CHAPTER ELEVEN TRACE
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TRACE
Ashton’s cousin met us at the back of their hotel.
He opened the door, stepped out, and greeted Ashton first. Hugs.
A couple pats on the back. Ashton’s family was the opposite of mine.
They had larger numbers, and there was a general love and trust for each other.
There was respect and fondness between Stephano and me, but there was still distrust. I did what my uncle said because he was the closest thing I had to a father, but I wasn’t in denial of what he did.
Mafia was Mafia. The only gray area allowed was toward blood.
Family members got a lot of leeway unless they went after their own family members.
Our bloodline was needed to keep going, keep the family business, but even with that, I was starting to feel some chokehold pressure around my neck.
It was down to me to keep the family business going. Stephano knew this. I knew this.
Everyone else, they messed up once, and the consequences were dire.
I suppose there were times I didn’t have the stomach for what we’ve done, but I didn’t allow myself to have many of those moments.
It was what it was, but having said all that, I was envious of the fondness each had when Ashton stepped back and Marco Walden turned toward me.
He was a few years older than us, more ingrained in their family, but as far as I knew, he was the one who oversaw all their hotels.
The fact that Benny, their grandfather and the head of their family, was the one who’d reached out to Stephano told me they were done with my father.
Blood would need to be spilled to make sure my father knew they would not be giving him any more allowances.
This was a very major fuckup on my father’s end, but it was one that’d been coming for so long I wasn’t surprised to be in this position.
Ashton would’ve been called in for this anyway.
They were showing respect by giving the message to Stephano, who’d handed it down to me.
When I’d called Ashton, he’d just gotten his own call from his family.
Everyone was aware of what would need to be done.
“Tristian.” Marco held a hand out, and I met it with mine as we half hugged, clapped each other on the back at the same time. “It’s good to see you. You and my coz need to come up and spend more time with us.”
I nodded, stepping back. “You name the time, and we’ll be there.”
He tipped his head up, laughing. “Yeah, right. You and Ashton here are building your own empire. We hear the rumors. We know both of you are doing just fine. Huh?” He clasped Ashton’s shoulder, giving it a good-natured squeeze.
“Am I right? You and Tristian here, both the golden princes of our families. We’re proud of you.
You hear that? Proud.” His tone grew thick with that last word, and he blinked a few times.
“Real proud, Ashton. Grandpop says it, but you need to hear it more than you do.”
Ashton was blinking a few times too. “Thanks, Marco.”
“Yeah.”
I waited a beat, giving them a second before I cleared my throat.
Ashton saw his family on the regular, but it wasn’t as regular as they’d like.
That was because of me. He was firmly in our in-between world, focusing on our businesses.
Or that’s what they felt was the reason.
That he chose our friendship over them: there was a grain of contention underneath everything because of that fact.
That contention was not known to my uncle or my father.
It was known only to me, Ashton, and Ashton’s family.
That was another thing that added irritation about my father.
Besides being a general asshole in life as a husband, a father, a brother, this was the latest straw that was breaking my back.
And I was pissed at myself at the same time because we’d enabled him.
Myself. Stephano. Even Ashton’s family, to an extent.
We all let him do his shit, let him get away with it, and now, when he’d probably gone too far, we were coming in only to make things correct.
I was suddenly so tired of my dad’s bullshit that I wanted to get this done. We’d do what we needed to do, and I wanted to get to business. Get it over with, handle everything, and let Bobby have my father when we were done.
“My father?” It was time to ask.
“Right.” Marco’s tone and eyes both chilled. He straightened up, nodding behind him, and one of his men stepped around us to hold the door. Another two of his men began leading the way. Marco behind them. Ashton. Me. The door guy fell in line behind me.
We walked through their loading area, their kitchen, and a banquet hall, and then he led us to a back elevator.
I recognized it from their other hotels.
The elevator and this lobby were used for the high rollers or the celebrities.
Maximum privacy and confidentiality. I glanced up, seeing a rounded mirror set in the corner, but I knew this family.
There was no way those cameras were on. They were permanently “broken.” Their excuse for any authorities who might try to get a warrant for their security footage.
Once in the elevator, Marco still didn’t say a word. Two of his men stayed back, guarding the elevator. The third one, the door guy, came with us.
Marco hit the button for the top floor. He shot me a look. “He didn’t have that room initially. When the incident happened, we moved everyone up there. Easier to keep a handle on the collateral.”
Fuck.
It wasn’t just my dad involved.
I refrained from letting out a curse, but goddamn, Dominic .
The hotel was attached to their casino. My guess was that I was walking into a possible overdose?
A hooker? Or a high-end escort? That’s what I was hoping for, because if it wasn’t a working girl, we’d be wading into an area that, if I let myself, would turn my stomach more than it was already going.
I couldn’t let myself go there.
I was aware of Ashton glancing my way and Marco watching his cousin. Both were tensing up, both knowing there was a small chance I’d lose my shit inside.
I locked down. I had to.
We arrived.
The doors slid open, giving us immediate entrance to the entire top floor, which I was guessing was the presidential suite.
I saw the reason for the relocation. Three bedroom doors were open. Each had a guard standing in front of it, and at the ping of our entrance, I heard my father before I saw him.
“Finally! Goddamn, motherfucking. This is—” He cut off, coming from the bedroom closest to our right side. He saw me, and his words dried up.
He swallowed, and I’d only seen my father pale one time before. That was the night my mother died.
He paled this time.
Goddamn! I knew what that meant.
“Son.” His tone was all different this time. Way more congeniality, but I heard the caution in there.
I began shaking my head as I went to the far-left bedroom, rage filling me up. I was losing my battle over my self-restraint.
“Trace—”
“Do not call me that!” I pointed at him as I kept going.
Churning. More churning.
My stomach was twisting.
The guard moved aside, but I only looked. I didn’t go in the room.
A girl was laid out on the bed, her arms spread out, one of them falling off the bed.
Her legs were sprawled out too. She was in a bra and a skirt.
The skirt was pushed up around her waist. Her eyes were closed.
I tracked her chest, seeing if she was breathing.
I couldn’t see any needles, and there was no white around her nostrils.
Fucking hell.
“Is she alive?”
The guard looked at me, no expression. “Yes. Checked her pulse fifteen minutes ago. It’s there.”
I went back to watching her chest, counting her breaths. They were slow, and I was having a hard time seeing much movement.
“You guys have been waiting for me to come before handling this?” My tone picked up. My shit was easing out. My control was breaking.
I went to the other bedroom.
Marco was the one who answered. “We made the call to Stephano. This won’t be happening here ever again.” His voice changed, growing the tiniest bit distant, and if I were to guess, he was looking at my father as he said that.
And my father, fuck my father. He was quiet now .
Waiting. Biding his time.
I really loathed Dominic West.
He hadn’t been a father to me. It’d been Uncle Stephano at my ball games.
Uncle Stephano who helped me learn how to drive, who took me to the batting cages, who was there when I graduated high school, Columbia, Yale.
My dad? Not fucking there. He’d been getting high.
Cheating on his wife. A liar. An abus—I had to stop thinking about him, letting all the past rise up. I went to the second room.
It wasn’t much better, except the girl there was fully awake and barely clothed.
She was huddling in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees, and she looked at me, makeup streaming down her face.
She was in a bra and this time only underwear.
The bed had been stripped. I was guessing they’d pulled everything to keep any more evidence from being left behind.
Helped with the cleanup, and because we were Mafia, that’d been their fucking first thought.
Ashton hadn’t moved from just beyond the elevator. His gaze was solely focused on me.
I was aware of how much he was aware that I was fast losing any and all restraint I had in me.
I turned, facing Marco and my father in the same direction. “Who are these girls?”
Please be working girls. Not that their fate was any less tragic—it might’ve been more, but because they’d been caught up in this life before now, before my father.
He hadn’t been the first to victimize them, just the latest in a long line of others.
That, by itself, eased a little bit of the tension in me. Just a tiny bit, but not enough.
And seriously, how sad and pathetic of a thought was that?