Conquer Your Love (32 page)

“No.” He threw us a fleeting look over his shoulder. “I’ve discovered a
whole lot of other stuff, but it’s all irrelevant.”

Focus on I.

He had not yet shared his findings with Jett. I swallowed hard.

As if on cue, Kenny’s eyes rested on me. His expression was impassive,
but his eyes twinkled. I couldn’t help but feel slightly alarmed. Did he know?
Could he somehow have tapped into our search engine history and stumbled upon
the word ‘pregnancy?’

“What stuff?” I narrowed my gaze and a silent warning passed between us.

“Favorite bookmarks like certain sports pages, Facebook pages and
Wikipedia. Cookies people always fail to delete… that sort of thing.” He didn’t
smile, but his dark blue eyes twinkled again. “Like I said, all irrelevant.”

My heart banged hard against my ribs.

He knew.

I could see it in his eyes. Hear it in his words.

“I guess
he
wasn’t careful
enough,” I suggested, meaning I hadn’t been careful enough to erase any traces
and because I was the soon-to-be owner, Kenny probably thought the info
material on pregnancies concerned me.

“I’m good at this stuff. I pick things up. It’s like they just fall into
my lap.” Kenny leaned back in his chair and put his iPod on speakers, the sound
of hard rock making me even more nervous.

Damn it, Stewart.

Of course deleting the browser history wasn’t good enough when it came
to hiding something from a professional hacker. Sylvie and I forgot to clear
the cookies, and that’s probably one of the first things someone like Kenny
would check before trying to recover previous versions of the hard drive. I was
ready to bet my
pay check
he could probably retrieve
any sort of information, including the time one used the internet long after I
reset the browser.

“What is he talking about?” Sylvie whispered.

I shrugged and shook my head.

After what felt like half an hour, Jett finally left the bank. My
stomach fluttered as I watched him cross the street. Tall. Mesmerizing.
Dark hair and perfect bone structure.
A
body to die for.
It made me almost anxious to know he was with me.

He opened the car door and slumped into the driver’s seat. From the way
he threw the bag to Kenny before slamming the door shut, I could tell he was
angry.

“Anything?” Kenny asked, switching off the music.

“Nothing.” Jett started the engine and steered the car out of the
parking lot, his face emotionless. He was pissed big time though, which was
obvious from his driving—faster than usual.

“What did—” Sylvie began. I elbowed her gently and shook my head,
my gaze uttering a silent warning.

Jett’s hands tightened on the steering wheel until the white of his
knuckles showed through his skin, but he remained quiet. Knowing Jett, letting
him calm first was the only way anyone would get him to talk. He’d start the
conversation when he was ready.

Half-way
back to the estate, I noticed
his muscles relaxing a little.

“I checked the first two numbers, and then I tried three more,” Jett
finally said, breaking the silence. “They’re not bank accounts. The file we
found is a dead end.”

“Maybe they’re passcodes,” Kenny suggested.

“Passcodes to what?” Jett’s frown line deepened.

Unaffected by Jett’s frostiness, Kenny leaned back into his seat and
shrugged as Sylvie and I kept swapping curious glances.

“Maybe someone deliberated created confusion, so you wouldn’t find out
the answer,” Kenny said. “The right combination could be linking the first
three digits of the first half of the list with the last three digits of the
second half. It’s just a suggestion. I doubt anyone would make this easy on
you.”

“Or they could be different kind of accounts. Not necessarily bank
accounts,” I chimed in.

“I can’t go back without raising suspicion,” Jett muttered. “Either you
find out more, or you hack into wherever you think is necessary to give me
something I can work with.”

“That was exactly my plan, bro.” Kenny opened a foil wrapper and shoved
a piece of chewing gum into his mouth, before tossing the whole pack to me and
Sylvie, leaving a piece near the gearshift for Jett.

By the time
we reached the estate, Jett’s
bad mood had lifted. We walked up the stairs, when Jett pushed me behind his
back and motioned Kenny to be quiet. I scanned the area anxiously and my gaze
fell on the front door. It stood ajar, just a few inches, but funnily enough,
my first thought was that I might have forgotten to lock it when we left.

In spite of my heartbeat spiking, my mind remained surprisingly calm.
Maybe because the rain had stopped, and the sun was shining, clearing the dark
clouds and making it seem surreal that someone could have broken in in the
middle of the day.

Pulling out his gun, Jett instructed me to hide with Sylvie behind the
bushes on the other side of the house and stay there no matter what. And then,
in the blink of an eye, he and Kenny were gone.

“Come on,” I whispered to Sylvie, dragging her to the nearby bushes. We
fought our way through the dense undergrowth, careful not to scratch our arms
and legs. Reaching the backyard, we stooped down and I wrapped my arm around
Sylvie. Our gazes remained glued to the closed balcony door and the house
beyond while I listened for any sounds.

I began to count the seconds inside my head when a gunshot echoed to my
right, then another, and a startled yelp escaped my lips. My heart stopped dead
in my chest and I found myself leaping up and running across the open terrain
around the house and through the front door—my legs shaking bad, my lips
trembling with Jett’s name on them, my mind unaware of the fact that if anyone
decided to shoot I was an easy target.

“Jett,” I shouted, running straight into his arms, happy to find him
safe. The foyer was as silent as a tomb and Jett was alone—the
realization sent a jolt of ice through my veins. “Where’s Kenny?”

“He took off after the guy.”

“Are you hurt?” I brushed my fingers over Jett’s arms and chest,
checking for any wounds.

“No, but listen. I need you to stay inside, hidden. Okay?” He kissed me
absentmindedly and turned to leave. I gripped his upper arm, a rather feeble attempt
at stopping him. “Please, don’t go. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not getting hurt, baby,” he whispered.

“What’s going on?” Sylvie asked, her face a ghastly shade of white.

“Kenny’s following the intruder,” I said.

Her hands moved up to her chest. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled
her aside. “He’ll be okay.”

For the first time I noticed the place was ransacked. Almost every
drawer had been opened and the contents scattered onto the floor.

“Maybe we should lock ourselves up in the kitchen,” I whispered to
Sylvie, figuring that was the only place with an escape exit through the
backdoor and plenty of weapons in case we needed to defend ourselves.

We waited in the kitchen in silence until we heard footsteps departing.
Ever so gently, I locked the kitchen door behind us, grabbed a big butcher-like
knife from the knife rack, and motioned Sylvie to hide behind the kitchen
cupboards. Forcing myself to breathe quietly, I listened for any sounds.

***

“Brooke?” Jett’s voice called from the hall. The strained undertones
betrayed his worry.

“We’re in here,” Sylvie shouted.

My hand still clasped around the knife, I unlocked the door and opened
it. Jett and Kenny were standing in the hall, their faces hard, betraying
nothing. Sylvie jumped into Kenny’s arms. I was tempted to do the same with
Jett, but refrained from it.

“Are you guys okay?” she asked, clinging to Kenny for dear life. “We’ve
been worried sick about you. Thank God no one’s dead.”

“We’re okay,” Jett said. “We couldn’t get them though.”

Them?

I raised my eyebrows and hid my hands behind my back so he wouldn’t see
the knife, or my shaking fingers. “How many are we talking about?”

“Two. One broke in; the other one waited in the car. They sped off.”

“Was it the same car that chased us?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Jett said. “They wore ski masks and the car had no
license plate, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the same car.”

“They spoke English. Right, bro?” Kenny said to Jett. “I heard the first
one yelling something. You almost hit him.”

“You
shot
him?” I asked Jett,
horrified.

What did you expect, Stewart?

Of course I knew violence was pretty much to expect in such a situation,
but the knowledge didn’t make it any easier to accept.

“I didn’t hit him,” Jett mumbled. “Unfortunately. Let’s check what they
took.” I stared at Jett open-mouthed. There was something in his
gaze—just a tiny flicker, but enough to show me he was hiding something
and was trying hard to divert my attention from it.

“Jett, what’s wrong?” I asked, my gaze scanning his body to make sure he
hadn’t been shot. “Are you hurt?” My hands brushed his arms. That’s when I
noticed the tiny blood splatters on his shirt.

“It’s just a scratch,” Jett said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen
worse.”

My throat tightened at his words. Who would say something like that?

“How did it happen?” I pulled at his arm to force him to sit down. He
flinched but didn’t move.

“Knife. I didn’t seem him and he surprised me.”

“Let me see.” Ignoring Jett’s protest, I pulled his shirt up and gasped
at the two-inch wound on his torso. It was no longer bleeding and it didn’t
look deep but he’d need at least proper sanitizing, if not stitches. I didn’t
want his beautiful skin blemished, nor did I want him to endure any sort of
pain.

“We’re going to the hospital.”

“It’s just a scratch, baby,” Jett said, pulling the shirt back down.

“We need to treat that.” I glared at him, annoyed by the determined look
in his eyes.

“I said not now.” He pushed my hand away and started off down the hall
toward the library.

Damn his stubbornness and
unwillingness to give in.

I hurried after him and stopped in the doorway, ready to argue some more
when Kenny let out a string of expletives.

“What’s wrong?” Jett
asked.

Kenny pointed to Alessandro’s computer. It was still there. “Everything
important is gone.”

“What do you mean by everything?” I asked slowly.

“The financial reports,
Lucazzone’s
papers,
the book, and the disk.”

I stared at Jett open-mouthed. My vision blurred and my head felt so
light, I thought I might faint on the spot. “Everything?” I whispered.

Kenny nodded.

“Fuck.” It was the second time I heard Jett swearing.

***

We tidied up the place so Alessandro’s household staff wouldn’t notice
the break-in. As far as I could tell, except for the evidence nothing else was
stolen, nothing was broken. We worked hard to make the place look like it had
before. Even though every piece of evidence was gone, Jett insisted we leave.
We didn’t go to bed that night. After cleaning up, he gave Sylvie and me just
half an hour to pack our belongings, which turned into two hours because Sylvie
had acquired too many things during her brief shopping sprees and couldn’t fit
them in her suitcases.

“Do you think they’ll come back?” I asked Jett when we were alone in my
guestroom, sitting on the
bed,
my suitcase zipped up
at our feet. Jett’s arms wrapped around my waist and he pressed me against him.

“I’m not sure,” he whispered. “They have the book and they have the hard
disk. They have everything they wanted. There’s nothing to come back for.”

He was avoiding my question, so I turned around and peered up at him.

“But it’s not over, is it?” I asked him. I could see it in his eyes, in
the way he bit his lower lip, in the way he struggled to control the angry line
between his brows.

“They have no reason to.” He averted his gaze, still not giving me a
straight answer. “But it’s not safe for you to stay here. I know it’s your
house. I mean it’ll be your house some day, but staying here’s not a good
idea.” He took my hand and pressed his lips against the back of it. “Come back
home, baby. They might have what they wanted, but I’ll feel better if you’re
with me.”

“What about Alessandro? The lawyer called to say he’s in a coma.”

“We’ll figure things out. Okay? Just trust me. We’ll take the next
flight, if need be. There’s no point in you staying, not when you don’t know
how long it’ll take until he wakes up.”