Days later
I cannot stop thinking about my Kitten.
How lonely she must be, all alone out there in the wild, with nothing and no one to help her.
No money, no car, no home.
The men who sold her at the auction took it all away from her, and now she has nothing left except her memories.
I wonder where she’ll go.
She won’t go back to the fucking church after I chased her there. No way in hell would she want to put Andrea in that kind of danger. But where else can she go?
A shelter?
Fuck, I’ve searched every one of them and still haven’t fucking found her. Where the fuck could she be?
The days since she ran have been endless, each one more exhausting than the last. Every day has been spent searching for my Kitten without so much as a trace.
Now, Claudio and I are camped out at a twenty-four-hour diner for a much-needed break. A lone waitress comes over to refill our coffees. It’s my third cup since we walked in less than fifteen minutes ago. Yet it’s not doing a damn thing to stop the anger from coursing through my veins.
“You boys doing all right?” she asks.
She seems genuinely concerned. We must really look like shit.
“Just trying to find out where the fuck my girl ran off to, and whether or not a dead man came back to life,” I drawl before I can stop myself.
Her eyes widen. She’s not sure whether I’m joking or not. Claudio stifles an exhausted chuckle.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” she finally recovers. She whisks away from our table with a worried glance back over her shoulder.
When she’s gone, I turn back to Claudio. “Now, where were we?”
He stirs cream and sugar into his coffee as he runs through everything yet again.
“You saw the car with Harper and Frank go over the edge into the water. You went in after them. You pulled her out. The car sank. You left.”
I’ve told him this story at least a dozen times to try to piece together what route she might’ve taken so I can find her. That needs to be addressed, along with the fact that Frank somehow magically disappeared.
“The first recovery team arrived about twenty minutes later. They saw the tracks and secured the perimeter. We had a dive team there within the hour. They went down and found the car. Empty.”
“Empty,” I repeat. “Fuck,” I say under my breath. “Where the fuck could Frank be?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, Marcello—” Claudio begins.
I let out a short barking laugh. “Drowned men don’t walk out of the river.”
“We have to assume he did. We have no other choice.”
I sigh and relent. This isn’t Claudio’s fault. I need to breathe, think, recalibrate.
I glance out the window. The dawn traffic filters by. Normal people on their way to work. Oblivious to the shit that happens right underneath their noses.
Turning my attention back to Claudio, I muse, “So let’s say he’s alive. Let’s say he levitated right on out of the goddamn river. Where would he go? What would he do? The Russians just watched him put a bullet in Igor’s head. I don’t think he’s gonna be welcomed back there with open arms.”
“Perhaps not,” Claudio agrees. “But if he had other allies…?”
“Like who? The Polish wouldn’t fucking dare cross me. The Mexican gangs have been too busy knifing each other in the back alleys to get involved with this. The motorcycle clubs are weak and disorganized. He’s got no other allies, Claudio.”
He runs a hand over his head. “There must be someone,” he mutters. “He had to go somewhere.”
We fall into silence again. I drink my coffee. It’s hot and thick and tastes like crude oil, but it’s better than nothing.
I look up at the window again, my face reflected back in the glare.
My eyes are deep tunnels of black, lost and searching. Then my gaze refocuses on the outside world. More cars pass by. The sun is beginning to rise over the city skyline in the distance.
An ordinary white sedan pulls up to a stop at the intersection right outside the diner.
But what’s not ordinary is the girl in the front seat.
I’d recognize that blond hair anywhere.
It’s Harper.
I leap to my feet. The table rattles, and my coffee careens over the edge. It hits the ground, explodes, mug shattering and black liquid flowing down the grooves in the tile floor.
But I’m already gone. Already moving.
I knock into another patron coming in through the front door.
“Hey!” he cries out, but I don’t stop to look back at that either.
All I care about—all I can see—is that white sedan and the blond-haired girl sitting in the passenger seat.
Why she’s here of all places, now of all times, is a question for later.
I have to catch her first.
I hop into our car, ignoring Claudio’s yelling from the diner, as I hit the gas and race off, following the white sedan as fast as I can.
Far ahead of me, the white sedan is approaching the on-ramp to the nearby highway.
“I’m coming for you, Kitten,” I growl under my breath.
I’m gaining slowly, and I push the gas even harder, ignoring the red traffic lights. I hit the on-ramp at high speed with car horns blasting at me as I merge recklessly into traffic.
I’m knifing down lanes, splitting cars, and veering wildly from left to right.
I ignore all the drivers cursing at me.
All I care about is Harper.
I swing all the way into the far left-hand lane, where I can get a glimpse of the driver. It’s a big man in a hoodie pulled forward and low over his face.
Is it Frank?
No, it can’t be.
There’s no way Frank could’ve survived that crash.
I watched the car drag his body deep into the river.
But who else could it be?
Fuck! I’m coming, Harper.
I won’t rest until my Kitten is back in my arms.
And then I’m going to put a bullet in Frank Fitzgerald’s head myself.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter under my breath.
I’m trying to coax the car to go faster, but I’m already maxing out the engine.
The sedan exits the city and slips off the highway. We’re out between the suburbs and the city proper now.
I have to hurry and follow them off the highway, crossing lanes without caring for other cars in my way.
Suddenly, my phone vibrates in my pocket.
I pull it out at the same time that I wrench around to take the same right turn that the sedan took just moments ago.
“What?” I growl.
It’s Claudio. “I don’t know what you’re pursuing, but I have men coming to back you up. We’re tracking your location, and they’re just five minutes behind you.”
At the far end of the block, the sedan turns into the parking lot of a motel. The doors open. Both of the car’s passengers are facing away from me, but that hair, that hair.
It’s her.
It’s them.
It has to be.
“I’m not waiting for fucking backup,” I growl, and I hang up the phone and chuck it onto the passenger’s seat.
Screeching to a stop in the parking lot, I leap out of the car with the engine still running and sprint to the door of the motel room that Harper just walked into. Right before it closes on me.
I’m already roaring as I bust it open and step inside, “Frank, you fucking monster, get your goddamn hands off—”
I freeze.
A man and his wife are looking up at me.
The man has pushed back his hoodie. He’s got dark hair, thinning at the crown, neatly combed-over. His wife has a square face, blue eyes, a full figure, and that signature blond hair that caught my eye.
But it’s not her.
It’s not Frank.
It’s just another pair of innocent civilians who are staring into the face of a furious, delirious Mafia Don while fearing for their lives.
A surge of guilt washes over me.
I was so sure it was Harper. So sure that Frank had recaptured her.
But I was wrong, so wrong.
Fuck!
“T-Take anything y-you want,” the man stammers. He holds up his hands in pure fear.
They think … I want their money?
His wife looks even more terrified. Her bottom lip trembles like she wants to say something, but she can’t remember how to form a word.
Fuck. What the fuck am I even doing? What was I thinking?
I raise my hands. “Never mind.”
And then I turn and walk back out the door and out into the parking lot.
Claudio pulls up at that moment in a blacked-out SUV. As soon as the vehicle stops, doors fly open and soldiers pour out.
I wave them back in. “Go back,” I order.
They all pause, confused, hands already reaching into their jackets to withdraw guns and knives and go take down whatever enemy their boss has corralled.
If only they knew how laughable that was.
Claudio emerges a second later from the front passenger seat. “Is it—?” he starts to ask.
“No,” I interrupt. “Forget that. Forget this.”
I stride past him, headed for the car I came in. I want to get home.
“Are you sure?” he asks quietly.
I nod, unable to answer his question without yelling at him.
I’m going to find Frank and chop off his head.
And I fucking swear right here and right now that I don’t care if I have to go to the end of the earth, I’m going to fucking find Harper.
And I’ll make her mine.
Forever.
