CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

NICK

“How long have you been with the Graystone’s?” I asked Emilia smoothly, narrowing my eyes when she faltered with the knife she was holding, nearly stabbing herself in the thumb.

“Years,” she answered, without actually giving me a real answer.

There was a tremor in her hands, and her voice was shaky. All the while, she refused to meet my eyes. My suspicions were definitely growing.

“How many people knew of your location?”

“Only one.”

“Who?”

“Emilia, but it’s not her. She would never betray us.”

My conversation with Warren from the first time that he’d called to tell me he was going to be delayed played on a loop in my head. There had been an attack on him that previous night, too, and the only woman who knew where he was that night was standing in front of me in the kitchen now, busying herself with chopping vegetables for dinner.

The late afternoon light filtering through the windows cast shadows over her face and accentuated the deep wrinkles that furrowed into her skin. Just like Warren, she’d aged since I met them a little over a month ago. She slid her hands over the gleaming marble countertops, picking at nonexistent specks of dust as she tried to avoid looking at me once she’d added the vegetables to a pot that was simmering on the stove.

Alicia was in the shower, though she’d only agreed after I’d called the hospital on a secure line. Warren was still in surgery, but the nurse assured us that it was a flesh wound and that Warren was expected to make a full recovery.

It was the first time Emilia and I were alone, and the woman’s body language wasn’t right. I’d been interrogating her for the past ten minutes, but all of her answers were as vague as the one she’d given me seconds before.

Considering the shaky hands and voice, her seeming inability to look me in the eye when she spoke to me, and her near skewering of her own hand, I was sure that my initial assessment of Emilia being the leak was correct.

If it had been just one of those things, I might’ve doubted her involvement, especially given her length of service with the family, but all of those things put together? All was not right with Emilia. Plus, I’d seen her work plenty of times back in the Hamptons. She’d been nervous there, too, but her hands had been steady, and her voice had been sure.

The woman in front of me now was neither steady nor sure. She was on the verge of something. I just didn’t know what, exactly. There was a minuscule possibility that whatever was going on with her had nothing to do with being the informant, but the timing of her impending breakdown was too coincidental.

And I wasn’t a big believer in coincidences.

Emilia turned to watch the waves crashing onto the beach through the kitchen window, sighing almost wistfully before returning her attention to stove.

Why wistful? I wondered.

The delicious smells that were wafting from the pot invaded my senses, a rich garlic and vegetable concoction that was making my mouth water, almost distracting me from my fact-finding mission. Almost, but not quite.

Trying her best to sound nonchalant, Emilia turned the tables on me. “So, have you been enjoying your time with the Graystone family?”

I nodded.

“You and Alicia have sure spent a lot of time together,” Emilia remarked, sneaking a sidelong glance at me before stabbing at a carrot.

“I’m her personal bodyguard,” I replied flatly. “It’s an occupational hazard.”

“I’m sure you’re very… thorough,” she said, then added. “With your job.”

The conversation was veering into dangerous territory, so I made a noncommittal noise in the back of my throat and took back control. She was trying to distract me. It was too bad for her that I spotted her tactic, and I wasn’t falling for it.

Inclining my head to the chopping board, I steered to the conversation back to where I wanted to go. “You’re very committed to your job, too. A lot of employees wouldn’t have stuck around through all this.”

Emilia paled slightly, an almost imperceptible shiver running through her tiny frame. “I am. I couldn’t leave them right now. Not in their time of need.”

She turned away from me, but there was a low crack in her voice when she said the words “right now.”

Interesting.

“It is a difficult time. It must be a difficult time for you, too, knowing that they’re in danger.” I carefully watched her responses to my questions, noticing that the woman was strung out, despite how much she was trying to hide it.

Her voice was small when she answered me. “It has been a difficult time.”

Sticking a spoon into the pot, she dipped it and brought steaming liquid to her mouth, blowing on it before she took her small sip. Her hands were shaking so much that there was almost no liquid left in the spoon to taste. She realized that I noticed it when she snuck a peek at me, clearly not knowing that I’d been watching her all along. She brushed it off. “Old age, you know.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

Emilia’s eyes fell to the ocean again, narrowing for less time than it took for my heart to beat before she schooled her features and started chopping celery to add to the pot. If I hadn’t been watching her so closely, I would’ve missed it.

But I was. And I didn’t.

My own eyes roamed the waves swelling and crashing onto the beach from the sound, but there was nothing out there. The sound and the beach were as empty as they had been since Alicia and I arrived.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, further alerting me to how very uncomfortable Emilia’s behavior was making me. Something wasn’t just off with her. It was wrong.

“Beautiful view from here, isn’t it?” I nodded toward the beach, since she seemed so interested in it.

“It is,” she agreed, still not looking at me.

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked. It suddenly seemed important to know.

She finally met my eyes, as if this was a safe topic of conversation for her. “In Nantucket?”

“No, at this house.” I didn’t take my gaze off hers as I said it, but she didn’t hold it. She spun around and grabbed for the knife again, as if she was desperate for something else to do. She butchered a piece of meat she had resting on the counter.

“No, I didn’t even know that this place existed until this morning,” she finally said when it became clear that I was waiting for her answer and that I wasn’t letting the question slide. She shook her head. “I’ve always only worked for the family in New York. Why do you ask?”

I decided that being honest was the best way to go under the circumstances. This woman, whatever her involvement was with what was happening to the Graystones, wasn’t a mobster or a trained assassin. I doubted that she expected directness, or that she would handle it well, especially considering that she couldn’t even look at me while we talked about seemingly innocent things.

“I’m asking because I’m assessing the likelihood of an attack,” I said, my voice even.

Emilia scoffed. “And why would I have anything to do with that?”

Her eyes drifted out the window again, to the ocean beyond, and finally settled on a bright yellow vase, sickle-leaved Golden Asters that Alicia and I had picked during a walk the day before. Emilia was trying to keep calm, but her breathing was coming faster, and a vein in her neck popped and throbbed.

I leaned forward on the counter, my voice low. “Why? Because I have reason to believe that you’re hiding something.”

She whirled around to face me, her cheeks flushed with indignation. A dark look crossed her usually kind features as she stared at me defiantly. “Well, if I did, I wouldn’t be the only one, would I now?”

“What are trying to say, Emilia?” I had a pretty good fucking idea, but I didn’t like veiled threats. I hated thinly veiled threats even more, especially since this one was aimed at me and the woman I fucking loved.

“I’m saying that you stop asking about what I do behind closed doors, and I won’t ask who you’re doing behind them,” she said. It didn’t sound very threatening coming from the tiny scrap of a woman, but I knew the threat was very real.

My heartbeat sped up, and my palms grew clammy. I shot her menacing look. “You don’t know shit about what I do when my doors are closed.”

Emilia turned on me with a knowing smile on her face. “You want to know something that I learned from fading into the background for so many years?”

No. I didn’t answer her, staring into her surprisingly determined eyes as I waited for her to answer her own question.

“I learned to watch, Mr. Harden. I hear things, even when I’m not in the room with you, and you know what I find strange?”

Again, I didn’t answer her. I wasn’t about to take the bait or to play into her little intimidation game. The stakes were too high for me.

“I never heard one of Warren’s bodyguards calling him princess like I heard you call Alicia. I never saw one of them staring at him like he wanted to devour him. Yet, I’ve watched you lust after that girl since the second you stepped foot onto the property. I might not know exactly what’s going on between the two of you, but I bet Warren would be very interested to hear all about the heat in Alicia’s eyes when she looks at you.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told her, my voice colder than ice.

Emilia smiled sweetly. “And neither do you. So, don’t worry. I won’t say anything to Warren.”

She didn’t say yet, but I heard it tacked onto her statement by the silence that stretched out afterward. Eventually, she turned her attention back to hacking up the meat she’d been busy with earlier, adding softly, “Let’s just agree to butt out of each other’s business, shall we?”

I didn’t want to agree, so I didn’t.

Emilia’s little show had me more suspicious of her than ever, but I was going to have to toe the line carefully. I might be restrained because of her threat of exposing the relationship I was forming with Alicia, but there was also no way I was letting Emilia do something that could hurt her.

Not over my dead. Fucking. Body.