“As if someone’s going to be stupid enough to go against you. Come on, girl. That would be suicide for anyone who tried. Plus, he didn’t have a girlfriend, or at least hasn’t been seen with anyone who might be considered one, which, of course, doesn’t mean that he didn’t have a secret one. But really, whoever she is, do you really think she’d find an army to get her boyfriend back? I don’t think so. And I’m sure a lot of people have heard about the deal by now. They know what happens if he runs away.” She cocked her head at me. “If someone tries to rescue him, then that still counts as him running away, right?”

“Depends on the situation, but yeah. Who’s monitoring James’ conversation? I thought it would be you.”

“Oh, Felipe’s taking care of it. We set up remote control and all. It feels like we’re wasting time, though. We could be doing more important things. Like hacking into the Desaltis.”

“And how’s that going?” I looked at the screens, but I couldn’t see anything about our enemy on them. Besides, I didn’t think monitoring a few minutes of a conversation was that big of a deal.

Meg scratched her head. “Fine. Um, I should probably focus on that. You know, there’s a lot of stuff to do and...”

I rose to my feet. “Alright. I’ll leave you to it.” James was about to be finished, so I headed to the room where he was. I opened the door just in time to see his sisters waving back at him on the screen. A pang of envy shot through me. Maybe I was being too nice to him. Maybe I should just end this, but that would mean I’d rip a family apart, and for what?

No. If anyone was going to ruin this, then I’d let it be James.

Chapter 6

“ARIANNA!” I HEARD BRENT yell behind my back, so I stopped and turned around. We hadn’t spoken since yesterday, and James was with me again, but Brent didn’t even look at him as he came to a stop in front of me.

“What is it?” I asked, because I could see that his brow was furrowed and his eyes were filled with worry. Something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what.

“Someone hijacked our delivery,” he said through his teeth. “Everything says it’s the Desaltis, but either they hired someone to do the work for them or they teamed up with someone, because the men who attacked our trucks weren’t theirs.”