Chapter 14
“You could have tried calling before you just burst in here,” Logan complained to Bryce after August had jumped quickly to her bare feet, holding her unfastened robe closed as she fled the room.
The only reason Logan hadn’t followed her yet was because he was pretty sure August needed a few minutes to freak out on her own at having had Bryce walk in on them.
“Two things wrong with that statement, bro,” Bryce bit out. “Number one, as I’ve already said, your cell phone is going straight to voicemail. Number two,” he added as Logan would have spoken. “You shouldn’t have been fucking August in the first— What the hell?” Bryce protested as he suddenly found himself pressed up against the wall, one of Logan’s hands about his throat. “Get your hand off me before I break all your fingers,” he warned with deadly coldness.
Logan knew his brother was capable of doing what he threatened. They had all been in the army, but Bryce had gone one step further and joined Special Ops. They had never asked Bryce exactly what his capabilities were, nor was he allowed to tell them of the missions he had been on, but he was the brother Atticus always sent when extreme stealth was needed.
Logan didn’t give a flying fuck what Bryce’s capabilities were as his fingers tightened about his brother’s throat rather than releasing him. His face was mere inches away from Bryce’s while he warned, “Atticus used that word earlier too, and I don’t want to hear either of you ever talking about August in that way again. We were making love together, not fucking!”
All the tension left Bryce’s body, his head tilting to one side as he studied Logan’s snarling expression. “I’ve never seen you like this before,” he finally murmured.
“Like what?” Logan challenged.
“As if, maybe only for a brief time, the voices in your head have stopped tormenting the hell out of you.”
That was exactly how being with August made Logan feel. His head cleared, the past became exactly that, and he could see and think clearly for the first time in months. Quite what that meant…
“You love her.”
What the—?
Logan’s fingers tightened briefly about Bryce’s throat before he set his brother free and stepped back.
“You’re in love with August Harvey,” Bryce clarified.
Was he? How was that even possible when Logan didn’t even know what love was?
It was peace.
A fierce need to protect that went beyond anything Logan had ever felt before.
Feeling that same need to see her smile, laugh, even cry, when he was the one who got to hold her when she did.
An arousal that Logan couldn’t control.
Was that love?
“You might want to put that away.” Bryce nodded in the direction of Logan’s unfastened jeans, his boxers still pushed down at the front too. “I’ve seen it before, and it does absolutely nothing for me.”
Logan straightened his clothing distractedly. “What the fuck are you doing in my apartment at—Jesus,” he muttered after a glance at his wrist watch. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.” He didn’t bother asking how Bryce had got in. If his brother wanted in, then he got in.
Bryce sobered. “There’s been another attack.”
Logan stilled. “Who?”
“Jarvis? Jervis?” His brother frowned. “The owner of the gallery where August works.”
“Jervis,” Logan supplied distractedly, his mind racing. “What happened?”
“He’s currently being treated for multiple injuries at the same hospital as Jenna,” Bryce dismissed.
“Conscious?”
“Yes. The police are questioning him, but he isn’t saying much about who attacked him.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t know anything. Jenna didn’t.” Logan scowled. “When was he attacked and how?”
Bryce shrugged. “Some of Gregori Markovic’s men found him in a warehouse down near the docks just after midnight. Apparently, Rourke had a conversation with Volkov earlier today, so the Russian called Atticus first and then an ambulance before doing his usual trick of disappearing into the night,” he added with obvious admiration.
They all knew that Nikolai Volkov, the right-hand man and bodyguard of Gregori Markovic, head of London’s bratva, had survived growing up on the dangerous streets of Moscow. He had talents that rivaled even Bryce’s.
Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Have the police picked up Waterston and asked him where he was this evening? Although that doesn’t let him off the hook, because he wouldn’t have dirtied his own hands.”
Bryce’s top lip curled back. “They went to his apartment, but they have to wait until the drugs wear off before they can question him.”
“Drugs?”
Bryce nodded abruptly. “Apparently, Waterston is a cocaine addict.”
Which explained why Logan had sensed earlier that there was something off about the other man. Waterston’s façade was good, but… “His father knew.” It explained why Waterston Senior had worded his will the way he had. If Adam Waterston had access to all his inheritance at once, he would no doubt be dead within a year.
“It would seem so, yes.”
“It’s also the reason Waterston takes out the fifty thousand in cash every month,” he realized. “To pay for his habit.”
“Apparently, only the good stuff will do for our boy Waterston,” Bryce confirmed. “Since Markovic and Fescaru cut off the main supply coming into London, drugs have become an expensive commodity.”
Fescaru hadn’t been head of the Romanian Mafia for long, but his first act when he took over had been to stop bringing in the large amount of illegal drugs his predecessor had. It kept the streets of London free of addicts, but it also made them that much more desperate.
“The police became concerned after the man on the security desk confirmed Waterston was in his apartment but didn’t answer when the guy rang up to tell him he had visitors,” Bryce continued. “The security man then let the police into the apartment, and they found Waterston in his bedroom high as a fucking kite. If nothing else, he can be charged with being in possession of an illegal substance,” he added with satisfaction. “He must have been celebrating the arrival of a fresh supply, because he’d left the bag of cocaine on his bedside cabinet for all to see.”
Logan gave a disgusted shake of his head. “The guy’s more of an idiot than I thought he was.”
“So it would seem.”
His gaze sharpened. “Are the paintings all still there?”
Bryce nodded. “All present and correct.”
Logan frowned. “We’ve hidden August where she can’t be found, and so the men who attacked Jenna went after Jervis instead, as a way of Waterston continuing the myth it’s an outside job?”
“Atticus agrees with that theory, yes.”
Logan gave his brother a searching glance. “But you don’t.”
Bryce shrugged. “What I think is that it’s an awful lot of planning and subterfuge for a crackhead to have made. I’m not even sure how Waterston would have gone about hiring these men. There’s hardly a listing in the phone book under rent-a-thug,” he dismissed.
“If not him, who else could it be?”
“Me.” August stepped back into the sitting room, feeling less embarrassed now that she was fully dressed and had brushed her hair into some semblance of order. “Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Mr. Steele?” She gave Bryce Steele a pointed glance. “That I orchestrated the attack on both Jenna and now Mr. Jervis as a way of diverting attention away from myself?”
She hadn’t intended to listen in on the conversation between the two brothers, but her steps down the hallway had faltered the moment she heard them mention Adam and then Mr. Jervis’s name. Shock had held her rooted to the spot after Bryce Steele said Edward Jervis had now been attacked too and revealed Adam Waterston as being a drug addict.
She felt instant concern for Edward Jervis and pity for Adam for wasting his life. “Mr. Steele?” she prompted when Bryce didn’t answer her.
He looked at her with a chilling, totally assessing gray eyes.
All the Steele brothers August had met so far had an element of danger to them, but this man took it a step further.
Rourke was outwardly charming but with a steely armor beneath.
Atticus was scary as hell, both to look at and in the way he focused so single-mindedly on the protection of his family.
Haydn gave the appearance of being a complete nerd, but even he had that edge to him that warned against getting too close to him.
Logan was annoying, infuriating, dangerous, arousing, but he also made August feel safe, as if no one and nothing could get to her when he was at her side.
But Bryce…
Bryce was cold, controlled, and surrounded by a deadly aura, along with a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude that was both mesmerizing and repellent at the same time.
August was currently the focus of all that intensity of emotion.
“It’s one possibility,” Bryce finally murmured.
“What the hell—”
“Don’t, Logan.” August stopped him as he would have lunged across the room toward his brother. “The theory has validity. Adam Waterston obviously isn’t responsible, and it could have only looked as if Jenna had been mistaken for me, when in fact I made her the target all along.”
“That has to be the biggest load of crap I have ever heard in my life,” Logan rasped.
August’s smile was derisive. “That’s because I’ve made sure your judgment is blinded by lust every time we’ve been together. Isn’t that right, Mr. Steele?” She looked at Bryce.
His cold gray eyes narrowed on her. “I’ll admit it was a theory before I actually met you, but now that I have?” He shook his head. “I no longer think that.”
“Why not?” she challenged.
Bryce shrugged. “You aren’t the type.”
“Not femme fatale enough for you?” she taunted.
“August, what the hell are you doing?” Logan demanded impatiently.
She looked at him coolly. “I’m running with Bryce’s theory and seeing where it takes us.”
“It’s going to take you over my knee if you continue implicating yourself in this way,” Logan warned before turning to his brother. “August didn’t do any of those things.”
“I know,” Bryce drawled.
“How can you be so certain?” August demanded.
“Because if you did, my brother wouldn’t be defending you so vehemently,” he stated calmly.
A blush warmed August’s cheeks. “I’ve just explained why that might be the case—”
“August, and I say this with the greatest respect, would you shut the fuck up?” Logan bit out impatiently. “I’ve seen you with Jenna, and you aren’t capable of hurting her. Besides which, there’s a serious fault in the possibility of you having deliberately set out to seduce me in order to keep me distracted,” he added ruefully. “Think about it,” he encouraged huskily when August looked at him blankly.
She knew Logan had definitely been distracted earlier when she went on her knees in front of him and licked and sucked and stroked his cock until he came.
He had been distracted by her yesterday too when the two of them made love, to the point that even when Logan had discovered she was still a virgin—
Oh.
August’s virginity until yesterday was the fault in the theory she had just proposed. Because if she was the seductress and manipulator she had suggested she might be, then the chances of her still being a virgin at the age of twenty-two weren’t very high. Not impossible, but unlikely.
“Okay,” she conceded, avoiding meeting Logan’s eyes. “But if we’ve eliminated Waterston and me, then it has to be someone else.”
“Someone who already knows when the paintings are going to be delivered to the gallery on Saturday,” Bryce put in.
August frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“Because if that wasn’t the case, then someone would be dead by now,” he stated bluntly. “The attacks have been brutal but not deadly. That indicates a lack of…intent to kill on their part,” he drawled. “That these attacks were meant only as a distraction from the real culprit.”
There were only three people who knew when the paintings were arriving at the gallery on Saturday.
August.
Adam Waterston.
And Edward Jervis.