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The hell with it. I was too exhausted to keep worry at the problem of Ridley No-Last-Name. I got up to dispose of the condom, then took my place on the mattress next to the wall. Closing my eyes, I dropped like a stone into sleep.
Two hours later, Ridley’s cell phone vibrated, waking us both. She got up and dug it out of the pocket of her shorts.
“It’s a text from my alpha.” She sat down on the mattress and frowned at the screen. “She says you’re going to get a call and I should let you take it.”
“A call?” I rubbed a hand over my face, still half-asleep. “Did she say who?”
She shook her head. “No.”
The call came within minutes. Ridley handed the phone to me.
I didn’t recognize the number. I rolled onto my side, propping myself on a forearm, and brought the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”
“Zaquiel Kral?” A woman’s voice, tinged with a French accent.
I exchanged a baffled glance with Ridley, who lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
“That’s me,” I said.
“This is Zoe Tremblay.”
That made me sit bolt upright. What the hell could Victorine’s daughter want with me?
“You heard that?” I mouthed at Ridley.
She nodded, a perplexed line between her eyes.
“Yeah?” I said into the phone.
Zoe expelled a breath. “I’m calling about your brother. Rafael.” Her tone was so empty, so devoid of emotion it chilled me even through the phone.
I gripped the case, white-knuckled. “Go on.”
“He’s been captured.”
“Who?” I went taut, my muscles and sinews snapping to attention. “Who has him?”
“I can’t tell you that. But I’ve been instructed to tell you that you have one week to complete your mission. If anything goes wrong, Rafael will be sold to a brothel as a blood slave.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak over the anger and fear.
“Did you hear me?” Her robotic tone fractured into something frantic. Like Zoe Tremblay gave a fuck about my brother. Two years ago, she’d stood by while Victorine’s goons had beaten Rafe into a pulp. “Do you understand?”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I—” She gulped, then spoke in a rush like at any moment the phone would be taken away from her. “Because they’re forcing me to. But I can tell you that they mean it. If I could help, I would.”
Yeah, right. “Then get him away from them.”
“I can’t,” she said in a voice I had to strain to hear.
“I see.” A hot fury clamped like a band around my chest. It was an effort to speak. “Tell them I’m already in New York,” I said and ended the call.
Ridley took the phone from me and set it on her backpack.
I met her eyes. Whatever she saw in my gaze made her flinch.
Smart woman.
