Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
MASE
My hand searches the bed to pull Summer closer, but she’s not there. Eyes darting open, I sit up, my head pounding as I try to focus.
Where the fuck is she?
It takes a few minutes before I register where I am and what the hell happened to lead me here, but when I do, sickness rushes through me. “Fuck,” I groan, palming my face.
Where the hell is Summer? She’s the only person who will make me feel better right now.
A memory of Summer serving me on her knees in the shower last night comes rushing back to me, and I delight in it.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and glance down at my rock-hard cock.
Remembering the way she slid her finger into my ass has me smirking, and I head toward the bathroom, but when I swing open the door and there’s no Summer inside, worry gnaws at me.
“Get a fucking grip, Mase. She’s probably having breakfast,” I grumble to myself, but still, the thought of her leaving me here when she said she wouldn’t, riles me.
I grab a towel from the bathroom, wrap it around my waist, then head out of the bedroom in search of my girl.
Loud voices can be heard from the kitchen, and when I enter, all heads turn toward me, but not a single one of them is Summer.
Reed scans me, his face still the same haunted pale he wore yesterday. Shaw grimaces, and Owen’s flash of concern has my spine straightening.
Roaming my gaze around my congregated friends, it latches onto Travis. He grimaces, then quickly looks away, but my eyes remain trained on him. He’s here for a reason; the little fucker knows something.
“Don’t look in my direction,” Reed declares while staring Travis down. Then he lifts his hand and uses the other to point at his ring finger. “Happily. Married.” He punctuates each word, and Travis’s lips turn up at the edge before he shakes his head.
“Where is she?” I rasp, my heart pounding against my chest.
Owen drags a finger over his lip. “There’s been a development.”
I rear back, and it causes me to stumble. Clearly, the effects of the drugs still have a hold on me.
“You best sit down.” As he points to the chair at the kitchen table, I shake my head.
He crosses his arms over his chest. “Sit! Otherwise, I’m not telling you a damn thing,” he growls, and I move quickly, dropping into the chair with a heavy huff and blurred vision; I don’t know whether it’s from rage or the aftereffects of the drugs.
My pulse rushes at the concern in their eyes, then my gaze latches on to Gia’s, and she looks away, but I don’t miss the tears shimmering in her eyes. I swallow hard. “Where is she?”
“I’m waiting on an exact location,” Owen tacks on. “She has secrets, Mase.” The confirmation of my thoughts has the sound of my heartbeat ringing out in my ears.
I drag a hand over my head. “I know that.” My chest feels like it’s closing in on me.
“I hacked her phone,” Owen confirms, and I nod. I knew he would; I wanted him to. When I first discovered Summer was pregnant, I was convinced she was lying to me. Why wouldn’t I when I’d almost become susceptible to women’s lies?
“She did the Indulgence job to get money for college.” Again, I nod at his words. She told me as much, and I don’t blame her for not wanting to create a future on my father’s dime. Owen looks at me pointedly. “What she didn’t tell you is that she’s being blackmailed.”
I flinch, because what the fuck?
Raw anger surges through me. “By who?”
“Why would someone blackmail her?” Shaw scoffs, and I sneer in his direction.
“It appears she was being blackmailed because your father promised her hand in marriage to a business associate of his. He signed a lucrative contract. I’m guessing she’s paying him off.” Owen stares at me as fury ravishes through me.
“Who?”
“Gareth.”
That sleazy old bastard. The thought of him touching her has bile rising in my throat.
My poor girl was selling herself to get away from this life she desperately hated. She must have been terrified of her future. My stomach twists at the thought of the pain and anguish she must have endured. How utterly alone she would have felt.
The fact that my father set these wheels in motion doesn’t surprise me.
He was fucked up and would do anything to profit at someone else’s expense.
If he weren’t dead already, I’d happily torture the old bastard.
But I’ll take that wrath and hatred out on his good friend Gareth.
This isn’t the Mafia with arranged marriages in exchange for business agreements, but they can sure as hell help us end people like him.
“There’s more.” Owen glances around the room. “Oscar looked into this Gareth guy. It appears he and your father were into some fucked-up shit.” The look on his face says it all as it twists in disgust. “They raped women, Mase. Then Gareth would dispose of them.”
My jaw drops open.
“He killed them?” Shaw asks.
“Yeah, and your father would encourage him to do it.” Owen eyes me, as if waiting for a reaction.
My heart falls to my feet, and I wonder what Summer was aware of—definitely more than me. Was her mother a victim? “I don’t know what Summer knew or saw,” I breathe out, and hurt coils around my heart. She’s in real fucking danger.
“I think it’s a high possibility they had something to do with Summer’s mother’s death, and probably why they had cameras throughout the mansion.” Owen’s face twists. “Oscar’s looking into the footage now.”
Holy shit.
That’s fucked up.
“There’s also not a complete trail on the phone,” Owen says.
I grit my teeth. “What does that even mean?”
“They deleted the messages?” Shaw asks.
Owen shakes his head. “There’re not a lot of messages of interest and not a single one of them from Gareth. I’m surmising there was a middleman, someone she knew and spoke with on a regular basis, but their name remains listed as unknown. I’m also struggling to track it.”
Slowly, pieces of the puzzle start slotting together. Someone must’ve known what was happening in the house.
Owen’s phone pings, and when he lifts his head, his eyes bore into mine.
“Hugh knows something!” I snipe out before he has a chance to speak. Realization sits heavily in my stomach. The bastard has to know something; he quite literally knows everything.
“He does,” Owen confirms.
Reed appears with a bundle of clothes in his hands, and it’s not lost on me how I’m so discombobulated I wasn’t even aware he’d collected them. I drop my towel, and I spring up from my chair, trying my best to ignore the way my body sways with the movement and begin dressing.
“Oh, fuck.” Travis’s eyes widen, and I throw him a death glare.
“Let’s go.” Owen nods toward me, then withdraws his gun from his back and checks the clip before tucking it into the waistband of his jeans.
“We gonna need that?” I motion toward the gun, and we head toward the door.
“I expect so,” Owen grumbles.
The sun hits me in the face, causing my head to throb as we step outside and head toward his SUV. “You got another?”
Owen stops in his tracks, and when I turn my head over my shoulder, a sinister grin encompasses his face. “Obviously.”
“Good, because I want in with whatever is about to go down.”
I jump into the car, and the moment Owen is settled behind the wheel, I narrow my eyes.
“Now, tell me what the fuck is going on.”