Page 33 of Professional Liar
Twelve
Katherine
I pulledBianca out of school as soon as it opened in the morning. Then I went to my penthouse and hid out like a coward, because I knew she’d be coming for me. Angry about the choice I made for her, instead ofwith her. Faced with the murder of our father and attack on us, I felt it necessary. She likely disagreed.
My phone rang shrilly through the echoing loft. The walls were bare. Everything had been packed. The movers were taking loads to storage and Pierce’s house over the next couple of days. I glanced out the window at the skyline beyond. I’d miss it here. I couldn’t sell it, but renting it out still hurt just as much. I ignored the angry ringing.
Maybe I could convince Pierce to move closer to the city, offer me a house with a view. He’d likely consider every lit window an opportunity for a sniper and move us out as a fast as we get in. The man had a preoccupation with my safety, but after yesterday, I couldn’t be annoyed with him for it any longer. He’d likely saved us. After the assassination attempt on me, Bianca and I both took self-defense classes, at our father’s insistence, for years. I’d never used what I learned before.
A box marked clothes tumbled off a stack, and I studied Patton, yet another of Pierce’s crew, as he skirted through box columns to the main room. His buzzed head, leather coat, and scuffed up boots, the same as most of his other guys. “Everything okay?” he asked, Irish accent thick and deep. “Boss is calling, and you aren’t answering.”
I pointed to my phone across the room. “I’m avoiding it.”
He snagged it off the table and brought it to me. Not two seconds after it hit my palm, it lit up again, Pierce’s name flashing across the screen.
“Hello?”
“Are you okay? Why didn’t you answer before?”
I stifled the sigh. “I’m fine. Why do you all keep asking me that? Patton is standing over me as we speak. About the worst thing that can happen to me here is suffocation by cardboard.”
“Or your sister when she finds you.”
Shit. “She called you?”
“Called, yelled, threatened. Sounds eerily familiar.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. At least he wasn’t angry for having to deal with Bianca. But, I should deal with it before she popped a gasket and made things worse. Neither of us were known for our level heads. “I’ll call you later. I’ll go over and speak to her now.”
“See you soon.”
We both lingered on the line. The words hung in the air, but neither of us said them until, finally, I murmured goodbye and clicked off.
Fucking coward, I admonished myself. He’d all but said them. I hadn’t even come close to telling him.
I stood, pulled down my black sheath dress, and snagged the leather jacket of Pierce’s I’d taken to wearing. Since winter still fought spring for control.
Patton led me to the door, checked around every corner, and then out to the waiting car. I didn’t need to tell Holt where to go. He drove me straight to Bianca’s building.
When we parked, I looked up at Patton. “Any chance you can stay here?”
He answered in a short, cut off laugh. “Not a chance, love.”
I let Holt open the door and talked myself through all ten floors to Bianca’s apartment. The one my father bought her outright when she got into NYU, his Alma Mater. As I walked the long hall, I kept trying to reframe my reasons so she would understand them, but I couldn’t wrangle them in a way to keep her from being mad at me.
I knocked on the door and waited, my insides pulled tight. She didn’t answer.
A sound cut through the door, so I knocked again. No answer.
Was she ignoring me now, or trying to piss me off? I dug into my bag for a set of keys and found the spare she gave me last year when she changed her locks. It fit in easily, and I pushed the door open, Patton right on my heels. I scanned the room, and immediately, my eyes hit on why she didn’t answer.
My sister, naked, straddled an equally naked stranger in the middle of her living room floor.
I spun around as she scrambled and squealed behind me to find clothes. Once she seemed to be reasonably covered, and so did he, I turned back. “Sorry to, uh…interrupt.”
The young man couldn’t be older than her, with dark Italian features. Immediately, the events of the attack flashed in my head. “Who are you?” I demanded.
Bianca threw him a boot which he shoved his bare foot into. “Ignore her,” she said.
