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For starters, it held the most people, mostly suits in here. Our parents had a team of confidants and trusted friends in their corner. Our families weren’t just powerful because of their money, but also because they were decent fucking people and did a lot for the community. Any one of our parents would bend over backward if someone they knew was in need and that was why most of these people were here. Very few of them actually worked for our parents.
I angled through them all, a guy I passed watching the news footage on a small screen. He was taking notes beside it, and he must have been watching recorded clips because Sloane was on the screen.
I’d played this over a few times, her being escorted into the hospital with that fucking goon that my grandpa employed. The man was a hired gun, and he had my girl by the arm. I’d let my father know right away who he was, and Wolf had been able to confirm since he’d seen him before too.
If any of our parents didn’t know my grandpa was involved with this hospital takeover they knew now with that little detail, and I stared too long at that clip playing. I’d only stopped because my parents had taken my phone and only partially because I’d fucked up. Them and the other parents had been attempting to use it to call Sloane too. They knew I’d been seeing her.
I’d told them that too.
In fact, they knew just about everything, using all our phones at one point to try and speak with her. She hadn’t answered my friends’ lines or mine, but even before the kidnapping the news mentioned, she hadn’t been talking to me.
Don’t do that.
Fighting negative head shit was the hardest part in all this. To think she wasn’t answering on purpose. We’d had our problems, but the last time I saw her things had been good.
I refused to believe she wasn’t talking to me on purpose, and that almost made things worse. The alternative was my grandfather was deliberately keeping her from me and not letting her answer my calls.
I found my dad in the center of all the chaos with Wells’s dad, Jax. My god dad stood by my father’s side, a receiver to my dad’s ear. They’d been the only two to stay in this fortress of manpower the parents had created, and Dad was the best one to man the hub with the other parents preoccupied.
That said something considering his own dad was at the center of it.
Dad had been too silent when I’d told him everything. It had to have been breaking him, but when he’d finally spoken, he’d been my dad. He’d been calm and more than collected when he shouldn’t have been.
I almost wished he’d yelled at me.
It would have been better than the look I’d gotten when I finally had seen him, the look similar to the one he was giving me now when he noticed me in this room.
A slow shake to my father’s head, he held a stony expression that only said one thing.
Disappointment.
My dad was disappointed in me, and when his shoulders dropped in my very presence, my stomach soured. Few things had been able to cause me to feel ill today. I had held my shit together.
But my father looking at me this way…
He removed himself from the fleet of people around him, Jax too. They were both laid-back, Dad with his sweater bunched at his elbows and Jax in a Grateful Dead tee. My god dad often dressed down. He was cool like that, but Dad never did in the presence of others. They’d both been awake a long time.
Maybe even longer than me. I knew for a fact I hadn’t slept, and how could I?
She was still out there.
The thoughts of Sloane escaped when my father approached, still speaking into the line at his ear. He multitasked this while maneuvering toward me, but with the intent of his strides, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing the inside of this room for long. My father, all the fathers and mothers, had been very clear that we kids needed to stay out of the way and especially out of here, the place of their operation. The adults needed room to work.
Hence the kiddie table.
“Son—” my dad started, but I edged closer first. I maybe had one shot at this before he kicked me out of this bitch.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked, his eyes twitching. Maybe at the audacity? Shit, I didn’t know. I was fucking bold coming in here. I buried my hands in my pockets. “Please. It’s important.”
I forced myself to have an iron stomach in front of my father. I hadn’t told him everything, but now wasn’t the time for that.
I might not get her back if I didn’t.
I suppose the cowardice… the secrets stemmed from the potential disappointment from both my parents. Not just my dad. I couldn’t bear to think how my mother would look at me after I revealed what I had to. I couldn’t have her see me in a way I was already seeing myself. I wasn’t just a coward.
I was my grandfather’s grandson.
My dad covered his line, his eyebrows narrowed, features hard. He had been about to kick me out but stopped and brought the phone up to his ear.
