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My father jumped into action while I was a mess. He got hold of the security footage from the hall, and what we saw… someone had broken in and kidnapped her, taken her downstairs using the stairwell, where there weren’t any cameras; a blind spot in the building.
That was the first time I caught myself wondering, because it didn’t make sense. Giselle had only just moved in. She hadn’t been with me that long. Whoever had taken her must’ve done their recon on the hotel we were staying at long before she’d moved in, because no alarms had been raised at all, and no one other than the security camera in the hall on our floor had caught anything.
It was almost like someone had planned this for a while, since before she’d moved in, and if that was the case, then that meant…
Well, that meant my father was in on it. He and Miguel had basically sprung this marriage out of nowhere. We didn’t even have a goddamned wedding, and neither of us had actually signed the marriage papers. It was all forged, all forced, like it was nothing more than a part of their plan for getting on the Hand.
The possibility that it was my father and Miguel scheming behind Giselle’s back and mine made me feel only slightly better as the afternoon turned into dusk. If they were behind this, then maybe, just maybe she was still alive somewhere. Maybe Giselle was still breathing.
But, like I’d mentioned, it was a slight hope, because at the same time, I knew now what atrocities my father was capable of. I knew the things he could do, what he could hide. Even if he and Miguel had planned this, Giselle might not be alive. She might’ve gotten a bullet to the head this time, instead of the stomach.
Rocco and Miguel called Atticus around five o’clock. They had a meeting with the Black Hand about Giselle’s kidnapping at six. Rocco wanted me to go, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t shake the feeling he wanted me to play the worried, fretting husband when all along he’d been the mastermind behind this.
But I didn’t have proof. I only had my suspicions, and when things were life or death, you had to be unequivocally certain.
I didn’t eat dinner. I couldn’t. I sat there, in the room I’d only recently begun to share with Giselle, hunched over on the floor near the bed, my back leaning against the frame. My head was turned down, Giselle’s ivory gun in my hands.
It was beautiful. Beautiful and deadly. The grip was ivory, etched with flowers and vines. Her name was written on the steel. She’d told me that Damian had gotten her this gun, and I never really understood why—I didn’t know they were close.
But I supposed there was a lot about my wife I didn’t know. I liked to think I knew the important bits, the parts of her past that made her who she was today… in no thanks to my fucking father.
God, I hated him. I hated my own father because of what he did to her three years ago. How could someone do something like that and come home to his wife and son and act as though nothing at all had happened? What else was a lie?
My hands curled around the steel of the gun, my arms trembling as I wrestled with my inner emotions. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted… I wanted to be wherever Giselle was. I wanted to find her, to hold her, to be the man she deserved.
I was slow in getting to my feet, still holding onto her gun as I decided I’d fucking walk every block of this city. Every street. Every sidewalk. I’d scour the entire fucking city to find her. I’d do anything and everything I could. I’d—
Right then, my phone rang.
I assumed it was my father, so I took my time in setting Giselle’s gun in the nightstand near the bed before answering it. The number I saw flashing on the screen, however, did not belong to my father. It was unknown to me, not in my contacts.
A stupid hope rose within me: it could be Giselle calling from somewhere.
I answered it without hesitation once that possibility dawned on me. “Hello?”
Alas, the voice that spoke next did not belong to Giselle, although it was familiar. “Luca? This is Cade Cunningham. Are you alone?” The heir that was normally brooding and quiet, off by himself because he hated being lumped in with heirs that were at least ten years his junior. He was, I was pretty sure, the oldest heir in the running.
Had word already spread? I didn’t know how something like that was possible, but it was the first thought that came to my mind once he said his name.
“Yes,” I said, “what do you want?” If he didn’t know about Giselle, I wouldn’t tell him. I knew there were some… let’s just say complications between them, but I owed him nothing. I owed him absolutely nothing.
Although, maybe he’d help look for her.
“I’m going to list off an address. Memorize it. Don’t write it down. Come immediately.” As mysterious as ever, Cade offered no additional details—which would’ve been useful right about now, since I had no idea what the hell he was going on about.
“What—” I started to ask what this was about, but he cut me off.
“Shut up. Don’t ask questions. Just come, and come alone.” And then he rattled off an address that wasn’t in Cypress. He said it a second time before asking, “Are you listening?”
I snapped back to reality, “Yeah, I’m listening. Say it one more time.” This time, when he repeated the address, I mouthed it back. While still on the call, I hurried out of the bedroom and went to grab my car keys, and at the same time, I input the address to get directions. “It’ll take me forty minutes to get there.”
“Good. Come now, and remember—”
“Come alone, yeah, I got it.” I walked out of the suite with a brisk pace. “Cade, before you go, I don’t know if you heard, but Giselle—”
He hung up. Cade hung up on me, right after I mentioned Giselle’s name. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t grind my gears—I was on edge, obviously, as worried and anxious as a person could be without going insane—but there wasn’t anything I could do to change it.
Cade and I weren’t friends. We were barely acquaintances. We really only shared a single thing, and that was Giselle. For him to call me and tell me to meet him somewhere outside of Cypress, well… the timing was odd all around.
