Lily’s in the den putting the finishing touches on her article, and I sneak up behind her, trying to catch a glimpse of what she’s writing. When she’s not with one of us or at work, she has her head bent over her laptop, but she refuses to give us a single clue as to what it’s about.
When I get close enough to see her screen, all I see are pictures of puppies. I jump over the back of the sofa and land next to her with a thud. Shrieking, she slams her laptop shut and hugs it to her chest.
“Xander! Please stop doing that to me,” she gasps, but her eyes are full of amusement.
I laugh and give her a kiss on the cheek. “I thought you were working, not looking at pictures of cute puppies. Or is that what your article is about? Cutest puppies of New York?”
Rolling her eyes, she reopens her laptop and unlocks it with her fingerprint. “Not exactly.” She shows me a picture of Rottweiler puppies snuggled up in a pile.
I tilt my head. “Aw. They are cute.”
She nods, a huge smile on her face. “You like dogs.”
“Who doesn’t?” I wrap my arm around her shoulder as she scrolls through more images.
“Some people don’t,” she says in a sad tone, but before I can pick that apart, she goes on. “I always wanted a Rottweiler puppy.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, I’d call him Snowflake.”
I bark out a laugh. “Snowflake? A huge black Rottweiler named Snowflake?”
“Yeah.” She giggles. “I like the irony.”
“I’ve always wanted a dog too, but West and Zeke won’t let me get one.” That isn’t entirely true. If I insisted, they’d jump on board, but their objections always manage to talk me out of it. Apparently puppies are a big responsibility.
“They’re so mean.”
I kiss her sweet-smelling neck. “But if you were to ask for a puppy …” I trail my kisses lower.
“They’d tell me I was crazy,” she says in a breathy tone.
I stop kissing her neck and stare into her bright green eyes. “No. They’d do anything for you, shorty. We all would. Don’t you know that?” She bites down on the soft cushion of her bottom lip, eyes shining as she blinks at me. Holy fuck, she has no idea how much we need her, want her, love her. My chest tightens and I struggle to breathe. Is someone sucking the air from the room?
“You would?” she whispers, her dark eyelashes fluttering against her pink cheeks.
I take her laptop from her hands and place it on the couch, then pull her onto my lap to straddle me. My fingers caress her cheeks, brushing her hair from her face. “I love you, shorty. I can’t believe I never told you that before today, because I think I’ve loved you from the moment you handed me your roach-infested backpack.”
“I love you too, Xander.”
I dust my mouth over hers, and her warm breath mingles with mine. She tastes of coffee and chocolate, and I want to devour her whole. My fucking phone rings before I can. Pulling it from my pocket, I read the text from West. We need you here at the office. It’s important.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I sigh. “I gotta go, shorty.” I give her a quick kiss, barely refraining from sliding my tongue into her mouth and taking what I need from her.
“Wait a fucking minute, you’ve had a PI following Lily and you never told me?” I scowl at Zeke and West. “What the fuck?”
“I told you what Bree told us about her, Xander,” West says, trying to justify this shitshow.
I slam my fist on his desk. “And I told you she’s a crazy fuckbucket who can’t be trusted.”
“We know she is, but I asked Zeke to check out what she said anyway. Just to be sure. I didn’t know about the PI until just now.”
I retrain my glare on Zeke. He scowls back. “Since when do either of you ever question my methods? I get shit done, and you don’t usually give a fuck how I do it.”
“Because this is Lily we’re talking about, you asshole. Fucking Li-ly.” I overenunciate her name to remind him who we’re discussing here. There’s no fucking way Bree is right about her. No way in hell.
A throat clears, and we all turn our attention to Spencer, the PI standing awkwardly in the corner.
Zeke sighs and glares at me. “Tell us what you found, Spencer.”
“Your girl went to the Valencia Hotel. Took the elevator to the presidential suite, then went into a man’s room. Stayed for an hour and left.”
West bounces on his toes. Spencer’s about to get a punch in the face if he’s not careful. “You’re telling us that she went into some guy’s hotel room and stayed for an hour?”
“An hour and six minutes to be exact.”
West’s hand balls into a fist at his side, and I grab his forearm before he literally kills the messenger. “There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
“Who the fuck was he?” Zeke demands.
Spencer’s Adam’s apple bobs, and my stomach sinks. The fear on his face is scaring the shit out of me.
“Who?” West barks.
Spencer winces. “Nico Constantine.”
West’s face turns an unnatural shade of gray. Zeke kicks a chair, sending it flying across the office. I put my head in my hands. What the fuck, shorty?
“Nico fucking Constantine?” West spits the name out like poison.
Spencer nods. “Then on her way out, she ran into another guy who’s affiliated with Carmine Constantine. I grabbed a picture.” He takes his cell phone from his coat pocket and presses a few buttons. A second later, we all get an alert notification.
My heart breaks at the image on my screen. Not because she’s hugging some guy I’ve never seen, but because she wears a look of sheer joy on her face. This isn’t some casual acquaintance; he means something to her.
Zeke slams his fist down on the desk. “You have anything else to share?”
Spencer clears his throat. “No, that’s everything.”
“Then get the fuck out.”
Spencer quickly follows Zeke’s command, leaving the three of us alone with the bomb he just dropped.
West sinks into a chair across from me. “Nico fucking Constantine,” he says again with a shake of his head. “What the actual fuck?”
“You think she’s fucking him?” The mere thought of anyone’s hands on Lily makes me burn with jealous rage, an emotion I’ve never felt before in my life.
Zeke barks a humorless laugh. “Why the fuck else would she spend an hour alone with him in his hotel room, Fitch?”
West scrubs his hands over his face and looks up at the ceiling. “She might not be fucking him, but she’s definitely up to something.”
“You think she knows what went down between us and Carmine Constantine?” I ask.
“Who knows? But that was fourteen fucking years ago.” He gives me a pained look and shakes his head. “I don’t know how that could have anything to do with now.”
I sink into an empty chair like a deflated balloon. “He have any connections to Jensen Michaels? You think he’s trying to fuck up our deal somehow?”
West frowns. “The deal’s as good as done. And what the fuck would the Constantines want with a media company?”
“What the fuck do they want with Lily?” I retort.
West scowls. “Whatever it is, she’s been lying to us all along. She’s been meeting that Constantine piece of shit all this time and never once mentioned him. I’d guarantee he’s the guy who paid for her college. The one she couldn’t keep her hands off of. She’s been fucking the three of us and then sneaking off to his hotel.”
“Maybe it’s something to do with her article?” I know I’m clutching at straws, but there’s no way I can believe that our girl’s been pretending with us all this time.
Zeke sighs. “Genevieve doesn’t publish features on the fucking Mafia, Fitch.”
My head is spinning so fast I feel like I might throw up. Lily wouldn’t do anything to hurt us. She fucking loves us. “So we do what?” After a long moment of silence, during which tension infuses the air and makes it difficult to breathe, West sits up straight and twists his head from side to side. “When we get home tonight, we ask her about her day. And if she fails to mention spending an hour in Nico Constantine’s hotel room, we’ll know that she’s a fucking liar.”
