Chapter 24
Gabriel
Dried blood covers Tony’s quivering chin. He’s seated in a folding chair in the center of a shipping container. One of the perks of owning shipping companies is that everyone looks the other way when you pull into the yard carrying a screaming and kicking asshole.
“Look.” Tony sucks in a panicked breath.
No one’s even touched him yet, and he’s breathing like he’s gone twelve rounds with Lucian. My cousin looks like he could use the stress relief, but this prick is important to Savvy. Which means he’s not to be touched without my permission.
But I can’t help it if the idiot tripped over his own damn feet and was too high to break his fall with his hands instead of his face.
“I never even got to the tables; I don’t know why your guys grabbed me.” He twists his wrists, trying to get loose from the zip ties.
Lucian grunts from behind me. Saul and Antonio stand ready behind him. If he were anyone else, he’d already have two broken thumbs.
No one fucking cheats at our tables.
“How do you explain the cards tucked into your sleeve, and another taped to your stomach?” He wasn’t even creative in the cheat.
Disappointing.
Savvy would have found a better way.
“But I never got to the tables!” He insists, lurching forward in the chair. He’s not getting out of those ties, but whatever drug he did before he ventured into the club has him thinking he’s fucking Hercules.
I shove him back, holding him against the chair. “I want to know where you got the cash for the buy in.”
He stares at me. His face is flushed, and his pupils are blown wide.
“You’re the guy Savvy’s working for, right?” The corner of his mouth tilts. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re that guy. I remember she said your name. Valentine.”
“Valenti,” I snap. “Tell me about the cash, Tony. Did you get a loan from Vincent Ricci?”
“So what if I did.” He jerks his shoulder back and nearly knocks himself and the chair to the floor.
“Why don’t you let me have a minute with him. I’ll find out what you need to know,” Lucian offers. He’s leaning against the wall, playing with his brass knuckles.
“Savvy won’t let you hurt me,” Tony says with too much confidence.
“Yeah?” Lucian laughs. “You think your little sister is going to save your sorry ass?”
“Lucian.” I shoot him a glare over my shoulder.
He frowns, but shrugs and goes back to twirling his knuckles around his middle finger.
“Did you take a loan?” I fist Tony’s hair, dragging his eyes back to me. “Did you?”
“No. All right? I didn’t take a fucking loan.” He tries to tear free of my grip but only manages to pull his own hair.
“If you didn’t get the cash from Ricci, where’d you get it?”
He stares at me a long minute, deliberating on whether to tell the truth or trying to remember what planet he’s on. It’s hard to tell with so many drugs in his system.
A pounding on the doors interrupts his thought process, and he blinks away whatever he was going to say.
Lucian opens the door enough to have a conversation with whoever is on the other side. When he finishes, he’s carrying a black cloth bag with him and a sharp frown.
“The cash is fake.” He reaches into the drawstring bag and pulls out several bills, handing them to me. “Roberto had it brought over from the club. He said it’s good work, but the ribbon is one shade off.”
Savvy called this. A wash, not a loan. I told myself I’d run it down and let it slide instead, chalking Tony up as a non-threat.
He points out the flaw that caught Roberto’s attention. My muscles tighten.
“Where did you get this fucking cash?” I shove the bills into his face.
He smiles. “You already know.”
I fist his shirt, nearly lifting him from the chair. “She doesn’t do cash. She doesn’t have the equipment. Don’t fucking lie to me. Where did you get this?”
He snorts. “Believe what you want.”
She swore she wouldn’t help him. She vowed to only work for me, no side gigs.
It wouldn’t be the first time she lied, but my gut tells me she didn’t. She had nothing to do with what Tony tried to pull tonight.
But that doesn’t keep her out of danger. Tony went to Ricci looking for cash, and now he has fistfuls of counterfeit bills. Ricci wants what he can’t have, and he’s not above trying to take Savvy as a way to use her against me.
“Savvy’s the best at what she does,” he continues.
“Hey, Gabriel,” Lucian interrupts.
“Did you tell Ricci that? Did you say her name to him?” He’ll use any excuse to go after what’s mine. Protecting her is the only thing that matters right now. Forged paystubs, counterfeit money, I don’t give a fuck about any of that. Only keeping her from harm.
“She’d do anything for me,” Tony says, his words starting to run into each other. “Savvy would steal from rich assholes like you.”
“Gabriel—”
“She didn’t make that cash. Who did?”
“I’m telling you, Savvy did.”
I yank my gun from my holster and press it to his forehead. “Say her name one more time you little fuck.”
“Gabriel!” Lucian slams his hand down on my shoulder.
All color drains from Tony’s face, his eyes widen then cross as they focus on the barrel of the gun pointed at his head.
“What?” I demand, my trigger finger getting itchy. Tony has been nothing but trouble for Savvy for years. He was older, but he was the one being protected by Savvy. He let her go to juvenile detention for him.
He risked her life for things he’d done.
My jaw aches from clenching.
“Damien just called. She got away,” Lucian says quietly so Tony won’t overhear. He’s too busy whimpering to worry about anything other than the gun in my hand.
“What? Who got away?” I ease the gun away from Tony’s head.
“Savvy. She jumped out of the car at a red light. By the time Roman got out to chase her, she’d ducked into an alley. He never caught up to her.”
My fucking brother.
Tony laughs. “You lost Savvy?”
I grab my phone, quickly swiping open to the tracking app. Her little dot dances; then the location kicks in.
“You’re never going to find her. She’s even better at new identities than fake paystubs.” He snickers. “She’ll have a new name and life before the sun rises.”
“She’s at her apartment. Get the car.” I holster my gun and point at Joey. “I want him watched. He goes nowhere until you hear from me.”
“You’ll never find her!” Tony’s manic laughter echoes in my ear as the metal doors of the shipping container slam shut.
* * *
Roman stands outside Savvy’s apartment building, staring at his phone when I arrive. As soon as he senses me, he shoves it in his back pocket.
“Gabriel—”
“Has she come out?” I cut him off before he can spout any excuses for losing her.
“No. The lights are on, though.” He looks up at her apartment window. “I didn’t want to spook her, so I stayed down here.”
I frown. “What happened. Exactly.”
“She opened—”
“No. Before that. When you told her you were taking her to the safe house, what did she say?”
“I didn’t tell her.”
I curl my fingers into my palm. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her to pack.”
“That’s it?” I snap. “You didn’t tell her what was happening?”
Roman looks between us. “You didn’t say you wanted her to know anything. For all we know, she was helping that prick cheat. I wasn’t going to tell her anything so she could warn anyone else who might be involved.” Roman lowers his chin.
“You think she was involved in this?” I step closer to him. “Do you really?”
He glances back up at the window, then down the street, like he’s trying to figure out what he thinks.
“No.” He finally says. “But I wasn’t sure what you wanted her to know and what you didn’t. I told her we were taking her somewhere safe.”
“Where’s Damien now?” The car isn’t on the street.
“He parked around the corner, but he’s hanging in the back of the building in case she leaves that way.”
At least he’s using some sense.
Pulling out my phone, I call her again. So far she’s been ignoring the call, letting it roll to voicemail. But this time she declines it. At least she has the phone.
“Where’s Lucian?” Roman looks behind me.
“I left him with Tony.”
He raises his brow. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“He’s fine. He can control himself.” I look up at the window. “Stay out here.”
I leave him and head up to her apartment. The stairwell reeks of marijuana as much as it did the last time I was here. But there’s an added stench of burnt popcorn.
When I get to her door, I take a breath. She didn’t run because she wanted to get away from me, she ran because she thinks I wanted to get away from her. Fucking Roman and his cloak-and-dagger act scared her.
And why wouldn’t it? How many times did she get told to pack her shit without knowing where she was going next?
I have to be calm. Deal with her rationally. I’m still going to take my belt to her ass for not talking to me before taking off, but I’m going to reassure her first. She needs to know I’m not letting her go.
Not now.
Not ever.
As calmly as I can, I knock on the door.
And wait.
Nothing.
I knock again, a little louder this time. Maybe she’s in the bathroom and didn’t hear me.
Still nothing.
The muscles in my neck tense. I already know, but still I knock a third time.
Not a sound from inside.
I’ve broken this door down before, I can do it again, but I try the handle first.
The door easily opens.
Before I step inside, I already know she’s not here, but I go inside anyway. A quick sweep of the place reaffirms it. It’s empty.
I grit my teeth when I find her cell phone on the kitchen table along with a note.
Don’t look for me. ~S
That’s all. Four fucking words.
I crumple the paper in my fist. She’s gone.
It’s been an hour, maybe a little more since Roman lost her. In a city this size, there are a lot of places she could be hiding. She doesn’t have access to a car, so she’s not on the road. Yet.
She’d be taking a bus or the train.
In the corner of the living room, one of the floorboards is out of place. It lifts up easily, exposing a small compartment beneath it. A single bill is caught in the corner joint.
One hundred dollars.
She’s had a safety stash here the entire time. This thing could have been filled with passports, credit cards, cash, and anything else she might need to disappear.
Her escape plan.
I take the bill with me when I storm out of the apartment.
Roman’s expression hardens when he sees me come out alone.
“She’s not here.” I shove the money at him. “Take this to Roberto. I want to know if it’s counterfeit or real.”
“Sure thing.” He looks up at the apartment. “What about her?”
“I will find her. She can’t have gone too far.”
Roman looks like he wants to say more, but he’s smart enough to know when I’m done talking.
A cold breeze blows, chilling the tips of my ears. My body clenches. She could be anywhere. I tamp down the panic rising in my chest.
People have hidden from me before, and I’ve always found them. No one has ever gotten away from me. But I’ve never been wound up like this.
I pull out her phone and scroll through her messages, looking for anything that might hint at where she could go. But there’s nothing. Other than her messages with me, Cassie, and old random texts from Tony there isn’t anything helpful.
I picture her standing in our bedroom, seeing the suitcases laid out before her and hearing Roman give the order to pack. No matter how gentle he might have said it, it would have hit her like a bowling ball to the gut.
She thinks I sent her away. She thinks I gave up on her like everyone else did. I’m not those pricks. I will never give up on her. I will never give up on us.
Fuck! I love her, and she doesn’t know it. She needs to know, she needs to feel it.
I should have told her.
Standing in the middle of her street won’t find her, so I shove her phone into the inside pocket of my jacket and pull mine out. Shooting off texts with orders, I head back to my car and jump in.
I’ll find her.
She will be back by morning.
I will not lose her.