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Logan just looked at Freddy as he came up behind me, and handed him a water.
“That silver sedan you saw…” Freddy started. “They found it burned out in one of the dump sites we use.”
I just gave a shrug and lifted the beer to my lips once more.
“There was a message inside the trunk.”
I froze, my hand lowering slowly.
“A mannequin that looked a lot like you,” Freddy said carefully. “Complete with a gunshot to the head and a knife in the heart.”
Warmth flew out of me as the image of Baldeon’s face came rushing back to me. I'd tried to push it away all last night, focusing on the redheaded beauty instead. It didn’t touch me…didn’t involve me. It was some Cosa Nostra bullshit, not a Stidda problem…not ameproblem.
I licked my lips. “It’s not…”
“It is, Laz.” Freddy placed his water bottle onto the counter, his intense fucking eyes boring into me. “This is no damn joke.”
Taken’s unfocused eyes came back to me as he sat slumped against the door on the day he died. Anger seethed inside me even after all these years, the kind of flame that just didn’t go away.“You think I don’t know that?”
One slow nod of his head, and the asshole pushed off the counter. But the damage was already done, wasn’t it? Now it was Baldeon’s fucking face I saw in my head. Baldeon’s pale, pasty fucking face, and gray skin. Baldeon’s throat cut so damn deep it had almost severed his head from his body.That could be me…
A shiver coursed through me, cutting deeper than a knife ever could.
My phone made abeep.I looked down and saw a message from Finley fucking Salvatore, of all people.
Watch your back. The initiation is still in play.
I curled my lips in a silent snarl as Freddy glanced at my hand. “Everything okay?”
“Nothing I can’t handle,” I growled, and shoved my phone back into my pocket.
Taken.
Iggy.
Marco Baldeon…
“Tell me what you found out about her…” I lifted my gaze to Freddy and watched him wince and shift his gaze.“Freddy…”
“Look,” he started. “There isn’t a whole lot to find out. She’s not a party girl, if that’s what you’re worried about. She’s fucking…boring.”
Boring?
I didn’t think so. I lifted my gaze to his, and it was his turn to feel that desperation. “Tell me.”
“She’s guarded, likeheavily guarded.But you’d expect that for someone of her worth. She’s on the seat for a few of the normal boards, a children’s hospital, one for battered women, and she attends the galas in their names, giving millions every year. But other than that, she’s at home. Honestly…it’s kinda creepy. She doesn’t party like normal women her age party. She goes into that fucking mansion and she doesn’t come out.”
“And that sonofabitch called Hale?” I muttered, looking down at the counter.
“Now…that is where it gets…complicated.”
I jerked my gaze to his. “Thenuncomplicate it.”
He looked at Logan as though the savage bastard might save him. But he wouldn’t save him, not this time.
“He’s a friend of her father…and a ruthless sonofabitch. He’s the founder and CEO of Hale Financial, a private equity firm that makes a living investing in struggling companies, then tearing them apart the moment they close their doors. And when I say this guy is ruthless…I mean he’s one savage motherfucker. A savage motherfucker withvery deep pockets.”
A nerve twitched at the corner of my eye. Dangerous and rich. We were rich, too…maybe not that rich, but what we lacked in that department we made up in the dangerous side of the equation.
