“Rosebud,” I murmured, reaching out and touching the screen like it was really her here in my room. “I still love you. I’ll bring you home somehow.”
I swallowed, not knowing how it would even work. I was in my residency to become a doctor. I’d sailed through Mayfair’s undergraduate program in two years and was well on my way to becoming a doctor. I was a fucking prodigy with a stethoscope. It was a madness, really. I needed to be able to save my family. Being helpless wouldn’t work for me.
I breathed out and looked away from the image of Rosalie standing with Anson and a group of people I didn’t know at some awards ceremony.
She’d won a Grammy for her first album. I’d sat and watched it with Enzo and E. She’d performed live. It was incredible. Of course, the album talked about hating our asses, but I understood. We hurt her. She was allowed to fuck with our emotions like that.
We deserved it. Especially me, who forced my way into her body before she left for good. A desperate attempt to keep her. To remind her… fuck, as much as I hated what I’d done to her, I knew I’d do it again if it meant she’d come back to us.
But with Enzo saying he didn’t want her anymore and E wanting to keep Riot a secret, I knew I had very little chance of getting her back. I’d have to leave my family to be with her.
Or just be with her and watch my brothers be miserable without her.
But only if she came to us first. That was the deal we’d made with Church.
Fucking prick.
I rubbed my eyes for a moment before I looked at the picture of Fox I kept on my desk. It was the image the papers had taken of him the night he’d won his Heisman, his Freshman year at Mayfair, before he died.
Swallowing hard, I reached out and lifted the picture and stared down at his handsome, smiling face.
“Fuck, Foxy, I miss you too, man. You’d know what to do to get this mess sorted.” I sniffled and wiped at my eyes. He’d died in the underground almost five years ago. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about him.
Once a month, we visited his grave. Sometimes I went there alone just to talk to him as if he’d stuck around. If he had, I knew he damn well wasn’t hanging out with us. He’d be with Rosalie, standing in the crowd and cheering her on.
I wiped at my eyes again.
This was fucked.
I placed his photo back on my desk next to the one of Rosalie in that lavender dress I loved so much, before going back to my computer.
I found the gossip rags and stared at images of her being carried by Anson with her head covered and loaded into a blacked-out SUV, security around them.
BISHOP RUSHED TO THE HOSPITAL AMID ATTACK.
“Fucking prick,” I muttered, glaring at the image. I found it offensive for Anson to be carrying her that way, but I was more pissed that someone attacked her.
I navigated away from the article, which didn’t tell me shit, and looked at the next story.
SECURITY TIGHTENED FOR BISHOP.
I nodded. At least they were doing something right.
I continued looking through the stories, trying to find anything about who might have done it. The day wore on until night settled, and I stayed pacing my room, making notes, and searching for anything I could find to link an attacker to her.
So far, nothing.
“You hungry?” E called out, poking his head into my room as I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, my laptop next to me.
“No,” I mumbled.
He stepped into the room and sat on the edge of my bed.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“What? Food? I’m just not hungry, man,” I said, continuing to look at the ceiling.
“No. About this.” He gestured to my notes scattered around me and my laptop.
