The Revenge by Tijan

Pinned. Down.

His eyes were smoldering.

He swallowed to get control of himself.

“Oh, Bailey.” Matt pulled me closer and shoved my head into the crook of his shoulder and chest. He started petting me. “I’m here for you. I’m here for my sister. I’m so sorry. That’s so scary.”

Yeah. It was. But my hands started shaking.

It was building in me. Fury.

I was pissed.

My mom was alive, and I hadn’t said one word to anyone. Kash caught me up, whisked me here, and I’d been too stunned to start talking. Everything happened at a whirlwind pace, but now thoughts and emotions were catching up together. They were syncing, and I was livid.

I tore out of Matt’s hold. “I need my computer.”

I swung around.

The room had gone quiet.

I said to Kash, “Raccoon.”

His eyebrows snapped down together. He took one step, made one bark. “Out! Everyone out.”

Everyone scrambled.

In two seconds, we were alone, except for Matt.

He lingered, standing slowly. “Uh, guys—”

“You, too.” Kash nodded toward the door.

“But—”

“Matt.”

My brother pointed between me and him. “We’re Team Ba—”

“Not the fucking time!” Another one of those growls.

“Okay.” He turned for the door. “I’m going, but honestly.” He whirled one last time, his hand on the doorknob. “Are you okay?”

I was already standing, but I felt myself rising inside.

I tipped my chin up. “I’m good.”

He paused, then nodded. “Alright. I’ll leave it at that.” He pounded the door with his palm before leaving, then the door was shut.

Kash moved to lock it. “What’s going on?”

I felt alive.

My body was trembling with the feel of it, and I was fighting to stop from pouncing on him. We didn’t have time for that.

“Remember that guy that tried to kidnap me with Arcane? The one who was in on the first attempt but not the second?”

His frown was fierce. “Chase, right? That’s the name you told the police.”

“Well,” I locked eyes with him, “your twin brother is Chase, and my mom is alive.”





THIRTY-NINE

Kash


This was the moment I had feared.

I couldn’t shake it, and hearing that my twin had come in, that he had touched Bailey, gotten near her, this was my fear. Calhoun had taken everything from me. Both my parents. He had taken my own brother. I didn’t know of him before now, but it didn’t matter. He was stripped from me. And now that same brother had impersonated me, tricked my own men, got through to one of my buildings, and I heard Victoria’s warning.

It was a fucking premonition of sorts.

He wanted to replace me.

This was it. This was what my grandfather always wanted. This was why he had allowed me to live so long, because it never made sense to me. He had allowed me to live.

“How are you handling all this?”

Detectives Bright and Wilson came as soon as they were called. My guards were all debriefed on my twin brother, who to look for, and since then we’d been sequestered inside my office while Bailey gave the FBI a formal report. This wasn’t a local kidnapping attempt, not anymore. This was so much more, and I wanted answers.

I would fucking get answers.

Instead of answering Bright’s question, I pivoted with one of my own. “How was an entire body taken into evidence and processed and no one reported that it wasn’t Chrissy Fucking Hayes?” I ground out, my teeth grinding against each other. “How is it that Bailey witnessed her own mother get shot in the head and now she’s seen alive and well?”

And in the backseat with my goddamn enemy?

“Well…” Bright’s eyes flashed before she got ahold of herself. She ducked her head, glancing back to where Wilson was writing on his notepad, sitting on the couch beside Bailey. “Are we sure she actually saw her mother?”

I nodded my head. “She saw her.”

“How do you know?” She edged closer, lowering her voice. “M.E.’s report was solid. DNA matched Chrissy Hayes, along with her own daughter’s eyewitness testimony of seeing her mother executed.”

Jesus.

I ground my teeth again.

If Bailey had heard that word. Executed.

“You’ll watch how you talk about Chrissy Hayes’s supposed murder when you’re in the presence of her own daughter.” My tone was scathing, and her head whipped back. Her eyes widened.

She got the message. Respect or get out.

“We’re running road cams, all the typical stuff we’d be doing. We need to verify what Bailey saw is who she actually saw and not a play of shadows or something.”

“It wasn’t.”

I knew it in my bones, just like that other feeling. The end was coming.

“We have to make sure—”

“It wasn’t.”

“Your girlfriend’s been in mourning. It makes more sense that she wanted to see her mother and so her subconscious produced what she wanted.”

“She didn’t and it didn’t. She saw her mother.”

“How do you know, Kash?”