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“I had to leave. I’m–”
“Don’t tell me where you are. Plausible deniability and all that. Why did you leave?”
“Andro was…” I choked back a sob. “Andro was going to send me away. He doesn’t want me around. I don’t want that life. I can’t–”
“Oh, sweetie. Say no more. I get it. What do you need?”
“Time. I…I don’t know.”
Connor sighed, his breath hitting the phone and crackling against my ear. “Are you safe? You feeling okay?”
“Yeah. I think so.” Numb was all I was feeling now. My heart ached, but it had dulled considerably.
“As far as I can tell, they don’t have a clue where you are. It’s only a matter of time, though, because these guys have eyes everywhere. You can’t hide for long.”
“I know.”
Connor took a deep breath, and I could picture him pacing like he did when he was thinking about something. “Just lie low for a few days. Call me in the morning, and I’ll fill you in if I learn anything. In a day or two, I can get you a car or a bus ticket.”
“Where would I go?”
“Fuck if I know. For one, you gotta get outside Ferrini territory. We can figure out the rest later.”
“Thank you, Connor.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You sure about this, sweetie? You and Andro…it seemed so real.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. “He was going to send me away, Connor. None of it was real. I can’t live like that.”
“I’m sorry, Joey.”
“Me too.”
13
ANDRO
My brothers were out looking for Joey, talking to people who had connections and eyes all over the city. Our sources told us that the Mennetti family had also increased their presence within the city. If they were looking for Joey, we needed to find him first.
If he was hiding out, someone would find him. It was just a matter of who…and when.
If my brothers got to him first, they would bring him home to me. Mennetti… I wasn’t sure what they would do if they found him. Joey had no idea what kind of danger he was in.
I wanted to be out there with the search team, but I hit the bottle pretty hard after the second day. Our surveillance cameras saw him leaving with a backpack around midday.
From there, we lost him.
I had assumed he’d been kidnapped when I first discovered he wasn’t in our suite. It took watching the surveillance footage several times before I admitted to myself that Joey left of his own volition.
He chose to leave me.
Even though I just checked it thirty seconds earlier, I picked up my phone and looked one more time, just to make sure I hadn’t missed a call or text from Joey. I didn’t understand why he would leave. And of course, my father was quick to jump to the worst-case scenario. He casually wondered if maybe Joey was part of some bigger plan to seduce me, get information about the family, and then take that back to his family so they could attack.
But I didn’t buy any of that bullshit.
Joey wouldn’t do that. He loved me. At least, I thought he did. Because I sure as fuck love him. Present tense. Even if it was all a game to him, my love was, is, and always would be real.
For Joey and our child.
