Dean opened the door. Aaron stepped in, eyed Dean’s knife, and let the door shut behind him.
“I appreciate that someone’s watching out for Sloane,” Aaron told Dean. “But I also feel compelled to point out that a knife like that wouldn’t do much good if the person on the other side of this door had a gun.”
All that glitters is not gold, I thought, taking in the warning embedded in Aaron’s words. You’re used to the people around you being armed. The world you grew up in is a dangerous, glittering place.
Dean gave Sloane’s brother a dead-eyed stare. “You might be surprised.”
Aaron must have seen something there that sent a chill down his spine. “I’m not armed,” he assured Dean, “and I’m not here to hurt anyone. You can trust me.”
“Not an incredibly trusting fellow, Dean,” Michael said lightly. “Must come from being raised by a psychotic serial killer with a fondness for knives.” He gave Aaron a steely smile. “Do come in.”
Aaron’s eyes sought out Lia. “You’re the one who can detect lies?” he asked.
“Who?” Lia said. “Me?”
“I’m not armed,” Aaron said again, staring her straight in the eye. “And I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
Without another word, he took a seat in the living room. Dean sat opposite him. I stayed standing.
“As you are doubtlessly aware,” Aaron started, “Beau Donovan and I got into an altercation last night.”
The debacle backstage at Tory’s show seemed like a lifetime ago—and given what we’d learned since then, almost painfully insignificant.
“You brought another girl to Tory’s show.” Sloane didn’t look at Aaron as she spoke. She stared at the window behind him—at her map and her calculations and the Fibonacci spiral. “Beau considers Tory his sister. I suspect a nontrivial percentage of his demographic would have reacted similarly, under such circumstances.” Then, as if that weren’t clear enough, Sloane elaborated. “According to my calculations, there was a ninety- seven-point-six percent chance you deserved to be punched in the nose.”
Aaron’s lips tilted upward slightly. “I heard you were good with numbers.”
I couldn’t detect even a hint of criticism in Aaron’s tone. From Michael’s expression, I didn’t think he caught any, either. My mind went to Sloane saying that she wanted Aaron to like her.
I studied Aaron. You do like her. You want to know her.
“How about we focus on this mythical thing you need us to give to the FBI?” Lia came and sat on the arm of Dean’s chair. She didn’t like strangers, and she didn’t trust them—especially not with Sloane.
Aaron reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a clear case. Inside, there was a DVD. “Security footage,” he said. “Taken from a pawn shop across the street from where Victor McKinney was attacked.”
Lia’s silence seemed to confirm that the DVD was what Aaron had said it was.
“Victor was our head of security,” Aaron continued. “From his perspective—and my father’s—Beau Donovan was a security risk.”
Beau had attacked Aaron. He hadn’t done any damage, but to a man like Grayson Shaw, I doubted that mattered. If Sloane’s father viewed Sloane as little more than an inconvenient possession, his legitimate son would be viewed not just as property, but as an extension of himself.
I’d seen that dynamic before—with Dean’s father.
“If you’ll play the footage, you’ll see that Victor was the one who followed Beau, not the other way around. Victor was the one who slammed
Beau against a wall. And Victor,” Aaron made himself finish, “is the one who pulled a gun and put it to the side of Beau’s head.”
Dean absorbed that information in a heartbeat. “Your head of security never had any intention of pulling the trigger.”
Aaron leaned forward. “Beau didn’t know that.”
Sloane’s father liked issuing orders and ultimatums. It was a small hop to threats. Beau wasn’t a person who would take well to being threatened. He had a temper. The moment the gun came out, he would have fought back.
“He grabbed a loose brick,” Aaron said.
Blunt-force trauma.
“Self-defense,” I said out loud. If Victor McKinney had drawn a gun on Beau, it was a clear case of self-defense. And if Aaron had seen the connection between Beau’s arrest and what the Majesty’s head of security had been sent to do, Grayson Shaw almost certainly had as well.
“How could your father let Beau take the fall for the first four murders?” I asked. “Doesn’t he care that there’s a serial killer still out there?”
“My guess?” Aaron replied. “My father thinks he and the FBI have scared the original killer away. He’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. As it stands, Beau Donovan will never lay hands on me again, and no one is questioning why the Majesty’s head of security went after Beau.”
“Why bring this to us?” Lia asked. “Daddy Dearest isn’t going to be very happy with you.”
“He rarely is.” Aaron stood, shrugging off the words like they meant nothing—which, of course, told me they meant more than he would ever admit.
You’re the golden boy. The first-born son. The heir.
I stared at him for a moment, my mind assembling the pieces of the puzzle. You don’t go against your father without a reason. “Tory,” I said. “You did this for Tory.”
Aaron didn’t reply, but Michael translated his expression. “Yeah,” he said, sounding gut-punched at the depth of emotion he saw on Aaron’s face. “He did.”
I read between the lines of Michael’s words, my gaze locked on Aaron’s. You love her. The realization took hold in the pit of my stomach.
Aaron’s phone buzzed. He looked down, saved from confirming that he’d risked his father’s wrath to save Beau because Beau was Tory’s brother.
“Do we want to know what that text says?” Sloane asked.
Aaron looked up, meeting his sister’s gaze. “That would depend on how you feel about the man Beau put in a coma waking up.”
