32. Riley
I shakemy head in denial. “Frank? Frank! Dad? Just… just answer me!”
I hear another slow, wheezing breath—an exhalation that almost sounds like my name—and then nothing but the wet, rattling sound of a man choking on every inhalation.
Dante steps away, pulling out his own phone and getting Maddoc on the line. Once he’s given him an update, he reaches for my hand. “Put it away,” he says, nodding toward my phone. “Let’s go.”
I nod, feeling numb, but hit the “end call” button and do it.
As soon as we get in the Escalade, Dante peels out. “They’re meeting us there.”
“Where?” I whisper, that numbness making it hard to think.
He cuts a glance my way, then puts his foot down on the gas, blowing through a stop sign. “Frank’s place. Maddoc and Logan are on their way.” He reaches over and grabs one of my hands, squeezing it. “Hold on, princess.”
I squeeze his hand back, and suddenly all the foggy numbness is swept away by a tidal wave of other feelings. Anxiety curls in my gut, my mind racing over all the questions Frank couldn’t answer for me on the phone. “Do you think he was lying?”
Dante glances at me again. “About Chloe getting in touch with him?”
I nod, my shoulder hitting the passenger door as he roars around a corner faster than the Escalade is designed for.
Dante yanks me upright again. “Let’s go find out,” he says, screeching to a halt in front of Frank’s place. There aren’t any other cars around, not even Frank’s.
I fumble with the seatbelt, pissed off by the way my hands are trembling and so jittery I feel like I might be sick. Before I can get it open, Dante comes around to my side and opens my door.
“Come on,” he says grimly, taking my hand again.
My steps falter as I notice that Frank’s front door is already open, the wood around the knob splintered and cracked, as if it’s been kicked in.
“Shit,” I whisper, my heart lurching.
“Pretty much,” Dante agrees, pushing me behind him and then dropping my hand to pull out his weapon. “Stay back for a sec, princess.”
He cautiously pushes the door the rest of the way open, peering inside. I rub my arms, a sudden chill running through me, and go up on my toes to see over his shoulder.
Nothing moves. At least, nothing I can see. The blinds are all closed, and just a few slivers of dim light from the streetlights make it through the broken slats, barely penetrating the dingy front room of Frank’s apartment.
“Wait here,” Dante says in a low voice before silently slipping into the dark room.
I don’t wait.
I can’t.
“Dad?” I call out as I follow him inside, earning a quick, angry scowl from Dante. But then I hear my da—Frank wheezing, and I push past him and rush across the room. “Goddammit, Frank.”
He’s on the floor, and each slow, rattling breath he manages sounds like a painful struggle.
I drop down next to him. My knees land in a clammy, wet puddle that smells metallic and dank. I know it’s blood even before my eyes adjust, and I don’t realize I’m crying until my voice comes out thick and tight.
“He’s been shot,” I say, pressing my hands over the wound in his gut.
Frank grunts softly, the pale gleam of his eyes fixing on my face.
“Don’t you fucking die.”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even flinch. Just keeps dragging in those painful, wheezing breaths, the space between each one getting longer and longer.
I lean in. “Frank! Where’s my sister? Who shot you? Was she here?”
Dante’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Princ—”
Something crunches out on the porch, and Dante whirls around, cutting the word off with a curse as he raises his weapon and moves between me and the door. Then he lowers it.
“Madd. Logan,” he greets them, stepping to the side. “Someone got to Sutton.”
Logan moves around the perimeter of the room as silently as a ghost as Maddoc comes closer.
“Dead?” he asks, his gun drawn as he approaches to stand behind me.
“Not yet.” I clear my throat, lifting a shoulder to scrub my face against it when my vision blurs. I press down on Frank’s wound even harder, his hot blood still oozing out between my fingers.
“We’re alone,” Logan says from behind me.
The men all tuck their weapons away, and Logan flicks on the lights.
My stomach heaves. The place has been ransacked, and there are smears of blood and broken pieces of furniture near the walls that make me think taking a shot in the stomach was the end of a much longer conversation Frank had with his attackers.
One that involved them trying to get something from him.
Something that must have to do with my sister.
“Don’t you dare fucking die,” I hiss, leaning in. “You owe me. Who did this? Was it West Point? Do they have Chloe? Where is she?”
Frank blinks so slowly I’m not sure he’s going to open his eyes again. His skin is almost colorless, his shirt soaked in red from chest to groin. He’s staring at me, but his eyes look unfocused, and even I know that no one can survive losing as much blood as I’m currently kneeling in.
“See what you can find,” Maddoc tells Dante and Logan, directing them to pull whatever clues they can from the wreckage around us before crouching down next to me. He puts his hands on top of mine, pressing down hard enough that Frank groans. “Like this, butterfly. Press hard.”
When he moves his hands away, I double down. “Keep him alive.”
“I’m trying,” he answers grimly, doing something in the bloody mess that has Frank’s body jerking. “Shit, he’s been bleeding out for at least an hour.”
“That text came in around then,” Dante says, referring to the one I showed him on my phone.
Frank must have sent it before they got to him. This happened while Dante and I were fucking.
“Did you tell them?” I demand, my voice feeling raw. “Whoever… whoever did this. Did you tell them about Chloe?”
His hand twitches next to my thigh, the barest flicker of movement, and blood bubbles out of his mouth.
“No! Don’t you dare. Talk to me first! Dammit, you need to tell me what happened! You owe me that, you motherfucker! Did they know Chloe was in touch with you? Was she here? Was it West Point?”
“It had to have been West Point,” I hear Dante say grimly from behind me. “This shit has them written all over it.”
Logan approaches on silent feet, then crouches down on Frank’s other side and picks up his hand, wiping the blood off Frank’s finger and pressing it against a phone. Frank’s phone.
Logan quickly flips through it as soon as it’s unlocked, then looks up at Maddoc and Dante with a frown. “There’s no recent communication with McKenna on here, but West Point must have found out that he’d been in touch with her. He doesn’t have his fingers in anything else that would give them a reason to come here.”
“So you think the timing is just a coincidence with this attack of conscience he had, reaching out to Riley like that?” Dante asks.
Maddoc looks up, his face like thunder. “I think McKenna has turned up the heat, just like we expected. Of course he’d have eyes on Sutton. The real question is, what did he find out?”
“You think he told him where to find Chloe,” Logan says flatly.
“No,” I whisper, panic rising up to choke me. “No, no, no, fucking no!” I dig my fingers into Frank’s clammy skin, then shake him. I don’t care if he was trying to fuck me over. I expect nothing less. But I can’t stand the thought that he’d do this to Chloe not once, but twice.
He coughs up another bubble of blood, muttering something in a low whisper.
“What?” I lean down, adrenaline surging through me as a fresh wave of hot blood seeps up under my hands.
Frank’s lips move again. “I’m… sorry… hon… honey girl.”
My heart clenches, pain spiking through my chest. I’m not his fucking honey girl, and I don’t want a goddamn apology. I just want to know what he knows about my sister.
I need to know what he gave up about her when West Point attacked him.
My father is the epitome of a weak man. No way would he have held back when they were hurting him.
“Are you sorry about Chloe? About selling her out? Telling Austin McKenna where she is? Dammit, Frank, do you know where she is? Does West Point know now? Don’t waste your fucking breath on apologies, tell me something useful!”
His eyes roll back, a horrible rattle sounding on his next exhale.
“No! Tell me anything,” I beg in a broken whisper that’s nothing more than a desperate puff of air. My throat is raw and panic crushes my chest, closing around me like a vise until I can’t breathe. “Just… god… please. Frank, say something. Please.”
Another bubble of blood starts to form at his mouth with the next rattling breath, but then it just… stops.
Everything stops.
He’s gone.