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We got too fucking complacent. We thought we had the upper hand, and now she’s fucking gone.
I help James into his pants because his hand is shaking too much to manage it on his own, and then I pat him on the chest and all but drag him down to Phoenix’s office setup. He’s already on his computer, tracking, and Kane’s staring with ice in his eyes.
“Who?” James demands.
“Give me five minutes,” Phoenix growls back.
It doesn’t feel like five minutes. It feels like five hundred years. I want to put my fucking fist through the wall. I want to find the person who dared put their hands on her and slit them from groin to fucking throat—slowly—so they feel every cut of my blade.
I want them to bleed out over my hands and cover the red stain left behind from Alice’s blood.
I want to ruin everyone who ever thought about touching what was ours.
“Breathe.” James’ hand comes around the back of my neck and squeezes, and I realize that I’ve been gasping. I force myself to calm down, feeling a slight swelling in my throat, but it begins to ease up as Phoenix pushes back from his desk.
“Who were you on the phone with, Kane?” he asks, his voice low and threatening.
“Aldis.” Kane visibly pales. “Don’t tell me—”
“He’s on his way to a little house in fucking suburbia,” Phoenix says, standing. He turns, placing his hand on the desk behind him to keep himself oriented. He looks every bit the beast he was once called. He looks like he could breathe fire. “He’s just gotten off the phone with Marco and Guido. I don’t know if this was some plan to two of you cooked up, using her as bait—”
“Fuck you,” Kane spits. “I would never, ever do that. Ever. He said he was in New York. Flew out this morning.”
“He doesn’t know about the trace, then,” Phoenix says. “He’s really lost his fucking mind that he dropped his guard that far. His last message sent was to Rhys, letting him know he had something to take care of and that he’d be bringing Leo home.”
“Like fucking hell,” Kane rumbles.
James clears his throat. “What did Rhys reply?”
“Nothing,” Phoenix says. “He deleted the message. I don’t think he knows what his dad’s up to.”
That’s a problem for a different day, I think, and Kane seems to be on the same line of thought because he just nods and squares his shoulder. “Three minutes to get dressed. I’ll arrange a car. Don’t you let him out of your sight,” he says to Phoenix. “You’re sure she’s there?”
“I’m sure that Romano and Ricci have her, and if we move fast enough, we can take care of this today,” Phoenix says.
If I could have spoken, I might have demanded they skip the clothes and get in the car immediately because Alice wouldn’t care how we showed up, she’d only care that we were there. But maybe we all need these precious few minutes to gather ourselves because we’re no good to Alice if we can’t see past our fear and fury.
I’m not really aware of dressing, though. It happens in a blink. I’m suddenly in jeans and a T-shirt. I’m strapped and I’ve got my knife roll and med kit and I’m standing by the door as James is rushing toward me with Phoenix on his arm. Kane’s not far behind, and no one puts up a fight when he gets behind the wheel with Phoenix beside him.
There’s a gaping hole between me and James, and I can’t stop staring at it. We will get her back, but will she end up like the rest of us? Will she lie here between us, bleeding on the seats and clinging to life?
She’s carrying a child. Will it survive?
I startle back to the present when I feel a touch against my jaw, and I glance up to find James watching me. I expected him to be the one falling apart. He’s weakest of all of us. He’s willing to take pain and even degradation when he needs to, but he’s also soft inside. He feels almost too fucking much.
But right now, he looks more put together than I am.
“We’re almost there,” he says instead of making some bullshit promise about how everything’s going to be okay.
The only thing I know is that Alice is alive because Romano isn’t stupid enough to kill her. Not yet.
“I’m going to park here,” Kane says as he pulls into the garage of a house that’s only partially done being built. There’s no garage door, but the walls obscure our car from the main street view. “I plan to take prisoners, however, so we’ll need to move it once we get the jump on them.”
“Is Aldis there already?” James asks.
Phoenix taps on his phone for a second. “He’s pulling up now.”
So we have time, and we haven’t been spotted. If we had, they would have run, which means that we had their tech guy. Aldis was just their in. Aldis was how they knew where the wedding was and where we’d be after.
