Binding Attractions

Chapter 12

A heavy silence hugged the room, only broken by the scrape of forks across the porcelain plates. Trey had finally finished cooking the food and everyone sat around the dining table attempting to swallow it.

It wasn’t that the food was bad. The creamy lemon parmesan chicken was tender and hadn’t needed more garlic like Abigail had insistently argued it would. Absolutely nothing was wrong with it. After all, it had been prepared by a recognized chef. Trey certainly knew his way around food, even though his family liked to argue with him ninety percent of the time about his dishes. Thank god Trey never really listened to them and just did his thing.

No, Trick couldn’t think of anything wrong with the chicken and potatoes on his plate covered in creamy white sauce. But he still couldn’t seem to swallow it. Not with his mind running a mile a second and the irritation and anger bubbling just under the surface of his skin.

Another sound cut through the silence, and it was the sound of ice cubes clicking against the glass as Talia lifted her glass of water to her lips. Trick was certain he could hear her swallow. That was how quiet it was in the room.

The frown on his forehead only deepened. He suddenly lifted his head and stared at the hallway that led to the bedrooms. To where the cause of the current tension was peacefully taking a nap after she practically threw a bomb at their feet. Finally, he couldn’t hold his tongue anymore.

“Why does she have to sleep in my room?”

Forks froze half way to open mouths, and every eye turned to look at him. Trick didn’t like how his friends were actually staring at him like he had asked a ridiculous question. Or as though they were wondering what was wrong with him. It was the second time they were giving him that look, and it hit a nerve.

He fought the urge to throw his fork and instead stiffly placed it on his barely touched plate before he folded his arms over his chest and glared at them. It was a large round table with a sitting capacity of eight, so it was easy to see everyone.

Abigail, always the one who tried to handle tense moments and defuse bombs before they went off, swallowed what was in her mouth and washed it down with a sip of her water, and then she cleared her throat before addressing him in a calm voice. “And where exactly was I supposed to take her?”

Trick looked around the table at everyone and saw they were all waiting for his answer. He huffed and shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know. How about Gabriel’s room in your penthouse? She claims to be his sister, after all. It makes logical sense to put her in there. Or Edward’s free room?”

“We were all in here. It actually made more sense to keep her here for now,” Edward responded and went back to his food, which looked almost as untouched as Trick’s portion.

“Then Abigail should have taken her to Trey’s room,” he argued, still not ready to see the sense in what they were saying.

Both Danielle and Trey lifted their heads and looked at Trick in shock. “You must be joking.” “I don’t want some unknown woman sleeping in my bed.” They simultaneously spoke over each other.

Trick arched a brow. “But some mysterious woman sleeping in my bed is perfectly fine?”

“Are you really bitching about the woman taking a nap on your pillow?” Lorenzo snapped. “I will get you clean sheets and a new bed if you will shut up. We have bigger things to worry about. Much more pressing than where she is resting right now.”

“You don’t get it.” Trick shook his head like he couldn’t believe he had to explain his concerns to them. “We don’t know her. She could be lying about everything she just said. But then, you put her in my room... My bedroom is where I keep the rest of my gadgets and equipment. She has already hacked my system once today. Why the hell would you make her life easier by basically putting her in the control room? What if she gets into my system again and drains our accounts? Or worse, she sends information about our less desirable acquaintances to the police?”

Suddenly, Lorenzo threw his napkin down on the table and turned in his seat to give Trick his full attention. His eyes narrowed as he spoke. “Speaking of which… How the hell did she even get into your system in the first place?”

“Are you trying to accuse me of being sloppy?” Trick immediately asked with a raise in his voice. Emotions and tempers were certainly on the rise and pulsing in the air around the table. The topic was definitely not suitable for mealtime.

“No one is accusing anyone,” Abigail cut it and glared at her husband before she looked at Trick with the same look that said ‘hold your s**t together and use your head.’ “We just want to understand what happened.”

Trick definitely didn’t appreciate his work being questioned. For the first time in his life, he wanted to remind every damn person at that table that they couldn’t do what he did, even in their dreams. It was damn tempting to throw it in their faces how much s**t he had gotten them all out of over the years. But he bit back the words. The men and women at the table were his closest friends and the only family he knew and loved. They were his brothers, even though they were not related by blood. Nothing could ever separate them. They had always had each other’s backs and had gone through hell and back to get to where they were today. A simple question about what happened wasn’t going to be the spark that ignited the dynamite and blew it all to hell.

Resolved to give an explanation, Trick leaned back in his chair and rested his palms flat on the table on either side of his plate as though he were searching for a way to ground himself. “No system is perfect,” he said in a clipped voice. “Otherwise hackers would be out of business by Christmas. But of course, I have always aimed to make my system as difficult as possible to penetrate. That is why I constantly update it and run checks. And I also made sure it can’t be hacked from the outside remotely.”

“So what happened? How did she get in? She’s that good?” Trey asked.

Trick ran his tongue over his teeth and then leaned forward. The truth was Nadiya was good from what he had seen. How she had easily found a crack in his walls and waltzed right in was quite incredible. But he would be damned before he spoke those words out loud. “She got lucky,” he said instead. Which, technically, wasn’t a lie. “The security for the elevators is connected to the security of the entire hotel below us. She just needed someone with high clearance to click on a pop-up porn advert she sent with a trap and she was in. Trojan horse epic.”

“Who would be that stupid to watch porn on a company computer?” Edward demanded. The glare in his eyes told Trick that someone was about to get fired or shot. The hotel was one of many owned by Edward. So he was responsible for the stuff and the i***t that had watched porn and allowed Nadiya to access their system and eventually their home.

“Your manager. I traced the leak back to his computer in his office.”

Edward abruptly stood up, almost sending the chair to the floor. He cursed under his breath and walked out of the room. Trick assumed he was on his way down to deal with the soon-to-be-fired hotel manager. Hopefully, Edward wouldn’t shoot the i***t, because then Trick would need to clean up that mess and he didn’t have time on his hands for that right now.

The rest of the people at the table seemed to relax a little. Like they had all been reassured that their lives and finances weren’t being handled by an amateur. Trick shook his head, unhappy with himself. He had no reason to think like that. His family had never once made him feel like they didn’t trust him to get the work done.

Not when Trey had been abducted and certainly not even with Gabriel still missing. No one had once said they thought he wasn’t doing enough. He realized he was allowing his own fears and doubts to cloud his mind, and he had to stop.

But his internal battles didn’t change the fact that they had a woman they knew nothing about, sleeping in his bed. “I don’t trust her.”

“You should probably wait for her to wake up and have a full conversation before you pass judgment on a person. I’m just saying.” Danielle muttered and shrugged.

Trick gave her a skeptical look. “The woman has trouble written all over her.”

“She has a tattoo on her forearm that says: Don’t f**k with me,” Abigail said as though she were thinking out loud.

Trick threw his arms in the air. “I rest my case.”