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I’d never been a religious guy, but I was starting to wonder if God liked his little moments of fuckery. Because he apparently hadn’t found enough entertainment in torturing me with my daughter’s uncertain fate; no, he’d gone and added Levi to the mix.
Sweet, tormented Levi who’d suffered more in his life than anyone I’d ever known.
It was shitty enough that God had decided my loyalty to my new family needed to be tested, but to let me fall in love with someone I could never be with was the ultimate cruelty, second only to the half-loss of my child.
My phone buzzed, jerking me from my pity party. I checked the text from Daisy.
Four external cameras. North, south and east cameras working, west camera offline. Footage attached from east and north cameras.
The east camera was the one facing the entrance to the store, the north faced the employee entrance. Which meant the one offline was at the back of the store where the dumpsters were kept and deliveries occurred.
I hit the first video attachment. The picture wasn’t as clear as I would have liked, but I could make out Levi when he came into the frame as he returned a grocery cart to the long line of carts outside the store’s entrance. Someone approached him from behind and while I couldn’t be sure it was T, he had the right build and hair color. Levi turned and ran into the man and they exchanged words. I couldn’t tell if there were bruises on Levi’s face. The image also wasn’t good enough to see his expression, but Levi’s body language showed his tension as he turned and walked with T towards the side of the store. It looked like T was holding his arm, but I couldn’t be sure.
I switched to the next video and saw T and Levi walking past the employee entrance and out of the view of the camera. Frustration coursed through me as I realized they were going to the back of the store where there’d be no video footage.
The last video showed Levi walking back towards the front of the store with a guy I didn’t recognize. Again, I didn’t have a good view of Levi’s face so I didn’t know if there were bruises or not.
I texted Daisy a quick thank-you and then tossed my phone in the cup holder. I’d hoped the video would offer proof that T had assaulted Levi, but all it had done was make him look guiltier. At least, that’s how Ronan would see it. I knew in my bones that T had done something to Levi at the back of that store, but I was in the same position I’d been an hour ago.
With orders to kill a man who didn’t deserve it, but no way to prove it.
The ironic part was that Ronan wasn’t behaving any differently than me. I, too, was going on emotion and instinct when it came to protecting the man I loved.
As darkness fell, the store closed and all of the employees left. I was tempted to go knock on the employee entrance and force Levi to talk to me, but I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere. Not while I was still struggling with how to proceed with everything. Since my car was now one of the only ones left in the parking lot, I moved it to the street where it wouldn’t stand out as much, but where I could still have a good view of anyone coming or going.
My phone rang and I saw Ronan’s second-in-command’s name come up on the screen.
“Hey, Memphis.”
“Hey. I need to see you.”
My gut tightened. This couldn’t be good.
“I’m on a job,” I said.
“I’m sending someone to cover for you.”
I wanted to tell him no…that I wanted to keep an eye on Levi myself, but I knew that wasn’t an option. “Who are you sending?”
“Dante.”
“Okay. I’ll head over to your place as soon as he gets here.”
I hung up and contemplated the turn of events. There was only one reason that I could think of that Memphis would want to talk to me.
It didn’t bode well for me…or Levi.
Headlights appeared in my rearview mirror about fifteen minutes later. I got out of my car and walked to the plain navy blue sedan. For all his flash off the job, Dante was the consummate professional on it. He lowered his window and brushed back the dark curls that had a tendency to fall in his face. We bumped fists.
“Memphis give you background info?” I asked.
“Yeah. Levi Deming, 24.” Dante motioned to a file folder sitting on the passenger seat. I wondered how much he really knew. Fear curdled through me as something occurred to me.
“Can you step out for a second?” I asked, since I didn’t want to have this conversation through a car window.
