Young Revelations (Young Series) (45 page)

“And if we’re not done laughing?” Claire asks, grinning.

Rolling his eyes, Matthew turns and leaves the kitchen, snatching Tyler off the floor where he stands, causing him to squeal. After a bit of scuffling in the hall which I assume to be Matthew grabbing Tyler’s bag, the door opens and shuts, and then silence. I turn back to Claire. “I should probably catch up before they get anymore impatient,” I say, sliding off the stool.

Chuckling, Claire sets down her coffee mug, walks around, and links her arm with mine as we walk towards the front door. “Well, I’m going to be sad to lose the third adult in the house,” she tells me lightly. “And while my door is always open to you no matter what, whenever, and for however long you need, I sincerely hope you only ever come back here for a day visit.”

I laugh, resting my head against hers for a moment. “Me too,” I respond. “But thank you, for everything. Really.”

She smiles. “Anytime. Maybe I’ll pop by the compound later this week to help with whatever wedding preparations Matty didn’t finish.”

We make our arrangements, and she says she’ll bring my clothes and whatever else we might have left lying around, and I open the front door just in time for Matthew to press his hand on the car horn. The windows are rolled down so I can hear a familiar childish giggle before Tyler pushes his way towards the front seat to mimic his father’s actions.

Groaning with not entirely false exasperation, I reach back to give Claire another hug. “Wish me luck with those two,” I say wryly.

She
laughs. “I think you’ll survive,” she tells me. Her expression sobers pretty quickly. “Just do me a favor?” My brow furrows in question and confusion at her sudden change in tone. “Take care of my brother, Sam. He puts up one hell of a front and acts like everything rolls off his back like water, but sometime soon, he’s going to crash hard and he’s going to need you to pick up the pieces. If you can’t do that, I think you need to reconsider your decision to go home with him.”

I’m momentarily stunned by her words, mostly the last statement. “I’ll take care of him,” I assure her quietly. “As long as he’ll let me.”

She nods once to signal the end of the subject and starts waving me out the door. “Get out. You’re letting out all the warm,” she says, only partly joking.

As I head back towards the car where my boys are very eagerly awaiting my arrival, I have to consider Claire’s parting words—the ones about Matthew, that is—and I’ve wondered about the same thing. He can pretend everything that’s happened is magically fixed by my coming home to him, but I know better. We still have so many hurdles to jump before we can get to our happily ever after. They say third time’s a charm, so maybe that applies to us. All I really know is that whatever it takes, I’m in this until the very end. I can only hope the very end is several decades in the future.

––––-o––––-

Today has been beyond perfect. Breakfast with my girl—girls, if we count Olivia. Getting to see my son’s face light up with pure joy when I told him he was coming home with me. Taking Sam and Tyler to the backyard fire pit to keep my promise about the s’mores. Laughing at how Tyler managed to get more melted marshmallow on his face and in his hair than he actually got in his mouth. Listening to Samantha’s happy laughter and realizing how much I’ve missed it.

I’ve lost so much time with both of them and the blame can be spread around to several people, but when it comes down to it, I’m responsible for that loss. It would have been so easy to chase Samantha to Omaha and beg her to come home again—she probably would have agreed in a second. Instead I stayed here and wallowed in self pity for years on end. More recently, I’ve chosen to trust others over her, to keep things from her over and over again, to push her away. That part of my life is done. There is nobody I trust more than Samantha.

After our very unhealthy lunch of graham crackers, half-burnt marshmallows, and chocolate, we retreated into the house to escape the snow that started falling and spent our afternoon in the basement watching movies. Well, Tyler and I watched movies. Samantha napped. All in all, I can’t remember ever having a more perfect Sunday.

That thought lasts until Tyler is tucked into bed and Sam and I are heading back to our bedroom in a fashion that makes me feel like we’re teenagers sneaking around behind our parents’ backs. We walk past my office and my good mood slips when I hear my phone ring from behind the doors. I know immediately who is calling; only a handful of people call that rather than my cell and only when something is wrong. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. I glance down at Samantha who stares at the door with the same level of disappointment and annoyance I’m currently feeling. For a moment I consider just letting it ring and go to voicemail, though every part of me says to answer it.

“Go,” she urges softly, squeezing my upper arm. “I was going to grab a glass of water anyway.”

I nod. “I won’t be long,” I promise her, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

She grins suggestively and walks away, intentionally exaggerating the way her hips move for my sole benefit. Groaning, I head into my office. This woman will be the death of me. And what a wonderful death it will be.

“This better be really fucking good,” I snap when I answer the phone.

There’s a slightly muffled snort of laughter on the other end. “Good to hear your voice too, Young,” Marcus responds. “Sorry if I’m interrupting, but I thought you’d want to be aware of the developments.”

“Thought you weren’t going to apprise me of anything unless it was important.” I close my eyes and sink into my office chair at his silence, knowing that’s why he’s calling. “What happened?”

Marcus sighs. “We’re having some trouble trailing Frank Marone,” he tells me. “One of his aliases popped up this morning in San Diego. Four hours later, another one in Miami. There was one in Oklahoma City, another in Vancouver, Canada, and a fifth in Sydney, Australia. You get the idea…”

“Were any of them real?” I ask, pinching the bridge of my nose as I feel an oncoming headache.

“Not from what we could tell,” Marcus responds. “That’s why I wanted to touch base with you, make sure you’ve got your guard up. That fucker could be anywhere right now and apparently he knows enough to evade our search efforts. I don’t know what his intentions are, and if you do, now is the time to tell me, because then I’ll know what I’m looking for.”

I sigh in return. “Honestly, Marcus, I don’t know what he wants. Bad business dealings shouldn’t lead to this sort of bullshit. This is personal and I don’t know whether it’s about Leo or something else entirely, but he’s dangerous.”

“Now that I agree with,” Marcus says tiredly. “Like I said, keep your eyes open. I don’t know what sort of security arrangements you’ve got for Samantha and your son, but you probably want to increase it, whatever it is.”

“They’re here with me,” I tell him. “At home. They’re safe.” I try not to think about that statement too much; they’ve already been taken from here once, so who’s to say it can’t happen again. I swallow hard at the thought. “Security has been increased already and I’ve got half the town on high alert. Marone comes back and they’ll know.”

“We’ll see,” Marcus says grimly. “And I’m glad to hear you’ve got your family back, Matt. Keep them close. Keep them safe. I’ll do whatever I can from my end and we’ll get together sometime this week to discuss our next moves.”

“I will,” I reply. “Thanks for calling.”

A moment later the line goes dead and with a heavy sigh, I drop the handset back onto its base and look up at the door to my office, which I left standing open. Samantha is there, holding her glass of water, her expression wary. I sigh heavily and push myself out of my chair to go to her. “How much did you hear?” I ask her softly.

“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop,” she insists in a whisper. “I was heading back to bed and wanted to see if you were going to be much longer.”

I smile at her. “It’s fine,” I tell her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “How much did you hear?”

“Not much. Something about Frank.”

I nod, taking her hand and leading her into the room. “So more than enough to concern you,” I declare.

She shrugs. “I suppose. Should I even bother asking you what’s going on?” she asks. “Or reminding you everything we said last night about not keeping anymore secrets?”

“No, I don’t need the reminder,” I answer. “I was waiting to tell you what I knew until there was something to actually tell you.” We walk over to sit in the armchairs across from my aquarium. “I don’t want to keep things from you, Sam, not after everything we’ve been through. At the same time, though, every fiber of my being is telling me to protect you from this as much as I can.”

“And I appreciate that,” she says sincerely, “but I want to help. Whether that means trying to help you figure things out or just being your sounding board, I want to do whatever I can.”

I smile slightly, bringing her fingers to my lips to kiss. “And I appreciate
that
,” I reply with a wink. Taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, I think through everything I’ve learned and how to best explain it without scaring her anymore than she needs to be. I don’t want her scared; I want her content and happy, but she needs all the facts to know what it is we’re facing. Even if I don’t know exactly what’s going on. Sighing heavily, I focus on my fish swimming around as though they haven’t a care in the world. Never thought I’d be jealous of a Goddamned fish…

“When I got word that you were working at the travel agency in town with Frank, I nearly went ballistic,” I tell her. “Punched a hole in a wall and everything. That was the moment I realized there was more going into all this bullshit than I originally thought. I hated the idea that he was so close to you when I was so far away. I couldn’t be there to protect you from him. I know you saw all those files in his desk with pictures of you, of Tyler, and of Saunders, and all that information he’s gathered on you over the last five years or however fucking long it’s been. He’s dangerous and unpredictable at best. At worst, he’s psychotic. We don’t know the lengths he’ll go to in order to get what he wants and I don’t think he’s done.”

Samantha remains silent for a moment and when I glance at her, I’m slightly impressed to find no sign of fear in her eyes. I’m sure she’s come to all these conclusions about Frank on her own, but she and I haven’t really discussed him in-depth yet. She doesn’t know the whole story. “He scares you,” she states quietly. My eyes widen as I turn to look at her. She seems so certain.

I nod very slightly. “Yes, he does.”

She sighs. “What happened between the two of you?” she wonders aloud. “Why does he seem to hate you so much?”

There’s a loaded question if I never heard one before… “I never trusted him,” I begin. “Never particularly liked him and after everything went down between us, I was left wishing I’d never met him to begin with. Frank is,” I pause, rolling my eyes at myself, “
was
Leo’s cousin. They didn’t grow up together or anything and I don’t think Leo knew he existed until Frank popped up one day. Anyway, I don’t know if Frank sought Leo out because of his connection to me or for some other reason. What I do know is that Frank had a business proposition for me and at the time it felt like a no-brainer for me. He had some very powerful connections and I thought if I could get in good with them, I’d be set for life business-wise.”

“What was the proposition?” Sam asks quietly.

“A contract with the CIA that I’d been trying to get on my own, but didn’t have the pull to get my foot in the door,” I answer. “Frank had the connections he needed to secure the contract, but he didn’t have the tools at his disposal to give them exactly what they wanted. I did have those tools; I just didn’t have the necessary connections. So we thought we’d go after it together. And for a while, that worked. We got the contract and it was fantastic, so of course I decided to continue doing business with Frank. But the more we did together, the more I saw how he truly operated. He’s very much an any means necessary guy. And those any means very nearly cost me my company. He was lying and stealing and cheating his way to get what he wanted. I don’t have any proof to back this up, but we suspected he might have killed a rival for one of the contracts we’d gone after. After some time, it got to the point people didn’t want to deal with me anymore because I associated with Frank. He’d become reckless and dangerous, and I did what I had to do and cut him out on one of the deals we were working on together. Well, he didn’t like that. Not at all. He started throwing around accusations that I’d stolen patents from him for things my company developed, things I oversaw directly. Leo tried to talk me into just letting bygones be bygones and that the positives far outweighed the negatives. I disagreed. I think that’s when Frank started coming after me with everything he had… when he started trailing your movements.”

I look over at her to gauge how she’s taking all this to find her hanging on my every word. “You met him once,” I say, squeezing her fingers. “Before you went to work for him, I mean. It was this party we attended when Tyler was only a few months old—the first time we spent an evening away from him. I remember you fretting the entire drive about how he was doing and whether he calmed down after we walked out of the house and if Bonnie would be able to get him to sleep. And I remember how incredible you looked that night in your dress with your hair and makeup done.” I smile at the memory of her walking down the stairs to meet me and how she knocked the breath out of me with only a smile on her face. “Anyway, you’d ducked out at some point to call and check-in on Ty, then headed to the bar for a couple drinks. I watched every move you made, never let you out of my sight. Then I saw Frank approach you. I don’t think he knew who you were or that you were my wife; he probably just saw an opportunity with a pretty girl. Either way, you hardly gave him the time of day and I decided to intervene before he tried anything more. The moment he realized we were married, I swear, Sam, his eyes lit up. Knowing you were mine made him want you all the more. He spent the rest of the night with his eyes glued to you, probably mentally undressing you, and I wanted to beat the shit out of him.”