Felix glanced over his shoulder towards the door. “Tell her I’ll be with her in a moment.”
“Okay. She’s in the receiving room.”
“Thanks, Vin.” Felix sighed and shook his head. “What the fuck do they want, Brett?”
Prior to recent events, Brett would’ve waved him off and said something generalised, but after everything that had happened, he couldn’t. He tugged Felix to him and held him tightly, breathing in his scent and thanking his lucky fucking stars that he’d finally got his head out of his ass.
“I don’t know, Felix. But we’ll figure it out.” He pulled back, cupping his jaw. “I promise.”
He wanted to kiss him but wasn’t sure if it would be received well in a room half full of guards, so he didn’t. But as he stepped away, Felix grabbed his hand and pulled him back, placing a chaste kiss on his lips. Heat swept through him.
“Don’t go anywhere without me,” Felix said, heading for the door.
“Where would we be going?” Dominic asked.
Felix stopped just outside the door, his hand on the frame and a quirk to his lips. “You might get some fancy ideas and go jetting off into the sunset.” He winked and disappeared.
Brett hadn’t wanted Felix to face Rico’s wife alone—not that he was concerned she was in on it; as far as they could tell, she was as clean as can be—but for emotional support. However, Felix had said he would prefer to do it alone, so she didn’t feel like they were ganging up on her. He could see his point, but it still left him uneasy.
Heading back to the table they’d been working at, he listened as Dominic and Owen discussed the events at the chapel during Christian and Oscar’s wedding. Brett’s mind detoured to his and Felix’s owneventuntil Owen brought his attention back.
“I still can’t quite get my head around how they managed to stop the camera from seeing them,” Owen said. “It reminds me of magic tricks that you never get a proper answer for how they work.”
“In the basic sense of the idea, think of it like a mirror. You can’t see what’s behind it, only what’s reflected. This is similar, but it uses technology to show what we should see if nothing was there,” Sam said, frowning when Owen shrugged. “Um, how about a TV screen? The screen projects the image of what it should look like behind it.”
“I kind of get it, but it’s just crazy to think how something that we didn’t even notice could do something so big.”
“Did we ever speak to the guest who jumped in the video?” Dominic asked.
Brett paused. “I’m not sure we did.” He met Dominic’s gaze. “Maybe we should, just to cover all bases. Owen, can you sort that?”
“Sure. I’ll head out once I have the info.”
“Thanks.” Brett rubbed his face. “We might as well get all the bits of information we can to make sure we have everything. You can guarantee that the one piece of info we didn’t get is going to be the one we needed to end this.”
“I’m going to check some things about the video from the chapel and the one sent to us,” Sam said. Brett nodded.
Dominic leaned a hip against the table. “How far from their endgame do you think we are?”
“I honestly don’t know, Dom, and that scares the hell out of me.”
Dominic squeezed his shoulder. “Now you have me worried. If you’re scared, then there is usually something to be scared about.” He turned back to the table, staring at the map and pieces of paper littering the top.
“What are you thinking?” Brett asked.
“It’s the fake execution that’s got my head spinning. I get it that they did it to cause devastation and to get us to make mistakes in our grief, but we’ve had men die before, and we managed. Why did they think that happening to Felix would be any different? And what use was he to them alive?” He winced and glanced at Brett, holding up a finger. “Not that I want him dead.”
Brett snorted, humour flowing through him even as the thought of Felix not being in this world cut his heart into a million pieces. “We came up with a potential answer when we spoke with the Sutcliffes. Me. As many of you lot have said over the months, I wasn’t exactly hiding my feelings as well as I’d hoped I had been. If you could see it, others could too. Am I convinced it’s all about me? Not entirely, but it makes sense if I’m right about Venus being part of it. Therefore, Felix’s capture is understandable, but his being kept alive is not.”
“Surely, they would get more devastation from a physical dead body than from a video?” Dominic muttered. “Why did they want him alive? They couldn’t use him as a bargaining chip because we thought he was dead? Did they want him to work for them somehow?”
Brett had been through the exact thoughts Dominic voiced, but he had come to a dead end. He had no idea why they hadn’t actually killed Felix, but he was grateful they hadn’t.
“We might have to come back to that part of it because it’s stumped me as well.”
Dominic cleared his throat and faced Brett. “There is one thing I wanted to bring up when there was no one else here,” he murmured. “If the field was a place that had meaning to Felix, do you think there is any chance his uncle had something to do with this?”
Brett clenched his jaw. “His uncle is dead.”