CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Az
We all watched, stunned, as Victoria stormed from the room. The minute the sound of her footsteps quieted, Tiffany whirled to face me from across the table.
"You three should leave." Rich spoke before Tiffany could open her mouth. "Give the princess time to cool off."
"Fine, but we're not done with this conversation, Innocenti." Tiffany spat. "Come on G.G., Noah."
Noah glared at me until Leighton leaned over the table, sneering at him. "Out, narc. I'd hate to do something that you'd regret."
"I'll see them out." Craig offered, standing from his seat and following Victoria's guests from the dining room.
I silently seethed in my chair until he returned. As pissed as I was about Dudley Do-rights insinuations, there was something more pressing that we needed to discuss. One look at Joey told me he'd seen the same thing I had when Tiff's girlfriend had been filling her dishes with food.
"Well, that was a shit show." Craig said, strolling back into the dining room.
"More than a shit show. It seems Tiffany is involved with a Golden Devil." I replied. "That G.G. has their symbol tatted on her arm."
"You're sure that's what you saw?" Rich asked.
"It was definitely their symbol." Joey added. "I saw it too."
"What the hell is a party girl doing with a Golden Devil?" Craig mused.
"It could be a coincidence, or it could be something more." Rich said. "We should get eyes on Tiffany to see if we can figure it out. The timing is suspicious, but we need to be sure before we do anything with this information."
"You think the Devils had formed an alliance with the Jackals?" I asked.
"It seems counter to the little anyone actually knows about the Devil's operations, but it is suspicious that days after L put Colin in our basement, Tiffany shows up here with a Devil on her arm." Rich answered. "Put someone on Tiffany and in the meantime we leave Colin sit for a while longer. Either it'll smoke someone out or he'll be ready to break from hunger alone."
"On it." L chirped, pulling his phone from his pants pocket.
"Did you find anything on the cameras from the center?" I asked Craig. "Something that might explain why Mrs. McMillan suddenly doesn't have faith in us to make the fucker that attacked the center pay?"
"She's just covering her bases to keep the kids safe, Az." Rich warned. "It makes sense she called Mercer, with the center's neutrality being violated. I'd be shocked if she hasn't also called in Harrison."
"Harrison, I'd understand. But that uptight prick?" I snarled.
Rich pinched the bridge of his nose and propped his elbows on the table. "That's enough, Az. I'm not in the mood for anymore of this shit from you. Craig, did you find anything?"
"Not a damned thing." Craig responded. "Whoever looped the cameras was skilled enough to hack in and do it real time. I started looking at the data, trying to find a digital fingerprint that can trace back to whoever it was, but that's going to take time."
"I think we should discuss the elephant in the room." Joey spoke up, causing us all to look over at him. "The Princess was right that we've been bulldozing over her. Even taking her out with one of us has been a fight, Rich. At first we weren't sure of her involvement, but if anyone is still questioning that, you're just being willfully ignorant or blind. She is a bright woman, and capable. We can't keep attempting to control her under the guise of protection. It's gotta go two ways, or she's going to keep running from us."
I started to protest, but Rich shot me a look and started speaking. "Fine. We can give her tonight to cool off and then we'll address that with her first thing in the morning. You're right. Any doubts I had about her involvement were cleared with the attack on her office at the center. She may be a lot of things, but she wouldn't do anything that could hurt that place."
"If we're done here, I'm going to the gym." I gritted out.
Rich gave me a curt nod, dismissing me from the room. He knew as well as I did that I needed to work out some aggression before I lost my shit. I quickly stopped in my room to change into gym shorts before heading back down to work out. Turning some death metal on the surround system, I went to work pummeling the punching bag.
I'd been at it for nearly an hour, stopping only long enough to down a bottle of water, when Leighton barreled into the gym. I was expecting him to take a cheap shot and initiate a sparring session, but the odd look on his face stopped me in my tracks.
"What's wrong?"
"She's gone. Slipped out and took your car. Not that I blame her for taking your car. You kind of deserve to have that thing stolen, but–"
"It's not like she could get too far. I'm not sure why you seem so unsettled, L. Just have Craig track my car and go get her."
"Sometimes I wonder if all that pent up anger fucked up your brain or something," Leighton snarked. "Craig did track the Porsche. It's at her apartment complex."
"So," I shrugged. "Go get her."
"Are you even listening to me? She's. Not. There. Rich already called the complex, and some doorman named Arthur said she's stopped in and picked up her car."
That caused me to draw up short as some feeling squeezed my chest. "And we didn't LoJack her car, did we?"
"If we did, would I be here? Get your head out of your ass and get out here." Leighton snapped, losing his patience as he brought me up to speed and slammed the door to the gym. Not even pausing to turn off the music or clean up the gym, I hurried out after him to figure out what we would do.
I rounded the corner to the foyer to see Rich and Joey barking orders into their phones and Craig's eyes glued to his laptop.
"Where are we with the runaway princess?"
"Fucking nowhere, asshole." Craig snapped at me. The flickering light from his screens illuminated and highlighted the worried crease in his brow.
"I've got street guys looking for her car in their areas, but I don't have high hopes that she'll go anywhere near where my guys work. But it's better than nothing." Joey said, sighing irritatedly. His phone rang, and he answered it before the second ring sounded. "Mrs. McMillan… Yes, I know it's later on in the day… Yes… Well, I was wondering. Have you seen or heard from Victoria?"
" YOU LOST HER?!" The old woman screeched so loudly Joey had to hold the phone away from his ear.
"We didn't really… No, Mrs. McMillan. She ran from us… I know… Thank you." He said, hanging up and stuffing his phone in his pocket. Turning to his brother, Joey shook his head. "Mrs. McMillan hasn't seen her."
"She's a sharp girl. It's not likely she would go somewhere we'd think to look if she went out of her way to ditch the car where we could find it." I mused, my voice coming out tighter than I'd expected it to. Being angry at her was taking a back seat to worry as our leads from the house were running out.
"I've not found her again after I lost the car leaving the area of her apartment complex. There aren't enough live video cameras or security cameras to track her movements. So I'm at a dead end here," Craig said, slamming his laptop shut.
"Well, boys, we're doing this the old-fashioned way it looks like. Leighton, take your bike and head to the east end. You'll move faster than us, but stay sharp since you'll be on your own. Joey, Craig, take the west end. Az, you're with me. We'll check the north side. I want check ins. If you find her, I don't care if you have to carry her back here kicking and screaming."
By the time Rich was done talking, the sound of Leighton's bike was already roaring away from the manor. An amused thought crossed my mind as we headed to the garage. I wondered if the Princess knew just how much trouble she was in when we found her.
The minutes seemed to crawl by as we moved through the city. The boys texted their negative check-ins repeatedly, and I felt like a new stone settled in my stomach with every one. Rich was white-knuckling the steering wheel so hard I wondered whether or not he would break it.
We'd cleared a few diners, coffee shops, and a shopping center in the more affluent part of the city and turned up nothing ourselves. Places to look were running low, and I didn't know what we'd do if we couldn't find her.
I was starting to picture the things that could have happened. Reasons why we weren't able to find her and hadn't had any check-ins from our street guys that were positive either. It was gnawing a fucking hole in my stomach. As much as we were at odds, I didn't want her in danger. She didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve what she was going through… And if we didn't find her, based on how the guys had been looking at me before we left, there were definitely some attempted beatdowns in my future. Rich probably wouldn't even stop them.
I might not stop them either if something happened to her.
The sound of Rich's phone pulled me out of my spiraling thoughts, and he pulled to a stop at a well-timed red light. Watching him scan his phone screen, I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding when his whole body seemed to sag with relief.
"Mags has her. She's at the Spotted Cobra." He said, whipping a U-turn.
The engine roared as he pushed the gas nearly to the floor, heading toward the neutral bar. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him push his baby this hard to get somewhere, a point punctuated by him nearly drifting the car around a corner as the thought crossed my mind.
"I–"
"No." He snapped, cutting me off.
"What?"
"Whatever you're about to say. No. I don't really want to fucking hear it, Az. Unless it's something about you figuring out how you're going to finally pull your head out of your ass. Or how you're going to stop piling your bullshit, and tension, and antagonism on the situation we're all in." His voice was laced with impatience and anger as he snapped at me. "We've talked about it several times. I've given you patience and time while we sorted out what we were dealing with. The one thing we have learned is that Victoria is not the villain of this story. She's either a victim or an unfortunate bystander, and there's too many coincidences for it to be the latter. You need to sort it the fuck out, and if you can't, you'll be sent on hiatus just like Leighton."
I stared at him as his words sunk in. I opened my mouth to respond before just shutting it again. I didn't know how to react because I knew he wasn't wrong. Sometimes, I wasn't even sure why I was angry at her anymore, and I knew even less why I couldn't let it go.
We'd covered the distance from where we were in Northside to the Spotted Cobra in what had to have been record time. Rich had barely stopped the car and cut the engine before we both opened the doors to climb out. A couple of people milling about the entrance scattered when they saw us coming. The sense of self-preservation overruled the common knowledge that everyone knew this wasn't the place to cause trouble.
I grabbed Rich before he burst in the door and motioned to him to calm down. I didn't look forward to being greeted with a shotgun for entering the place in a fury. Recognition dawned on him, and he straightened his shirt, steadying himself for a second as his mask of control slipped back into place. I knew the routine. I was used to doing it myself.
We strode into the bar a couple of minutes later, and before we'd gotten more than a couple of steps from the door, Mags pinned us to our spots with a stone-cold glare that made me a little nervous. My gaze slid hesitantly from her to the woman sitting before her. Her head was in her hands, and her shoulders were shaking slightly. It took me a couple seconds to figure out what was going on.
She was crying. Why the fuck was she crying?
"If you two come in here doing any of that dick swinging I've been hearing so much about, I'll remove your ability to do so." Mags sneered at us as we moved closer to the pair of women.
"What?" Victoria's voice sounded laced with an emotion that pulled at my chest painfully. She sniffled slightly, and she turned her head slowly toward us.
"We're not here to start anything. We know the rules." Rich said calmly.
"I ain't worried about that, big man. I know you do." How she said it made it perfectly clear it wasn't a compliment. "I've just been told the most interesting story of this young lady's most recent history. You five feature heavily, and I have to say. It's not a flattering tale for you boys."
"Mags, we–" I started.
"Stuff it, Az. You have a lot of fucking nerve. Well, the lot of you do. But you … Some things are just needlessly cruel. Prudence would be disappointed in you, Az Casadei." She snapped at me. Her statement was as good as a slap to the face. I couldn't do anything but take a few stunned steps backward toward the door.
Rich moved toward Victoria slowly, almost like he was afraid she would run again if he got too close.
"Take her home, Richard. And give her space. She's under your protection. She's not one of your rank and file. Learn how to talk to your girl, or you'll do more damage than you'll be able to fix," Mags said firmly, but some anger drained out of her voice. It had hints of sadness in it. Rich nodded as he finally reached Victoria's side.
"Princess, you had us worried. Let's get you home. We'll have Craig cook you up something fresh for dinner." His voice was soft, soothing even. He picked up and shook the vodka bottle that was next to her.
"Make whatever it is light. She's fucking wasted, but she's held it down. I'm impressed." Mags said, smirking slightly.
"You just want to take me back to the cage you made of my childhood home…" Victoria said sadly, hiccuping slightly. Rich looked back at me by the door. I, again, didn't have anything to say. A dark, sick feeling twisted in my gut at the pained way that sentence fell from her lips. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, she looked past him and at me.
"What did I do to you? Why–" She hiccuped and looked like she would burst into tears again. "Why does it feel… like you just enjoy hurting my feelings? Is it just to knock the rich girl down a few pegs?"
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from responding. It was painfully apparent that anything I said wouldn't be helpful right now. I was staring down the result of my own bullshit, and I knew it. I was starting to wonder if I shouldn't just let Joey and Craig kick my ass when we got back. It'd probably hurt less than the look she was giving me.
I tore my eyes away from Victoria to look at Mags. She was looking between the three of us with an unreadable expression. I could only wonder what this all looked like from the outside. We probably looked like a cross between pathetic and awful. My familiar urge to hit something returned, and I bit the inside of my cheek again.
"No, Princess. We're… we're gonna work on that, okay? But you gotta come home, baby," Rich crooned, brushing some of her loose curly locks behind her ear.
His voice dropped low enough that I couldn't hear what he said to her, but after a couple of minutes, she nodded, and he sighed, relieved. He helped her to her feet, but she wobbled heavily when she tried to move away from the bar, and he had to catch her before she fell. He shook his head before he pulled her up into his arms.
She hadn't taken her eyes off me with that sad expression, but with his soft murmuring, she finally turned her face away from me and buried it in his chest as he moved past me and out of the bar.
I turned to follow, feeling my uselessness in this situation like a weight on my chest.
"Az." Mags' voice made me pause with my hand on the door. "I don't wanna see your girl in here again crying her booze. Don't be sorry, be better."