Chapter 24 – Elias
I t’s been about two weeks since the shootout outside the karaoke bar and a month since the Lords were dismantled. Noah is fully recovered now, and her and Lance have been back to snooping for solid evidence at her father’s businesses.
Things have been quiet. Despite Chase’s threat for me to back off, there haven’t been any human trafficking shipments. He’s spooked. He knows I’m watching his every move. He’s likely gone into hiding, knowing I’ll murder him the moment he shows his face—especially after putting his hands on Sage.
My concern about Chase halting shipments is for the people he’s kidnapped. They’re likely being abused, malnourished, or worse while Chase and his partner or partners scramble to reorganize an auction or secure sales directly.
Sage has been my saving grace this past month .
She’s there when I need an escape from my life.
Sage is my life now.
She officially ended her lease at her apartment and is now fully living with me.
I had the rest of her belongings from her studio moved into my penthouse.
She has her own room—something she didn’t ask for, but I set up in case she wanted a space that felt like her own.
Somewhere she could go when she needed to be alone.
She’s yet to spend a night in there.
I haven’t stopped thinking about our karaoke night, the post-shootout orgasms, and her request to be woken up with sex. However, I’ve been too busy for it to happen. When I get home, she’s still awake and when I wake up the next morning, she’s already in the kitchen cooking breakfast.
It’ll happen. I will do anything Sage wants. I will give her everything she’s ever dreamed of. Every fantasy she wants fulfilled. I just need to find her fucking ex and whoever he’s working with. I need Noah and Lance to get that evidence on Lenetti so we can finally take the Empire down.
All these obstacles are getting in the way of my life with my queen and once they’re gone, I can focus on her.
I’ve been at my office at Underground Park Slope all day because I’m still a legitimate business owner who has to do his job sometimes, but now I’m on my way back to the penthouse. I’m eager to see Sage .
My thoughts must have summoned her because she’s calling me.
“Hey, everything—”
“I need you to come home.”
“What is it?”
“I think... I think Noah is in trouble. Please, hurry. I’m worried.”
“I’m almost there.”
I bark at the driver to speed up, and five minutes later, we’re pulling into the horseshoe driveway where Sage is waiting. I open the door and get out before the car is barely parked.
“Tell me what happened.”
She pushes past me and climbs into the SUV.
“Sage?”
I stand at the open door, peering inside as Sage frantically taps at her phone.
“I texted Noah earlier to hang out since you were going to be gone most of today. She didn’t answer, and I didn’t think anything of it because she’s usually with Del, but I had a bad feeling.”
She turns the phone’s screen toward me.
“Typically, if she’s on a hit job, she’ll warn me that she’ll be out of commission, but she didn’t today so I tracked her location, and it’s showing she’s in Queens.”
I zoom in on the blue dot on the map and suck in a sharp breath .
“I know where she’s at. Sage...” She raises a brow as if daring me to say the next words, but I have to. “I need you to stay here.”
“Not happening.”
“Please. I don’t know what we’re about to walk into, and I won’t risk you getting hurt.”
“I’m. Going.”
I curse when she moves to the far door, locks it, and crosses her arms.
Brat.
But I can’t say no to her.
As if she’d let me.
Before I get in, I give orders to my men and tell the driver where to go. I make calls to my uncle and deploy soldiers to my childhood home in Fresh Meadows. I call Lance next, and he doesn’t answer. Texts also go ignored.
I have a feeling he and Noah are together.
“Do you know what’s going on?” Sage asks about ten minutes into the drive.
“Nothing good,” I grumble.
Twenty minutes later, the driver pulls onto the street where I used to ride my bike. We pass familiar homes, many left abandoned. I instruct the driver to park a block away where a few of my soldiers are staked out, watching the property.
I barely recognize the home where I grew up. It’s been condemned for years, and the last time I was even here was in my early twenties. It holds too many horrible memories. The only reason I haven’t bulldozed it to the ground is because it’s one of the few places I have left of my mother.
Her handwriting remains on door frames when she used to measure mine and Lance’s heights throughout the years.
She also loved to paint and draw and decorated my room with snakes and wildlife, because I loved nature shit when I was a kid.
Still do. It’s why I have it tattooed all over my body.
Lance’s room was decorated in robots and alien drawings because he loved science fiction books and movies.
But the negative memories outweigh the positive ones.
“Stay here a sec,” I say to Sage and get out, my gun drawn. I spot my uncle and approach him. “Report.”
“About six men outside, captured or dead. Six more inside.” He pauses, and I sense he’s leaving something out.
“Say it.”
“It’s Percy... One of the QBM soldiers spotted him in the basement with Noah and Lance. Noah is tied up. Lance was unconscious but appears to be alive.”
My eyes move past my uncle to the rundown three-story home with peeling yellow green paint and dark forest green sidings falling off the walls. Vines snake their way up the sides and the windows are either cracked, broken, or missing.
A ghost of a home with the ghost of the man who abused me inside .
Except, he’s still alive?
“Impossible. How?”
An ache forms in the back of my throat, pressure building behind my eyes. The fucker’s been alive this whole time. I’d always been suspicious of his diagnosis the moment he refused to let us see him on his deathbed.
He faked it all.
But why?
“Elias,” my uncle urges, recognizing I was seconds away from having a mental fucking breakdown.
He’s seen me at my worst. He’s the one who arrived with my father that night twenty years ago and pulled me from my mother’s body. He’s the one who sent my ass to rehab when I tried to drown my new responsibility of taking over the QBM with drugs and booze to the point that I almost died.
My phone rings, and I scramble to answer, hoping it’s my brother saying they somehow escaped and they’re fine. Disappointment sinks in when ‘unknown number’ flashes across the screen. I only give this number out to a select, trusted few so I answer.
“Carter,” a deep voice bellows from the other end.
Lenetti?
How the fuck did he get this number?
“Got a strange call from someone claiming to have Noah. They sent me an address in Fresh Meadows. ”
My heart skips a beat, and I swallow to wet my dry throat.
“The fuck did you say?”
“Fresh. Meadows. Got wax in your ears, boy?”
I ignore his condescending words. “What the fuck does that have to do with me?”
“Are you dense? That’s QBM territory. Did you really think you could set me up by sending me to your childhood home?”
“I’d never let the Empire in QBM territory. Fuck off with that.”
He mumbles something I can’t understand. “Look, Carter, just find Noah and make sure she’s okay. I’m in the Bronx right now, and traffic is a nightmare.”
“I’m close. I’ll check it out,” I say and hang up.
Lenetti doesn’t need to know that I’m already here or that his daughter is, in fact, not okay. Gio would lose his shit. He’d risk starting a turf war by sending in every last Empire soldier. I’m surprised he even called me for help.
He’s a monster, but one thing’s for sure: He loves his daughter.
I return to Sage who’s sitting on the edge of the back seat, door open.
“Things are about to get bloody. I need to stay focused, and I can’t do that if you’re out here and needing protection. ”
Her bottom lip shakes, tears falling down her face, but she nods.
I turn to leave, but she catches me. Taking my face in her hands, she brushes her soft lips over mine.
“I want your bad romance.”
I smile against her mouth, then devour her plump lips with a breathtaking kiss.
“Tell me,” I say, breathless. “I want to hear you say it.”
She peppers me with kisses on my lips, my cheeks, my nose, my chin, my jaw.
“I want to marry you. I want to be your wife.”
“I love you, Sage.”
With one more kiss, I walk off.
I don’t allow her to respond because if I hear those three little words from her, I’ll be tempted to get behind the wheel and drive off with my woman, leaving this world behind.
I can’t do that to my brother again. I can’t leave him when he needs me most.