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"Vivian."
She bolts up from her chair, looking pale. "Y—yes, boss?"
"The Gallo you flagged two months ago. The one who was blocked from entering the Golden Flame. Pull up any footage we have of him. Get me his name and a fucking address."
The Wild Seven might be elusive to a legendary degree, but Ace said they were working with this asshole. Finding him means finding a pressure point that can lead to the Wild Seven's whereabouts faster than any other idea I have.
She gets on it right away as I bark out more orders to the only remaining Caputos with the spine to stay in here. They're not working fast enough, though. The security room had already been a flurry of chaos because of the total reset Loren mentioned, telling Big Luck.
As if summoned by my thoughts, Big Luck appears at my side, takes one look at my face, and swallows.
"Okay. Whose head are we about to bash in and why?"
The words won't come out because I'm still trying to catch up with everything just revealed to me.The Wild Seven have my daughter.
My daughter. Evelyn.
It's so much to take in. Normally, I would analyze how I feel about the truth bomb that just went off through Loren's phone. She lied to me about her daughter's—our daughter's—paternity. She was once with the Wild Seven and kept that from me. I'm a fucking father, and I've missed two years of my little girl's life. Shock, wonder, betrayal, and a dozen other emotions war with the fury pulsing in my chest.
But now isn't the time for me to overanalyze. I can't ponder the best course of action at length as I do with so many other big decisions involving my family. I'm not the type to act first and bear the consequences later, but at this moment, I can't think clearly, let alone fucking strategize.
They hurt my Loren. Broke her leg, threatened her, terrified her. They took our Evelyn.
I'm going to fucking kill them.
Once again, I'm struck by the fact that Loren hasn't said a word since she followed me into this room. I turn, expecting to find her behind me, but then I realize she's sitting at her computer, and her fingers fly across the keyboard with blinding speed. One look at Vivian tells me that my Caputo cousin is not having luck, but perhaps Loren is.
She stiffens noticeably when I step behind her but doesn't stop her intense work. I can't make sense of her screen. Numbers, occasional letters, brief searches of websites that she navigates as if she's seen them hundreds of times. It's all a static-like blur, and I realize she's breaking laws right before me, hacking in the exact way I told her not to.
But right now, I couldn't care less. I'd do the same thing if I knew how. My attention pins on her.
"Loren."
She doesn't answer, simply pressing her lips together. My cherry blossom is normally so bright and chatty, but right now, it looks as though a gust of wind could break her. I'm violent by nurture, not nature, but seeing her like this makes me ache to spill blood and burn everything down.
"Loren."
"I know you're mad," she snaps, her voice breaking. "I get it. I'd be mad at me, too, if I was you. But just let me fucking do this right now. You can take her away from me for good and throw me in prison for working with the Wild Seven later, but Ihave to do this.I have to get her back."
Her words turn over in my fury-addled brain, making no sense. But beside me, Big Luck's eyes go wide and he splutters.
"You're one of them? I knew it! I knew when they picked you up that something was going on. I bet you told me to do that reset to help them get into our systems, huh? Well, the Caputos are going to make you regret—"
"Luck," I snarl at him, whirling on my hulking friend, who shrinks back in surprise. "Shut the fuck up and contact all street teams to be prepared for a chase. The Wild Seven took my daughter."
Big Luck's brow creases and he looks at me with immense confusion before his eyes flick between Loren and me.
"Oh. Holy shit. I'm on it, Boss."
He's immediately making calls and rushing from the room while everyone else scrambles to get the information I need. Loren beats them to it, and soon, we have a name and an address for Ricardo Gallo.
I vaguely remember the name. He'd tried to get in with the Caputo crime family shortly after being cast out of his own family for squealing something to law enforcement. But no crime family worth their salt would let a squealer in their midst—and certainly not a hacker as he was known to be. It seems he was a more skilled hacker than one would guess, and he's been scamming my family's casino as a small retribution as the dark web entity that Loren has had trouble pinning down.
Now it seems Ricardo Gallo is trying to use my daughter to get back on his family's good side. And I know they'd accept his fucked-up show of loyalty. The Gallos hate me and the rest of the Caputos because this is leverage they could use to twist my arm clean off my body.
Loren was right about the hacker being in Vegas despite not physically being allowed into the Golden Flame. With his address locked down, my gun at my back, and my phone in hand, I quickly have Caputos gathering around his premises to keep the Gallo there while Loren and I get into my car, and Big Luck drives. He burns rubber getting to the hacker's address.
I sit in the back by Loren, anger still throbbing in my veins. Still, my cherry blossom doesn't say a word. Her jaw is clenched, and she stares out the window as she hugs her purse to her chest with a haunted expression. The tears have stopped, but now she looks practically ill.
