I pace up and down the hallway outside Ayvah’s room for hours on end.
She’s too far away from me and I don’t like it. I don’t know how to make myself okay with having distance between us, because if I had it my way she would be in my line of sight at all times.
For a man who prides himself on control, Ayvah makes me lose every ounce of it. She makes me lose my mind. That’s the only excuse I have for what I did this afternoon, but it doesn’t make it any better.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Wynter snaps. I should have known she would be here soon. We need to talk through my altercation with Annalise, and of course my baby sister is insisting on being a part of that. She’s six months pregnant but you wouldn’t know by the amount she’s working.
I turn around and come face to face with her. Her blonde hair is bundled on top of her head but she’s still wearing makeup from the day. She’s wearing a tight-fitting cotton dress that showcases her perfect round bump. I can’t wait to be an uncle. I know that’s strange for someone like me, someone who hates appearing weak, even to my family, but the idea that I’ll have a niece in a few months makes all that I do to keep this family safe worth it.
She rests her hands on top of her bump, her eyebrows raised as she waits for an answer. “Well? Emerson called me to tell me you scared the hell out of a poor girl today? What the fuck is going on?”
“I found her.”
“Her? Who? The girl?”
A chuckle at the other end of the hallway draws my attention away from my sister and I meet my best friend’s eyes. Everett Masters. One of the only people in the world I trust implicitly, and also the biggest pain in my ass. It doesn’t help that he knocked up my sister out of wedlock, but he’s conveniently avoided all questions about that over the last few months with everything else that’s been going on. “He found her. The equivalent of Rayne’s Emerson, my you, Elijah’s Snow. The king of the bachelors has fallen.” He’s getting way too much fucking joy out of my misery.
Wynter’s head whips from her fiancé to me and back again, understanding dawning on her. “Let me get this straight. You’ve fallen for this girl? This eighteen-year-old you saved from being trafficked?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you scared the shit out of her today by spanking her without consent or a safe word?”
“Yep.”
“For fuck sake. I’m so glad this baby is a girl, because if I had to have another man around, I might actually lose my mind.” She steps toward the door that Ayvah is behind and I quickly block her path. “I’m not going to hurt her Storm. I’m not going to say anything that is going to make her run. I just want to check on her and make sure she’s okay.” She waits, her eyes locked with mine as I make a decision about whether I should allow my sister to talk to the woman that has quickly become the object of my obsession.
I step out of the way and Wynter quickly slips past me and through the door before I can change my mind. She knows me too damn well.
“I’d like to say I never thought I’d see the day, but the way I remember it is that we did in fact see this coming, and you swore black and blue it would never happen.” Everett chuckles.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yep,” he chimes. “But I’m family, so not a lot you can do about it.”
I growl and chance one more look at the door behind me. I can’t keep pacing out here like a caged animal. I have to ensure her safety, and the only way to do that is to take out our enemy.
“Tell me what you found,” I demand as I approach him and he falls in step with me.
“We tracked them back to an old warehouse by the docks, but when our guys got out to do recon it was like the cars disappeared when they drove in.”
“And they didn’t drive out the other side?”
“Nope. We had three teams to make sure they couldn’t slip us, and they surrounded the building.” His brows pull together in a mix of confusion and frustration. Taking down this trafficking ring has been hard on all of us, but none of us have taken it as hard as Everett has. Because it’s his flesh and blood who’s trading in flesh, and he feels responsible for the mess she’s creating.
“Interesting.” I rub my hand down my face as we approach my office and immediately take our usual places. I take my seat on the opposite side of the desk, and he falls into the one across the mahogany. “Any word on the street? Rumblings? Anything?”
“The only things we’ve heard have been vague comments made to some of our low-level guys. Someone approached one of them the other day and said if he wanted to make some real money he should speak to the real Queen in town, just that sort of shit.”
I roll my eyes. The audacity of this woman. She comes into my city and starts making claims like that while dealing in the one thing I will not stand for. She has to pay for all her sins, but none more than the ones she’s committed against my family, Ayvah included. “She’s getting more bold.”
Everett scoffs. “You think? There was an attempted trade at one of our establishments. She’s testing us. Looking for weak spots.”
“She’s not going to find any.”
“We’ve thought that before.”
How could I forget? Our head of security was feeding information to the Russo family in an attempt to take us down, and then proceeded to take Wynter and I hostage as part of a revenge plot to avenge his brother. We’ve rebuilt since then, but you can never be sure when it comes to loyalty, especially when you’re a criminal. Your allegiance is always where the money is, and while we pay well, I don’t know enough about Annalise to know the lengths she’s willing to go. Financial or otherwise. “Give everyone a raise.”
He raises a brow. “Everyone?”
“Everyone. I want them loyal. I also want everyone reminded about the perks of working for Frost. Protection for them and their family. Their families taken care of if anything was to ever happen to them. Help if they ever get into trouble. Whatever we think will keep them loyal, remind them of.”
Everett gives me a sharp nod and starts typing out a message on his phone. My eyes drift to the screen in front of me, but I can’t focus on any of the work I need to get done. I wish I had cameras in the room Ayvah’s in. I wonder if Elijah has any in there…
I’m about to reach for my phone and text my stalkerish brother-in-law, the very one who used to be our enemy, stalked my baby sister for a decade and yet still somehow clawed his way into our family when the office door swings open and Rayne strolls in and takes the vacant seat beside Everett.
“Where’s Emerson?” Everett asks without looking up from his phone.
“In with Wynter and Ayvah.”
The sound of her name makes my cold, dead heart speed up. How can she have such an effect on me after such a short amount of time? But then again, this is the way we’ve all fallen. Everett back when he and Wynter had no clue what the emotions they were feeling meant. From what I understand, Elijah was obsessed with Snow the moment he saw her, and Rayne was very much the same. Maybe this is just how men like us fall. It’s not slow and precise like most men. We don’t have time for that. It’s fast and rough, and we don’t realize what’s happening to us until we’re too deep to escape.
“Is she okay?” I force myself to ask the question I have no right to an answer to.
“She’s really shaken.” Rayne sighs. “Emerson gets the impression she may try to run, but I’ve taken the liberty of some extra security around the perimeter for the next few days while you beg for forgiveness.”
I glare across the desk at him and give a sharp nod. “Thank you for doing that.” It kills me to admit it, but he did the right thing. Ayvah was a flight risk before, and after what I did today, that’s even more true now. But soon she’ll realize there’s nowhere on this whole fucking planet she can hide that I won’t find her.
