Dishearten (Frayed Satin #2)

Prologue

“You found my daughter, and you won’t tell me where she is!?”

“Thaaat’s right,” I sing, my stopped-up nose making my taunt nasally. Though, the caller on the other line is so pissed, I don’t think he notices.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind, Hatton Fury!”

“Uh… duh?” I huff a laugh as I rub my tired, itchy eyes. “Come on, McKennon. That can’t be news to you. The body my brothers and I left in that New Orleans alley didn’t tip you off? Or the poker game after Asheville?”

“Don’t remind me, you cheating piece of fecking shite. You still owe me for the burns you left in my casino’s carpet.”

Oh yeah. The Irish accent is in full force. My should-be-father-in-law is pissed.

“Cheating? Moi? No… couldn’t be me,” I muse lightly. “But you know… maybe you should be clearer on the house rules.”

“House rules!” He scoffs, and I almost smile. “Everyone knows you can’t pick and choose from your own deck!”

Goddamn, riling up the King of Vegas is fun. Almost as fun as stalking his daughter is. Or was. You know, before she went missing for six very shitty, very terrifying, and very-fucking-long months.

But I finally found her.

Kian McKennon lights into a string of Irish curses, but the building pressure in my sinuses is too distracting to pay attention. With the dingy hotel room’s brittle curtains drawn, I might as well be in a cave—there’s not a ray of sunshine coming in and it’s dusty as hell.

Ignoring him, I focus on my bright-as-day laptop screen, fingers hovering over my nose.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Nooope,” I sound out, popping the “p” and keep staring at the digital sun.

I’ve all but given up when the sneeze I’ve been waiting for all dadgum day finally racks through me as violently as an electric shock. I pinch my nostrils just in time to keep from scaring the skittish girl on my bed, making my ears pop so hard they squeak.

“Fuck, that felt good,” I mutter, then work my jaw and tug one earlobe with my fingers to pop them again. Unfortunately, as soon as they do, the enraged father roars back into my hearing, loud and fucking clear.

“I have had it up to here with you, Fury. Do you hear me? My wife and I will have your bloody head if you don’t cut the shite and tell me where my Laoise is!”

LEE-sha, that’s how he pronounces her given Irish name.

The first time he texted it to me, I about went cross-eyed trying to figure out what he was saying.

Reading texts is already difficult enough, but a totally different language?

Fuck that. I told him voice notes or calls only after that.

He refused at first, but after the million-and-oneth unanswered message, the stubborn bastard finally got the hint.

I hum to myself as I switch video feeds, triangulating the hacked satellite footage and security cams to an island that’s only a short boat ride away from me. As I try to find her, my eyes begin watering again, and I nearly groan.

Hopefully, this will be my last cramped, musty-ass hotel with zero air circulation and sealed windows. These shitholes are under the radar, but they’re a nightmare for someone in my particular predicament.

Tipping the rickety desk chair back, I stretch to fish a syringe from my bag on the floor.

Once I retrieve it, I slam back on all four chair legs and bite the protective shield over the needle, spitting it with practiced ease into the nearby wastebasket with the others.

My free hand pulls back my basketball shorts and rubs the skin on my thigh, readying it.

I keep my face carefully blank even though the head of one of the Troisgarde families—and eternal pain in my ass—can’t see me wince through the phone.

McKennon’s still ranting about how I’m the enemy, he’ll never forgive me for scaring his daughter away, that I’m a dead man for keeping her location hidden, and blah blah-dee-fucking blah.

I tune him out as I drive the needle in, silently cursing for the thousandth time that I have to do this at all.

Though, the flood of relief that washes over my sinuses and itchy skin is enough to make me lightheaded.

“You better start fecking listening, or I’ll have to trace this call and come kick your arse myself.”

“Nuh, uh, uh… that would be against the rules,” I taunt him with a sing-songy rhythm again.

I resist itching where the needle went in and grind out, “I know the Troisgarde has a hard time committing to pacts, McKennon, but we both agreed to this one over the card game of your choosing. Fair and square. Finders keepers.”

“My daughter isn’t a toy to fight over on the playground, you crazy mother—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” I snap. “Watch your goddamn tone or fuck off. I didn’t have to tell you that I found her, but I did it as a dadgum courtesy. I could’ve kept this information to myself and let you rot with worry like I’ve had to do for months…”

I drift off as the gorgeous strawberry blonde in workout sweats reappears on my screen, and I zero in on the footage.

“But I didn’t,” I add with a murmur. “Because I’m considerate and shit.”

Lucy McKennon walks down one of Wander Isle’s docks that serve several fishing and house boats, nibbling the cookie base of a tart she already dissected the filling out of with delicate curves and flicks of her tongue.

Thanks to the complex surveillance system my brother designed, I got rock-hard watching her go through the process with a different pastry earlier.

This setup has better angles than a damn NFL game. Now it does, anyway.

The satellite network Dash hacked into—don’t ask me how, he’s the genius—was supposed to make finding Lucy an easy task.

Instead, I had to hit several city streets and use my own skills to chase the metaphorical—and sometimes literal—pastry crumbs she left behind.

It took six months of always searching a town or two too late before everything suddenly flared to life, and my screen filled with a Carolina Lowcountry bakery’s storefront window.

One second, I’d been confused as hell, frowning at what had set the facial recognition software off, the next, the sun shifted, eliminating the glare on the glass…

And there she fucking was, enjoying a cherry tart like she was making love to the damn thing.

Relief hit me in a wave until my cock registered the way she lapped at the sweet custard. I nearly threw the computer out the motel’s two-story window to keep from coming right then and there.

In my defense, I can’t even remember the last time I got laid.

But still, after searching for sweet, innocent, scared little Lucy all this time, I hate myself that once I finally found her, my first thought was to rush to her, hold her, then slip my cock in between those plush lips to teach my naughty little bunny rabbit to never, ever fucking run from me again.

Those perfect, full, pink lips…

“Listen, Fury,” Kian’s rage snaps me out of the memory. “When my wife finds out you’re refusing to tell us where Laoise is, she’s going to lose her mind. You’d already be a dead man if she wasn’t thirty-thousand feet in the air after consoling the Lucianos in Boston.”

I wince.

Shit.

My voice is gruff when I’ve gathered the courage to speak. “How are they? How’s…” I blow out a breath. “How’s Brylie?”

I shouldn’t even ask about Lucy’s best friend. The Lucianos have every right to hate my family to the grave and back… Brylie was Dash’s fiancée.

Is. Is Dash’s fiancée.

The daughters of the Troisgarde crime syndicate—Luna Bordeaux, Lucy McKennon, and Brylie Luciano—were inseparable before the Furys came along. Inseparable and safe. But then we fucked everything up like we always do.

Now Luna is with my oldest brother, Orion, sheltering back at our Appalachian home. At the first sign of the death and chaos the Furys cause, Lucy fled for her life and has been in the wind ever since. And Brylie…

Lucy doesn’t even know what happened to her best friend. She can’t, can she? Or else she’d have gone home.

Damn. I ain’t no coward, but I hope to Christ I’m not the one who has to break the news.

Kian sighs. “Severino and Talia are doing as well as can be expected.”

My brows raise, shocked he answered at all, but I’m too full of my classic Fury family guilt to give him shit about it.

“So, not too fucking well, I gather.” My fingers tap the desk before I give in. “You know, if y’all looped Dash in, or even just let him visit the hospital, maybe he could—”

“Do you Fury boys have a death wish?” Kian snarls. “Talia alone would slice Dashiel’s throat with a razor blade before she ever let him so much as breathe the same air as her daughter ever again.”

I suck my teeth in frustration.

That response was to be expected. At least I can tell Dash he’s been successful at flying under the radar.

“And speaking of mothers,” Kian continues. “You better hope to God my wife has mercy when she finds out you’ve been withholding information about our daughter from us.”

I clear my throat. “That’d mean you’d have to tell her about your little end of the bargain, though… wouldn’t you? How would Mrs. McKennon feel learning her husband bet away the right to protect his daughter to whoever found her first? I know I’d flip my ever-loving shit.”

I did, actually. Which is why I was so goddamned determined to get to her first.

At his pause, I hum. “Mhm, seems like we both have a vested interest in keeping finding Lucy to ourselves, now don’t we?”

This kind of manipulation and scheming, teetering on the cliff of danger while simultaneously poking the charging bear, it’s what I do best for my family.

Our branch of the Fury family tree is split into jobs.

King, my father, rules—a little on the nose, I know—Orion is the muscle, Dash is the smart strategist, and I…

I’m fucking crazy.