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The air in the room tightens around me and I spring up, calling her.
She doesn’t pick up.Fuck, fuck, fuck!
I hang up and dial her bodyguard. One of them picks up with a bored, “Hello.”
“Where’s Aspen?”
“She left fifteen minutes ago and asked us not to follow her.”
“And you fucking incompetent fools listened?” I hang up on him before he can respond and call Nicolo.
He answers after one ring. “I was going to call. We have a situation.”
“You think?”
“Bruno escaped from Attica in the midst of a carefully planned prison uproar. He disappeared off the face of the earth so that not even his own soldiers know where he is.”
“Fuck.” I storm out of the office. “Do you have any idea where he would go?”
“I can only guess, and judging by your voice, that would take more time than we have to spare.”
“Can your people track a phone?”
“Can do. Whose phone?”
“Aspen’s. He must’ve lured her somewhere, because she asked her bodyguards not to follow.”
“On it.”
“Don’t even think about protecting him this time, Nicolo.”
“I won’t. He disobeyed clear orders. I have no use for insubordinate soldiers. But, King?”
I punch the elevator’s call button and step inside. “Yes?”
“I have to say this for your own sake. Prepare for the worst.”
31
ASPEN
Istand in front of an abandoned twenty-story building.
Under the afternoon light, the construction debris that surrounds it looks like apocalyptic crops.
But this isn’t just any building.
This is the same hideous, half-naked building in which my father killed someone in cold blood while the FBI witnessed it. They were late and couldn’t save my father’s victim, but they arrested him.
Back then, I stood by the corner, shielded by two agents, and watched as they led him out of the building, handcuffed and with a sneer on his lips.
A few hours before that, I’d heard him talking on the phone with one of his underlings about a guy he was personally going to kill to send a message to some rival family. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a conversation. My father was arrogant enough to overlook me and my morals that developed completely independent from his.
Before that, I had been too scared to go against him, and I still was, but the image of my dead mother is what pushed me to follow him and make that call to 911. They forwarded me to the FBI because he was already under close scrutiny by them, so any information was welcome.
Honestly, I was half expecting the operation to fail and for my father to kill me, but when I saw him being led out by the officers, a huge weight lifted off my chest.
It was also one of the few times I allowed myself to cry until no tears could come out.
