about him. If that fourteenth rose wasn’t meant for him, then it had to be for the baby. God, there was a rose for Carys. There was a rose for Grace and Sean’s baby girl. Ian’s niece.
All that death would be her fault because she’d come back into his life. He would lose his family. They would all lose because Chelsea was right. She’d been selfish, thinking only of herself, of getting back to the place where she felt safe. But in doing that, she’d placed all the people she cared about in danger.
She’d never had a chance. From the moment she’d been born, her path had been set, and every time she tried to find a way out, someone died. She wouldn’t get that house filled with children. She wouldn’t get to wake every morning and see their little faces and know that they would carry on after she and Ian were gone.
She had always been meant to die, her painful existence erased in a single bullet.
Guilt gnawed at her gut. There was only one way to try to make things better.
She turned to the door and walked out, a calm settling inside. She’d cost Liam his wife. She couldn’t cost the rest of them. Maybe her uncle would be satisfied with her. Maybe he would give up the rest. Perhaps he’d sent the flowers as a warning for her to give over to the inevitable without taking down everyone around her.
“Charlie?” Ian’s voice rang out, but she couldn’t listen to him now.
It would be such a simple thing. She would go and sit on the bench outside the building. It was pretty there. There were pansies of all different colors and green grass. She could sit on the bench and wait. If she let her mind go, she wouldn’t even feel it when the bullet found her heart or her head or wherever they decided to aim.
It would be fitting to let them take her outside his office. She’d gotten close. So close.