“Go,” I push out breathlessly, hopeful Estelle can still hear me.
My prayers are answered when she asks, “Where?”
I wipe at the tears streaming down my face while answering, “Anywhere. I’ll find you. I promise.”
“Roxie—”
“I’m fine. I promise you I’m okay. I just need you to go.”
Her snivels break my heart. “Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I wait for the creak of the safety gate on the elevator of our building to sound down the line before locking my eyes with the camera above my head. I stare straight at the blinking contraption as if not an ounce of fear is bombarding me. I don’t know if my strength stems from my determination not to have my entire world stripped out from beneath my feet or the wary churns of Estelle’s motor when she cranks the ignition on her shit box. Whatever it is, it shifts my protest from peaceful to anarchy in less than a nanosecond, and even quicker than that, it sees me shredding off my clothes as brutally as Dimitri did weeks ago.
Once they sit in tatters on the floor, I growl out, “Send one of your goons to deal with me now. I dare you.”
Fifteen
Dimitri
“Shut down the feed.” When the eyes of over a dozen thirsty men who should know better than to look at anything they don’t own stray toward my laptop screen, I scream at the top of my lungs, “Shut down the fucking feed!”
Even knowing too well yanking the cord out of my laptop won’t stop the camera in Roxanne’s room from broadcasting elsewhere, I rip it out before sending my laptop sailing across the room. My plan worked. I forced her to eat. Now she’s upped the fucking ante.
“Tell me it’s shut down, Smith.”
When he hesitates, my jaw works through a hard grind. “It’s not an easy fix, Dimi. You wanted the best. The best doesn’t crumble for anything. Besides, the feed shouldn’t be the sole focus of your concern.”
After spinning away from the group of men gawking at me, annoyed I canceled the provocative show early, I ask, “What should be?”
“Rocco.” Smith’s simple reply shouldn’t agitate me to no end, but it does. “He’s heading to Roxanne’s room.”
“Call him back.”
He laughs at me as if I’m an idiot. It’s the same chuckle he hit me with when I told him about my plan to force Roxanne to eat. “He isn’t wearing an earpiece.”
After hitting a pompous prick with a stern finger point, warning him I’m seconds from removing his finger if he dares to tap my shoulder one more time, I ask, “Why not?”
Smith’s laugh shifts to a bark. “‘Cause you wanted to keep him out of the loop with your plan, that’s why.”
“Lose the fucking attitude, Smith. My plan worked, didn’t it?”
He acts as if my threat doesn’t have an ounce of sting to it. “If you consider your girl being eyeballed by men who’d happily hurt her while she’s butt-naked, yeah, I’d say it was successful.”
I don’t know what to take my anger out on first. Roxanne’s gall or Smith’s fucking shitty attitude. I go for both when I snarl, “She isn’t my girl.”
“Then you’ll have no issues with her and Rocco getting super friendly in ten… nine… eight…”
I spin around to face the procession of money-hungry gangsters so fast I make myself dizzy. “Our meeting has been postponed until next month.”
They have the hide to grumble at me under their breath like I don’t have the ability to sideswipe their entire existence with my pinkie finger. They did the same thing when I took an intermission in our meeting to authenticate the effectiveness of my ruse with Roxanne. I acted as maniacally back then as I do now.
“You either accept a second interlude in our proceedings, or we permanently part ways.” When silence stretches across the room, I get cocky. “That’s what I thought. I don’t want to work with you pricks any more than you don’t want to lick the soles of my shoes for an ounce of my attention. Unfortunately, you don’t have a choice. You need me. It’ll do you best to remember that the next time we meet.”
After ensuring my father absorbed my words along with the rest of our ‘family,’ I race out of my office and hotfoot it up a set of stairs I’ve avoided like the plague the past four days.
Smith is no longer counting in my ears, but I mentally tick over two just as I stop outside Roxanne’s bedroom door. I’m too worked-up to mull over the fact Rocco could be inside. I just throw open the door and step into a warzone without adequate protection.
