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‘We’re taking the Bugatti.’ It’s the most conspicuous, but it’s also the fastest, and James can navigate through damn near anything, including open fire. I don’t actually think it’ll come to that, but I keep that to myself. ‘Do we have anything to go on?’
“SUV,” I tell him, finishing up forwarding the footage to James’ phone as well as the GPS coordinates and the last place the SUV was spotted. From everything I was able to discern, the SUV hit Kane from behind, sending his car rolling. After that, the footage is spotty because clearly, they have someone who can disrupt the feed.
They don’t have my level of skill, but it’s enough to keep me from being able to follow him. I’ve got a trail as they head into the city, and then I lose it.
“I think you’ll need to pick someone up and make him sing,” I tell Ari.
He touches my face, telegraphing a kiss that lands at the corner of my mouth—unyielding and furious. ‘He’ll be a fucking soprano by the time I’m done with him,’ Ari vows.
If I wasn’t losing my mind with worry over Kane, I’d probably be hard in my jeans right now. “Where’s Alice?”
‘James is giving her a quick lesson in self-defense.’
Knowing James, that’s how to shoot something small and deadly. He’s also a weapons expert and largely the reason I can shoot a target now. Kane was willing to let me wallow in my misery and lose myself in relearning the tech I thought I’d lost, but James had seen that I needed more.
“It won’t be enough.”
‘I think he’s doing it to calm her down. She’s terrified.’
I feel a surge of anger because there’s this little irrational voice inside me that says she has no right to be worried about Kane. She’s not one of us—not really. Her father—or, well, the man that raised her—is the reason I’m forced to live the rest of my life without sight, and Ari without a voice, and James without a hand. He’s the reason Kane has invisible scars that damn near destroyed his ability to love. He’s the reason Kane ismissing.
But none of this is Alice’s fault. Guido tortured her too, in other ways. I could feel it in the way she was fucking grateful for how I didn’t tear her to pieces. How she all but thanked me for stealing her virginity after Kane forced her to sell it to us.
She fell apart in my arms and didn’t want to let go. And then, when she let me have her again, she’d been tender with me. Like she wanted to be in my arms.
That softens me a fraction, and I turn my face toward Ari, nodding. “Tell her to come in here after you both leave.”
Ari taps my hand. ‘Do you think we should call Aldis or Rhys?’
In the moment, I hadn’t considered either of them, but my instinct is to say no. I know them both from when I was younger, and though it’s been twenty years since I’ve had anything to do with either of them, something about them rubbed me the wrong way.
“I don’t think it’ll do us any favors if they think he’s missing. I’ll keep an ear to the ground, and if it looks like Romano’s going to go public with the knowledge that he’s got Kane, we’ll call them in first. But if we can get him back without anyone finding out…”
‘That’s what Kane will want,’ Ari answers for me, his fingers tapping on the side of my chin.
I nod. “I don’t want to trust anyone else with this right now. Things might not be as stable as they seem.”
Ari squeezes my chin, then kisses me a bit softer before he hurries out of the room, and seconds after the door shuts, it opens again. I recognize Alice only because she doesn’t sound like either of my lovers, and I sink back into my chair as she crosses the room.
“Did you find him?”
I shake my head. “I have a short trail, but it just leads to the city. The boys are going to go have a look.”
Her voice wobbles a bit when she asks, “What do we do? If you can’t find him?”
“We find someone and torture them until they talk,” I tell her simply, not bothering to sugarcoat it. “And we keep doing that until we find someone who has information about where he is.”
I can feel the tension and unspoken questions radiating off her, but I wait to see how long it takes her to crack. “What if we’re too late?” Her voice is barely a whisper, and I can’t take it. I can’t take it because I want to be that afraid and that vulnerable, but I’ve never been allowed.
I stretch my hand toward her, and she steps into my embrace, falling into my lap as I bury my nose in her hair. The scent of her paints a picture in my head, and I cling to it. “Kane is a survivor,” I remind her. “Romano is behind this, and he’s too pissed off to let Kane die easily. We have time.”
Alice scoffs. “That’s not a huge comfort, considering what they can do to him in that time. He shouldn’t have gone there alone.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. The sound is mostly bitter, but it’s also delighted because she’s a fucking clever little thing, and if she spends long enough here, she’s going to turn into a proper little psychopath. Just like us.
“You can lecture him about that when we get him home,” I tell her. “And yeah, it’s probably going to be ugly. Romano enjoys leaving marks, so we need to be prepared for how Kane comes back.”
She shudders, understanding, and I wonder how much she’s seen. I doubt a lot, because Romano preferred to keep her in her little bubble, but I have no doubt she’s heard things.
