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“Rose Tower.” I know that tone.
“Don’t come here, Mia. Just focus on the orphanage,” I plead. Mia sighs, still not ready to give in. I can’t blame her. In fact, when she was in my place, I did everything in my power to protect her, even at the expense of my own safety.
“What is it about us that attracts psychos?” she sighs, finally surrendering. “No doubt you, Addie, and I must have something in common.”
“That’s why we became friends, I guess. Like attracts like.”
She laughs, and I smile against the phone, too.
“Maybe we’re hidden psychos, too,” she says.
“We sure like to go after our goals just as relentlessly.” Even though I haven’t been able to say that about myself lately. During the past few months with Joseph, my motivation and drive had been dying a slow death. I’d been succumbing to alcohol. Then, after The Rite, I totally crumbled. Yet when Joseph disappeared and the threats started, those ashes were ignited once again.
So much depended on me. Joseph’s whole empire was in my hands, and so many people needed help. It was on me to stop the drugging and raping of young girls, and the using of kids to move those drugs at the expense of their lives.
Mia sighs, and Declan says something behind her. He hasn’t let her out of his sight since The Rite. I wonder if the poor woman can even take a dump without him hovering around her like a paranoid guardian angel.
“See what you can find about the orphanage,” I insist. “That’s a huge lead.”
“What are you going to do, trapped at the Rose Tower with that beast?”
A pang goes through my chest and, if I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s exhilaration. “You know what they say, when life throws lemons at you, make some lemonade. And I have every intention of squeezing everything I can out of this huge-ass lemon.”
CHAPTER V
Sirenna
Zayne’s penthouse is a one-of-a-kind-prison. One that includes a bunch of shop assistants from all the designer brands in the city visiting with the most expensive outfits their showrooms have to offer and hanging them in my closet. They’re all bows, and giant grins before they leave, ushered out by a squad of frowning bodyguards that make a show of how they barely contain their aggression.
“Don’t worry if you feel we handle them a little harshly,” the one who seems to be the boss said before he followed the others out the door. “It’s the only language these hustlers understand, and they get paid richly for this.”
“I have no doubt,” I murmur in his wake, staring at the door.
After a few hours of wringing my hands and chewing nervously on my lip, I try to go out, but the same bodyguard places himself in my way at the door.
“Can’t let you go, Ma’am. Boss’s orders.”
