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“And are we behind it?”
I cast her a frustrated glance. “In case you’ve forgotten, Sloane, you two are the ones currently attached to the Rossi heirs. Doyouknow if there were plans to attack the Massimos?”
Sloane turned and looked behind her. “Penny, do you know anything? You’re the one who likes to poke around in Michael’s paperwork.”
I expected Penny to say that she’d only done that because she was being blackmailed, which was her general retort, but evidently we weren’t in a place for petty arguments.
“I don’t know anything about anything. But I think Brooks is right. If the Massimos were attacked they’d assume it was the Rossis. And that means they’ll be looking to retaliate. They’ll be gunning for us.”
Sloane turned back to face me. “Which means we might be running right into danger. Are you sure about this, Brooks?”
I was.
I was pretty sure I was right about everything going on—which meant I was also right about retaliation coming from the Massimos, and Sloane was right about this being a stupid move. We were running right toward trouble.
But my heart was screaming that I needed to know whether Anthony was okay or not. And I wasn’t going to turn around and wait for Joseph or Michael to let me know.
I wanted to see it with my own eyes.
9
ANTHONY
Ilooked out over the crowd as we played our first chords, my eyes searching for a girl with curly red hair—dyed, as she was actually blonde—and sly blue eyes. I looked for the most beautiful face I’d ever seen.
And I didn’t see anything.
Brooks hadn’t come, then, and though I worked hard not to care and to tell myself that it didn’t actually matter, part of me knew I was lying to myself. That part also knew that I’d dreamt about her last night and had her in the back of my mind all day, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.
Maybe it was an echo of having her under my hands again yesterday on the ship. Or maybe it was the feel of having slid right back into that spot where the tension between us was fizzling with electricity.
Maybe it was just the realization that I’d felt like something was missing from the moment she got out of my bed and walked out of my life.
Whatever it was, Brooks had managed to worm her way back under my skin and make herself at home there. And weirdly, I wasn’t even upset about it. After all, she’d been living there since we were kids. We’d gone on so many adventures when we were young that she was practically my other half. Getting her into bed had been a realization we belonged together there, too. We’d fit like puzzle pieces that had been searching for each other for years.
And then she’d been gone and I’d pretended to myself that I didn’t care.
Now that she was back...
But she wasn’t back, I reminded myself, my fingers moving instinctively across the strings of my guitar to close out the song. If she was back, she’d be here right now. And she wasn’t.
I bit my lip, turned my attention back to the crowd, and moved on with the set with Brooks buried somewhere under the music. I couldn’t afford to keep thinking about her when she obviously wasn’t thinking about me.
Besides, she was on the Rossi side. I was not.
We finished the set quickly, flying through songs that we knew like the backs of our hands, and then I found myself bowing for the applause and following my friends off the stage, each of us ready to get out from under the hot stage lights. I made my way right for the bar, in desperate need of a drink. As I went, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked it for anything important.
To my surprise, I had message after message, each of them delivered in all caps. And what I saw took me right to the closest chair. We’d been attacked. One of the Massimo safe houses had been shot up, leaving several members of my family dead or in the hospital. My family didn’t know who’d done it or how they’d figured out where we were.
We didn’t have anyone giving us any information.
And scattered into the middle of those messages were several from Brooks, none of them giving me anything more thanWhere the hell are you? Are you okay?Just the same sentences over and over again, peppered withWhy the hell aren’t you answering me?
I’d never seen Brooks shaken over anything, but her messages sounded panicked.
And coming in the middle of the messages from my family the way they were...
Oh my God.
