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Three dots lit the screen. I waited for the message to come, watching as the dots pulsed, then went dark.No message? Okay then…
I swung my gaze to the door as I dropped the phone aside and crawled from my bed. Cold kissed my feet as they hit the tiled floor. But I didn’t stop as I padded across my room and cracked open the door.
“Dad?”
There was no answer. That gnawing feeling in my stomach grew as I made my way downstairs and turned toward the back of the house. Lights were illuminated on the security panel at the front door. This place was wired with more security than the damn White House, a far cry from the hovel we'd lived in a few years ago.
There were guards outside, armed ones who patrolled the grounds inside the ten-foot fence topped with razor wire. There were floodlights on sensors and pressure triggers at the back door. Dad hadn’t always so obsessive. Hadn’t always so full of fear, but lately that’d been changing, and it had a lot to do with his employer…a man called Dominic Salvatore.
I rapped my knuckles against the door and waited.
“Dad, you in here?” I cracked open the door, to find the green glow of scrolling numbers.
The room was dark, darker than mine, making me blink until my eyes adjusted. Glass clinked as a shadow shifted.
“You should be asleep.”
His tone was distant and hollow.What, no, 'night, Button, I’m fine?
“You okay?” I closed the door behind me. Four monitors sat across his desk. Numbers scrolled faster than the New York Stock Exchange in a frenzy. Still it wasn’t fast enough. It wasneverfast enough. Our life revolved around transactions, around placement and hiding until there were just too many transactions to hide the illicit origin of funds. That was what we were…launderers.
“What’s wrong?” I stepped closer, catching the silhouette of my father's slump.
“Nothing.”
Nothing?That gnawing turned to a dull roar. “Doesn’t sound like nothing.” I moved closer to the desk and flicked on the lamp.
The bright light took me a second to adjust to, but as I lifted my gaze to dad’s, I took in the haunted glaze of his eyes and the blood splatter on his shirt. “Are you hurt?”
His brow wrinkled, the question wasn’t what he'd been expecting. “What?”
I took another step until I could reach out and touch his shoulder. “Dad, there’s blood on your shirt. Are you hurt?”
“Hurt? No, I’m not hurt.”
“Then whose blood is it?”
He was silent. The Salvatores. I glanced at my phone. “Did something happen?”
I waited for him to speak, for him to tell me everything was fine. That we were always going to be fine. Instead, the ice clinked in his glass as he shuddered. “I don’t know how to stop this. I don’t know how to stop a man like Dominic. He’s a monster, Button…he’s a fucking monster, and he’s trying to pull me in.”
Not just him…us.
An icy touch raced from my feet, finding my stomach instead.
“I can’t get out of it.” He lifted his gaze to mine and in that moment, I saw what fear looked like. “He’s got me in so deep I can almost touch the bottom.”
“We have his money tied up,” I protested.
A slow nod. “And now he wants it back.”
“That can’t happen.” My stomach rolled. “That’d take months, maybe even a year.”
“The Salvatores are going to start a war, Anna. One we’ll be dragged into.”
“So how do we get out?”
What about the others?Brown eyes filled my mind and a sweet smile followed.What about Finley?
