Chapter 20 Gone
TWENTY
GONE
DALLAS
Imake it two hours before I say ‘fuck it’ and go back to the Fortress.
I know Lucy said she needed space. I know I hurt her, that when the lies all came out, there was a good chance that she would decide that she couldn’t start her new life over with someone that she couldn’t trust. I couldn’t blame her, either, even though I spent the two hours convincing myself that love is enough.
I fucking love Lucy, and I’ll do anything I can to prove that that was never a lie.
I mean, what kind of man pretends to be her husband if he doesn’t love her, right?
And if I know that I’m being delusional, maybe it’s a good thing that I at least understand that my brain is cracked.
On my way inside the Fortress, at least four people break out of the crowd to approach me.
I’m not in the mood for this shit. When Jack was King, all of the Owed were too afraid of his temper to do something so bold.
If they wanted a meet with him, they make an appointment and hoped that he wasn’t too busy fucking the Used to show up.
Me? As if they see my casual wear, my scowl, my boots, and tats and, because it’s not a slicked-back do poured into an expensive suit, they think my time’s not valuable. That my title isn’t the same.
They want shit from me. They all do. Favors and money and power…
they’ll kiss my ass and wheedle and fawn, and I’m so fucking sick of it.
Though Adrian would chide me, saying the King as to listen to the Owed if we want to work to change the shitshow that is the Order from the inside out, he’s not here right now, is he?
I push my way through the crowd, ignoring the calls of my name, of ‘sir, of ‘excuse me’. When the elevator opens, and I step in front of a group that had been waiting for her, slamming it shut before anyone can join me, I see frustrated looks, but none of them dare to say anything about it.
I tap my boot as the elevator takes its sweet ass time going up to the penthouse. Then, when the doors open, I jog to our door.
The first thing I notice is the silence. The penthouse is too quiet, and my whole body goes cold.
You see, Lucy has a way of filling space even when she’s not speaking. The soft sounds of her turning the page of her latest book, the hum of the television in the living room when she’s binging a show, the whisper of her footsteps across the hardwood floors as she moves around the apartment.
But when I walk into the penthouse, I hear none of it.
Maybe… maybe she’s sleeping. That has to be it. The betrayal hit hard enough that she decided to go to sleep to escape the pain. As much as that hurts me, knowing I hurt her, it’s not like she left.
She couldn’t have left.
The security team would’ve alerted me. Shit, the app on her phone that I tucked in one of the folders that came standard to the device… that would’ve alerted me, too.
Before I go searching for her, I reach into my pocket and yank out my phone. I tap the app, waiting, waiting… okay. Her phone pings that she’s somewhere in the penthouse.
Good.
“Lucy? Luce, baby, you up?”
My voice echoes faintly through the eerily quiet space.
No answer.
A tight knot forms in my stomach.
Ignoring it, telling myself that she has to be sleeping, I start to search for her, going room by room.
I check the kitchen.
Empty.
The couch where she’d been sitting earlier.
Empty.
My bedroom is wishful thinking, but there’s no sign of Lucy in there. I check hers, expecting to find her curled up on her bed, but… no.
My pulse starts pounding.
“Lucy. Come on, Luce. I know you said you needed space, but you also said we can talk. I’m home, baby. Let’s talk.”
Still nothing.
Breathing heavily through my nose, I look at the phone app again. This time, I pink it. I didn’t want to disturb her, but I figure that, wherever she is, she had to have brought her phone with her.
When I don’t hear it right away, I start my search over, doing everything I can to hold my panic back. It’s hard to listen for the faint beeping when my pulse is thudding in my ears, but this is important. I have to find her. I need to know—
She’s gone.
When I finally track down her phone, tossed haphazardly in a closet in one of the unused guest rooms, my heart drops all the way down to my boots. At the same time, cold dread spreads through my chest when I look back at the untouched bed and there’s no sign of Lucy.
I grab it, turning it over in my hand like the damn thing might suddenly explain where she went. Before I gave it to her, I keyed my face to it so that I could unlock it if I wanted to. I never did—wanting her to have some privacy, wanting to trust her to want to stay—but now I have no choice.
There’s nothing. No messages. No calls, incoming or outgoing. It’s clean, and gives me no clue what happened to my Dandelion.
No. That’s not right. I don’t know where she went, but I do know one thing.
She doesn’t want to be found.
And that’s just not going to work for me.
Pocketing Lucy’s phone, just in case, I switch it for mine.
As much as I fucking hate being King, I’m not above using it to my advantage when I can.
This is an emergency. I select one of my stored contacts, cursing under my breath when it takes more than three rings for Derek, the head of security in the Fortress, to answer.
When he does, I snarl, “Lock the building down.”
“Sir?”
“Lucy’s gone.” The words taste like poison as I spit them out.
I’ve been so goddamn careful to hide her, to make sure that no one who could hurt would know that I had her.
The only ones outside of my brothers were supposed to be the security team in the Fortress because my need to keep her safe won out over my need to keep her a secret.
“I want cameras checked. Every entrance, every street corner, every damn alley around the Fortress. Find her.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, your majesty.”
Any other time, I would tell Derek where he could shove his ‘your majesty’.
Now? I just bark out, “Do it,” then end the call.
Almost immediately, I’m dialing again. No time for texts.
I get those who matter—Adrian, Bas, Connor—on the line, letting them know my Lucy isn’t where I left her, and that I need their help to do whatever it takes to track her down.
My brothers are on it. Each one promises to do what they can, and I believe them.
Bas shuts down the garage early to hop on his bike and take a tour around the Fortress, just in case she went on foot.
Connor says he’ll ask Haven what she thinks happened to Lucy, and if she somehow reaches out, hell let me know.
And Adrian…
My cousin is cool. Calm. Motherfucking collected.
He’s the only one who could talk me off the ledge, pointing out that I said myself that I upset Lucy with my lies, that she was the one who demanded some space, that the last time she was hurt, her instinct was to run.
He told me he would take the ride out to the park—to our fountain—and see if Lucy went there to seek refuge.
In the meantime, I should stay in the penthouse.
If Lucy just went for a stroll to clear her head, I should be her when she comes back.
Do I argue? Of course I do. I want boots on the ground, searching for her myself, but even I have to admit that Adrian has a point. I’m probably overreacting.
An hour later, spiraling and obsessing over how small and fragile she looked in the hospital bed… remembering the look on her face when I admitted that I lied about being her husband… I’ve lost my fucking mind.
She’s gone. Or she’s dead. She’s left me. She’s not coming back.
It echoes on a refrain through my broken brain. Logically, I know that it’s too soon to know if any of that is true, but it could be, and that’s enough for Dallas Collins to convince himself that he’s lost his one true love for the second time.
For the last time.
I pound on the windows. Spit froths at my mouth and I wipe it with the back of my hand.
I howl in rage. I pace. I throw a punch at the wall, desperate for some relief.
I’d beat myself bloody in my private gym if I thought that would help, but I stay in the front room, only marching to the living room to peer out on Harmony Heights below, hoping I can find a wispy head of dandelion fluff hair among the madness, before I throw open the penthouse door again, hoping she’ll be standing right there.
Only she isn’t, and I squeeze my phone, willing it to ring. Willing it to be Adrian, saying he found her, or Bas, or even Lucy on a payphone, letting me know she’s okay…
The first time the phone does ring, it’s Derek with an update.
He has no idea what happened. Going through every camera, there are a few ‘maybe’s, but no definite identification of Lucy on tape.
He thinks she wore a hoodie, covering her trademark hair, and slipped out.
He’s had his whole team scour the Fortress.
If she’s hunkered down on one of the floors, she’d be a kick ass hide-and-seek player because no one can find her.
I tell him to keep looking and hang up in case she tries to call and can’t get through.
And then, not that much longer after, Loni calls, and if she had been an ordinary secretary and not Adrians’ beloved wife, I might’ve bitten her head off when she interrupted my panicked pacing to remind me that there was a council meeting that I was already five minutes late for.
Council meeting? Council meeting? What the fuck do I care about a council meeting right now?
“Cancel it.”
“Dallas—”
“You heard me, Loni. Tell ‘em I’m busy. Tell ‘em that their stupid fucking meeting can wait. Tell ‘em that I’ll get married when I’m good and fucking ready, and if they don’t like it, the windows right there. Okay?”
So maybe I did bite her head off a little bit. I’m sure Adrian already warned her what’s going on, and she’s only doing the job that I hired to do because, damn it, I didn’t trust anyone else to have such constant access to me once I became King.
“I can,” she begins, her tone careful, “but considering what’s going on…
I thought you should know. It’s Matthew who called for this meeting.
He’s brought about eight of the old guard with him.
I saw Oliver… Stephen… Giorgio…” The men who were in Jack’s inner circle, the highest level of the old guard.
They’re all waiting for you in your office.
And Matthew… he says he wants to talk to you about the game you’re playing with Lucille Fairchild. ”
No.
There is no Lucille Fairchild. Even after she agreed to marry Julian, she never took his name. She sure as fuck never went by her full name. She was Lucy Wright then, she’s Lucy Wright now, and if I have it my way, the only other name she’ll have is Lucy Collins.
But Matthew Greene… another corporate lawyer who works alongside Desmond St. James’s old man, he’s smart. He knows what he’s doing. I have no doubt in my mind that he used that name on purpose, that he’s aware what name Lucy goes by.
He wants me to be aware that he knows she’s back in Harmony Heights. That I have her—or that I did—but that, in the eyes of the Order, she belongs to Julian Fairchild, dead or alive.
My jaw goes tight. Every inch of me wants to give Loni a message to pass along to Matthew that I’ll surely regret when my mental state is better and I have Lucy back with me safe and sound.
But he used her name. He wants my attention.
He fucking has it.
“Tell them I’ll be right down.”