And that was a huge step for me. I don’t like talking about my street racing days. Back then I did some things I regret.
I wish I wouldn’t have shut her down when she was trying to open up to me. I was too selfish, too in my head to want to hear what she had to say when I should’ve remained quiet and listened.
Maybe she’ll tell me again—and hopefully confess more.
“Good,” Winston says, his expression grim. “For all we know she put Daddy up to meet with her ex and they’re plotting to run away together with Daddy’s permission.”
That would never happen, is what I want to say. Her father is her worst nightmare. She wouldn’t want to work with him.
“They don’t get along,” is all I say in response. “Charlotte and her father.”
“Uh-huh. She might get along with him for the sake of getting out of a marriage she never wanted,” Winston points out.
“What else did this report say?” I ask, needing to change the subject.
Winston goes along with it, thank God. “He’s not left the Morelli mansion for the last thirty-six hours. People are constantly coming and going out of that place, and Myron is still looking into who everyone is.”
“Myron? That’s our investigator’s name?” I shake my head. “He even sounds old.”
“He’s a good guy. Gruff. Doesn’t put up with anyone’s shit. Even mine.” Winston cracks a smile.
“You really think that McAsshole dude is plotting to somehow get to Charlotte?” I can’t stop thinking about the possibility. How he might try to get close to her. Talk to her. What if she’s receptive? What if he says all the right things? She chose that asshole first. I was merely assigned to her.
What if I lose her for good?
“You need to prepare for the possibility that it could happen. I recommend beefing up the security at your apartment.”
“It’s a Lancaster apartment,” I remind him. “Daddy still has a key.”
Winston frowns. “That’s not good.”
“I know.”
“Change the locks. It’s your and Charlotte’s apartment now, right?”
“I don’t have a deed or anything like that.”
“Get one. Ask Charlotte to talk to her father.”
I won’t make her do that. She’s frightened of him.
“If her father still has a key, he could give it to Seamus,” I say, my mind awhirl with all of the possibilities. All of the awful, shitty, that-better-not-ever-happen possibilities.
Jesus.
“Like I said, beef up the security. Talk to your wife. Let her know what’s going on. Don’t leave her in the dark. She deserves to know her ex is a threat.”
Says the guy who didn’t tell the love of his life jack shit until it was almost too late.
“Learn from my mistakes,” Winston continues, making me immediately regret my thoughts. “She’s not your enemy, Perry. She’s an ally, even if we don’t necessarily trust her. Make her feel as if she’s on team Constantine and she’ll do whatever you ask her to do.”
“She is a Constantine now, making her an automatic member of our team,” I remind him.
“Not even a week ago she was a Lancaster. Remind her that she has a new allegiance. To you.” Winston jabs a thumb at his chest. “To us.”
I slouch in my chair, my mind crowded with too many things. All of them having to do with Charlotte and that jerk and the Morellis and her father.
Her father, a traitor to his own daughter—and to the family he just married her into. When he knew what he was getting into, making that deal with our mother. He was supposed to be team Constantine as well.