Chapter Thirty – I Found You
Chapter Thirty
Rafe
I FOUND YOU
Performed by Nate Smith
By the time Barry and I had gotten to LA and made it to the LAPD headquarters, the SWAT team had gone into the hotel where Adam had been staying and come up empty. Frustration eked into every pore, not only because we’d missed him but because I’d left the people I loved behind for nothing.
I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon pacing the halls of the police station while they sent officers scurrying in all directions, trying to locate him. Even though he’d been staying near the airport, Adam hadn’t purchased an airline ticket in his name. He also hadn’t bought a train ticket, bus fare, or rented a car, and yet his Mercedes had been left behind in the hotel parking lot.
The police assumed he’d somehow headed for the border. If he had the money he’d stolen from the ranch tucked into an anonymous offshore account, he could live for years in some non-extradition country. I was certain what he’d stolen in the last five years had only been the tip of the iceberg. If he started the moment he’d arrived back at the ranch, he likely had a million stashed away. And if he’d been smart and invested it rather than tossed it away in some ridiculous poker game with Puzo, he could have a much more sizeable amount waiting for him.
The only comfort I received from Adam’s disappearance was knowing he wouldn’t be anywhere near Sadie or Fallon. Perhaps we were all safe.
Unless he’d hired someone to come after me.
Which brought me back to Puzo and his thug, Nero. Was that why Adam had been cozied up to Lorenzo? For his connections? For some sort of twisted revenge against the Harringtons? Or had he hoped to get even more money from a deal with Puzo?
All the unknowns meant I was still wound tight and anxious to get back to the two women who held my heart. Every instinct told me I was still missing something, and it frustrated me that I couldn't figure it out.
And that wasn’t the only thing frustrating me. I’d spent half the day harder than a rock whenever I’d thought about Sadie and the way she’d thrown my taunt back at me before swaying out of the vault this morning.
I might not be able to solve the mystery of Adam or Puzo, but I had every intention of easing the tension Sadie had caused.
As soon as I stalked into the marquee, with its abundance of flowers, flickering candles, and elegantly clad guests, my eyes landed on the woman who’d tormented my thoughts all day. She was laughing and spinning around the dance floor with my daughter and Maisey. The way Sadie put her entire body into it, throwing her head back and exposing the long column of her neck, only increased my wild desire to claim her. I wanted to litter kisses along that smooth skin and suck on the pulse beating at the base, just as I had when she’d been tucked into my bed.
Movement on the other side of the dance floor brought Puzo into my line of sight. His focus was completely on Sadie too, and the intensity of his look triggered the savage beast inside me. Instead of stalking over to Sadie and pulling her into my arms as I’d intended, I crossed the floor to him.
“Keep your hands off,” I snarled.
Puzo lifted a brow, and I loathed how I’d repeatedly given him my emotions this week. Worse, knowing how I felt about Sadie gave him one more thing to strike at me with and she could be hurt because of it.
“I’m more than happy to do so, if you’ll tell her to do the same. If we wash our hands of each other, everyone can walk away friends,” Puzo replied.
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“She’s got the jewels, and that will have to be enough. She can’t have any other piece of our pie.”
I despised feeling confused as much as I detested my lack of control, but that was exactly what I was. How did Puzo know about the jewelry? Why did he even care about it? I couldn’t see all the cards on the table in front of me, and rather than pretend I did, I gave him my honesty instead. “I’m not following you.”
“The stolen jewels, Marquess. Keep up. She can keep those as her inheritance, but she won’t get anything else. Carolyn Puzo forfeited it when she walked away from her family.”
The only way he could know about the jewels was if Adam had shared it, or Puzo was watching us closer than I thought. Had Steele scanned the estate for listening devices? Cameras that didn’t belong to us? The knots in my stomach grew more knots on top of them.
Puzo had collected his information on me and mine, piece by piece. He’d pushed a few of the pawns along the game board, just to make sure he had everything right where he wanted. What I didn’t know was why the hell he thought Sadie was after his money.
“I’m afraid the stolen jewels don’t belong to Sadie either. They belong to my family.”
Puzo raised a brow and tugged on his tuxedo sleeve. “Actually, they don’t. They were supposed to come to us as payment for gambling debts.”
My gaze narrowed on him. “How do you figure that?”
“Your great-grandaddy owed the Puzo family thousands. He had two choices. He could either sell the ranch or sell the jewels to pay off his debt. In order to save face, we arranged for the jewelry to be stolen. Harrington worked the deal to loan them to the movie studio while we had fakes made. Carolyn was already working at the studio, so it was a slam dunk for her to swap them out, but then one of them double-crossed us.”
“We’re talking eighty years ago, Puzo. How can you even know all of this?”
“Italian families have long memories and the patience to exact retribution at just the right time. Harrington was supposed to get reimbursed from the insurance company, and our family would sell the jewels to pay off the debt. Any profit, if there was any, would be split between Harrington and my grandfather. No one expected Carolyn to betray her family. No one expected her to fall in love and run off. My grandfather wasn’t even sure if it was Carolyn who’d betrayed him, or if your great-granddaddy double-crossed him, killed her, and dumped the body.
“I don’t believe you,” I hissed.
“Gambling runs in both sides of this family, doesn’t it?” Puzo said, glancing to where Lauren was supervising the cake cutting. “After all, it’s how the Harringtons ended up with this land to begin with, isn’t it? Don’t act like you’re from some noble stock. Your family grabbed what it could, just like mine did.”
The fury I felt at his attack on a family name that I’d long since tossed aside shocked me. And yet, he wasn’t wrong—Alasdair had won the ranch on a gamble. But what he said also didn’t line up with what I’d read in Beatrice’s journal.
According to her, the movie studio hadn’t had insurance, and Alasdair had been out hundreds of thousands of dollars when they’d been taken. There was no way he could have known the movie studio would offer up shares in the company as compensation, so he wouldn’t have had the money to pay off any so-called gambling debts. Beatrice had said Alasdair had been furious about the swapped jewels. Her refusal to see Joe after they’d come back from Hollywood made me suspect this was much more about Joe’s betrayal than my great-grandfather being dirty.
“You’re lying,” I said, turning to glare at him. “It wasn’t my great-grandfather who owed your family money. It was Adam’s. The entire thing was Joe Hurly’s scheme, wasn’t it? It backfired when he tried to pass off the fake gems to my great-grandfather, not realizing Alasdair would have them assessed before they even left the studio lot. Hurly likely thought he’d have days, weeks, maybe even years before anyone realized they’d been replaced.”
Puzo’s face darkened, and I knew I was right.
“But you couldn’t have known Sadie had the jewelry when she showed up. Like you said, maybe Hurly was the one who’d double-crossed your family. So why would you care if the Hatleys claimed to be part of your family? What are you really worried about? Was there a clause in your grandfather’s will that entitled her to a share of the family’s wealth?”
Puzo didn’t move, didn’t react, but I heard a hint of anger in his voice. “As you said, it’s been over eighty years. No court would give the Hatleys anything if they came sniffing.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. So why would you be nervous, then? How big of a piece would they be entitled to? Half? A quarter? The way your business has been hemmed in with the FBI watching you, even ten percent might hurt.”
Only the way he slowly straightened the boutonniere in his pocket proved I’d rattled him. “Carolyn couldn’t claim her inheritance unless she came back and married the man my grandfather had picked for her, and she would’ve had to bring the stolen diamonds with her.”
Italian families have long memories and the patience to exact retribution at just the right time.
“Did you know who I was when I first came to work for you?”
He gave me a look that said the question was stupid. “We do background checks on all our employees.”
I’d stepped right into a nearly century-old vendetta at work and hadn’t even known it. What else didn’t I know? How could I protect the people I loved without all the information? “I bet some of those background checks aren’t entirely legal. I bet they cross privacy lines all over the place. I bet you told Nero Lancaster to dig up all the dirty laundry he could on me when I first graced your doorstep. What were you hoping for? That the jewels would suddenly reappear, and you could somehow right an old family wrong?”
“Was I hoping to get the hundred thousand dollars owed to us, with eighty years of interest? Sure.” Puzo glanced around the ranch. “But then I decided I’d rather have this instead.”
He was trying to distract me by bringing up the ranch and the community he’d worked his way into inch by inch.
“Except, the Hurly family owed your family the money back then, not mine,” I said, a calm settling in over me. “And you’d never be able to legally ask for it in a court of law.”
“You’re the one who insists it was Hurly who owed us the money, not me.”
“If you’ve got proof it was Alasdair Harrington, cough it up, but you don’t. I bet there isn’t a single marker signed by a Harrington, but I bet you have quite a few signed by a Hurly. You never said yesterday exactly how much Adam owes you now.” Puzo tried to move around me, but I cut off his escape. “What was the agreement you made with Adam? Bankrupt the ranch so it would allow you to buy it on the cheap? Every dollar he cut off the top of the purchase price by running it into the ground would be a dollar off his debt?”
When he shifted ever so slightly in discomfort, I knew I’d nailed it. Puzo wanted the ranch for whatever twisted reason he could come up with, maybe simply revenge on me and mine, and Adam wanted to burn it to the ground. Adam hated this place because it represented a century of Hurly family failures.
Some of those missing pieces had clicked into place with this conversation, but not all.
I smiled at Lorenzo—a dark smile full of promise—as I said, “Too bad you’ll never get your hands on the ranch now. I’ve got more than enough money to keep it going from now until we’re both dead and buried. Whatever it loses, I’ll cover. Neither you nor Adam will ever get another slice of what belongs to my family. Italians aren’t the only ones with long memories and a thirst for vengeance.”
Adam’s great-grandfather had lost the land in a poker match, and Adam had tried to grab it back, but he’d lost that gamble just like his great-granddaddy had. Puzo was right. Addiction ran in the family. Addiction and obsession.
Puzo glanced out at his family spilling through the tent, his profile stoic. When he finally twisted his head back to look me in the eye, the glimpse of exhaustion I caught was surprising. “I didn’t need to motivate or help Adam with his plans. I just had to wait patiently enough for him to run the ranch into the ground so I could buy it on the cheap. Now that it isn’t going to happen, Adam and I do have some outstanding business to take care of, and unlike my grandfather, I do have a contract in hand and a way to claim it in court.”
“Adam’s debt isn’t mine or my family’s,” I seethed.
“Are you sure about that?” he said and then strolled away toward the crowd gathered around the cake table.
I took a moment to control the rage flowing through me at Puzo and Adam and decades of feuding family nastiness. Maybe my family hadn’t earned the ranch in the most upright way, but we’d worked the land and grown it into what it was today. We’d put money into the community when we’d been flush. We’d done our best to pay some of it forward. Hell, the foundation my company ran gave millions each year.
But not to Rivers , the devil inside me taunted.
I’d distanced myself from the town as much as I had my family and the ranch. But I could change that. I could make some of it right again.
With the music stopped, my daughter, her friend, and Sadie had moved to watch the bride and groom as they sweetly fed each other cake. I glanced around, ensuring my detail was in place, and found Parker across the tent, his eyes glued on the three women.
I joined him, asking, “Everything’s been quiet here?”
“Yep. But I think you might want to lock up your women before anyone gets the wrong idea.” His voice was dark and broody as his gaze shot warnings to some of the guests who were sending appreciative looks at my daughter and the siren I’d fallen head over heels for.
After shooting some of my own bolts in those men’s directions, I asked, “Where’s your dad?”
“Hacking away at his computer. He thinks he might be able to find Adam when no one else can. He did say he’s crossed some paths that show Puzo is searching for Adam too.”
I shouldn’t care what happened to Adam, especially if he’d killed Spence, and yet Lauren’s plea from this morning still lingered in my soul. Her sad statement that they were the last of the Hurly family, just like Fallon was the last of the Harringtons, had hit somewhere deep inside me. Even before I’d left the ranch, I hadn’t cared about our name the way my father had. Maybe it had been the way he’d pounded into me that Spence would be the one to carry on all the Harrington traditions that had forced me to choose my mother’s name as much as it had been a child’s defiant devotion to the one parent who’d loved him. Whatever the reason, I’d never considered before today what the weight of carrying both Dad’s name and his expectations had been like for my brother—a weight that had been passed down to my daughter.
Fallon turned her head in our direction, and when she saw me, her face lit up. It was both a cut and a balm to my soul that she was actually smiling at me. She rarely looked at me with such joy anymore. The need to be right there next to both her and Sadie had my feet moving, but I stopped before I got too far, turning back to Parker. “When do you have to go back?”
“I report for duty on Friday.”
My head and soul were torn on how to protect the women I loved, but getting them away from me and the ranch and the hate and retribution we both seemed to draw had to be the best thing to do until things settled down. “If I can convince Sadie to leave and take Fallon with her, would you escort them to Tennessee before heading to Virginia?”
“I can do whatever you need as long as I’m on base by oh-five-hundred on Friday.”
“If this drags on longer than that, I can arrange for someone else to take your place.”
He gave me a curt nod, and I turned back to the two females who were calling to me with their smiles. From the moment I’d held her as a newborn, Fallon had taken ownership of a portion of my heart, and I’d never expected anyone else to own the other half. I thought the rest of it had become a dead muscle, and yet Sadie had brought it back to life.
I pulled Fallon into me with one arm and linked my fingers with Sadie’s on the other side. “You both look beautiful tonight.”
Fallon beamed at me, and it hit me right in the chest all over again.
The DJ kicked in a new song—slow and sensual—and the crowd around the cake table dissipated. Some slid back onto the dance floor while others grabbed dessert plates and headed for the tables. When Maisey dragged Fallon away to get cake, I turned to Sadie, wrapped her into my arms, and swayed us to the music right where we stood.
I ran my hand up her back, pushing her into me until I felt every soft curve pressed up against every inch of me. Until the rhythm of her heart echoed the beat of mine. A fluttering beat I wanted to capture and hold on to forever.
“You promised me all your dances from now on,” I whispered in her ear. “And yet, I saw you dancing.”
“You’re remembering it wrong, Slick. I simply said you’d get my dances tonight, and look at that, we’re dancing.”
I swirled her out and around, and when I brought her back, I drew her even closer. Our hips shifted in perfect unison, as if we’d always been together, as if we’d spent a lifetime dancing with each other. We’d been that way in bed too, finding each other’s rhythm instinctively. She might be a hell of a lot younger than me, but Sadie and I fit. I couldn’t shake it. Didn’t want to. I just had to figure out how to keep her and meet all my responsibilities, to which the ranch had now been permanently added.
I dipped her backward, kissed her lightly, and then swung her into my arms again, all while keeping the beat. I pressed my groin into her, and she let out a little breathy gasp.
“No one else should be able to touch you this way, Tennessee. I’m willing to negotiate. Line dancing with the men in your family is acceptable, but this, these moves with us tucked together, have to be mine and mine alone.”
Her eyes turned the same deep shade of blue they’d been when I was deep inside her, and it took everything I had not to embarrass myself amongst the guests. I’d said she’d be begging me to take her on the dance floor, but now our roles were reversed. As much as I didn’t like losing control, I’d found myself not only losing it repeatedly with her but willingly handing it over.
Sadie twined her fingers through the hair at my nape as she aligned herself into my every groove. She lifted onto her toes and kissed the corner of my mouth.
“How about if I promise you all my last dances?” she offered.
I shook my head. “Not good enough. All your last dances and all your slow dances.”
She pretended to think about it.
“All my last dances and all my slow dances, unless planned and negotiated ahead of time.”
I didn’t let her see it, but inside, I was smiling. Instead, I grunted as if I’d barely agreed to her terms. But from this day forward, negotiating with her would be one of my favorite things.
Before I could answer her, before I could seal our deal with a full kiss that would leave us both breathless, my gaze settled on Noah cutting through the crowd toward me. His face was pale and unsettled. He was followed into the marquee by one of Puzo’s men, who jogged around the outside of the dance floor to the back table where Puzo was talking to the bride and groom.
I turned so Sadie was behind me as Noah reached me. His words sent a chill through me. “Nero Lancaster has just stumbled up outside the tent. He’s been brutally stabbed. I’m not sure he’s going to make it.”
Parker had joined me from the sidelines as Noah had approached, and I met his gaze. “Don’t leave Sadie and Fallon alone for even a second. Not to piss. Not to fetch your dad. Not one second.”
Parker nodded curtly, and Sadie called my name, but I just ignored her as I followed Noah outside. A small group of my team and Puzo’s were gathered around the tailgate of a rig parked near the barn. The string of white lights Lauren had added to every building and every fence around the wedding marquee lit up the sky enough for me to recognize Nero lying in the truck bed. He looked like he’d been dragged through the brush. His clothes were torn and muddied, face and hands scratched.
But it was the long, jagged cut down his sternum and over his rib cage that set my pulse racing.
The matching wound on my chest threw me right back to the alley the night I’d gotten it. I could smell the trash covering the grimy pavement as my arms were twisted painfully behind me. I felt every punch as it landed in my stomach, my kidneys, my back. And I felt the tip of the knife as it broke through my sternum, slicing down toward my navel. I could even feel the blood oozing out of me with each heartbeat as I’d fallen to the ground.
I fisted my hands, nails biting into the palms, and pushed past the cloud of dark memories in order to ask, “Did someone call for an ambulance?”
One of Puzo’s men responded with a curt yes. Another was in the truck, adding pressure to the wounds with the suit jacket he’d removed. Blood had already saturated it.
I looked at Noah. “Call the sheriff.”
“The deputy on duty already did,” he responded.
My ears rang. The slapping of feet on the asphalt of the alley tried to pull me under again. I’d thought this man had been responsible for the knife wound to my chest that night. And maybe he had been. Maybe this was someone getting retribution for his sins, or maybe I had misjudged everything. It wasn’t just the blood and the memories that had me fighting back the bile that rose.
I swallowed hard and asked, “Where was he? And who found him?”
“He staggered his way into the parking lot from the direction of the waterfall,” one of Puzo’s men answered. “Bleeding all over the place and insisting on seeing Puzo.”
“Let me through,” Puzo ordered as he arrived. He brushed past me and climbed into the truck bed with Nero. The man’s eyes were wild and violent as he grabbed Puzo’s arm and yanked him closer.
His voice was choked with pain as he said one word, “Theresa.”
Puzo jerked back, gaze darting into the darkness. “She was here?”
Nero barely nodded, and then passed out.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck . Another person here seeking revenge. Another body bleeding out on our land. Anger and disgust rose and helped push back the nausea and the darkness of the past trying to drag me back into its seedy grip.
Sirens sounded down the lane, and Noah rushed away to lead the EMTs and the sheriff toward us.
As the medics moved in, trying to revive Nero, Puzo jumped out of the bed, and his gaze met mine. It wasn’t the rage in his expression that caught me off guard…it was the fear. Lorenzo Puzo was afraid, and I’d never seen him that way before. It sent a chill up my spine.
When he stepped farther away from the truck, I joined him.
“What the hell is going on here, Puzo? What did you bring to my doorstep?”
“Not just me, Marquess. This was aimed at you as well.” When I didn’t say anything, Puzo went on, “Theresa wants revenge because you sent Ike away for life, and she wants my head on a platter so she can take over and run the business the way her side of the family has always wanted.” He shook his head. “Two years ago, I called a temporary truce in the war that had only gotten worse since Ike went to jail. I brought her here so she could see what I’d done in Rivers.”
“She’s been here?” I swore quietly. Who else had been on my land who had it in for me? Who else had come here, putting my family at risk, when I’d been running the other way?
“I had her overseeing some of the business deals I’d made here in town. Clean, legal deals. I wanted her to see just what we could accomplish when we were on the right side of the law.”
I scoffed, and my voice was full of scorn as I said, “By stealing them in poker games?”
He leveled me a look that said how much of a hypocrite I was for even saying it, and I despised that he was right. That my family had anything in common with the Puzos.
“Adam and Theresa struck up, shall we say, a friendship.”
My stomach bottomed out all over again. Goddamnit. She was Adam’s girlfriend. The one no one had known or met. She wasn’t Tera. She was Theresa goddamn Puzo.
Had it been their hatred for me and my family that had drawn them together? Was she helping Adam even now? He’d said he’d been with her the night the rattler had been in my bed and the person had attempted to smother Lauren. He’d looked startled. Had it been his girlfriend doing the dirty work? Had they taken turns? The roiling acid in me grew another level. Pretty soon there’d be nothing left but burned stomach linings, ragged nerves, and holes that leaked.
“She’s been escalating since January,” Puzo said.
“What happened in January?”
“She tried to kill me by poisoning my coffee. That was when I cut her off from the family. Anyone who helped her was out.” He waved toward the marquee. “If you’ll notice, none of that side of the family showed up today for Marielle’s wedding.”
It had all gone down a month before Spence had been killed. Had Puzo cutting her off pushed her over the edge? Had she encouraged Adam to escalate his plans as well? Had Spencer found out about all of it and put himself in their high beams without even knowing it?
“You dragged my family into the middle of some mafia war?” I stepped closer, wanting to grab his lapels and shake him until his eyes rattled. “Not only that, you opened the door and led her right to me and mine without even a warning. No wonder she showed up here. Two for the price of one.”
“Don’t pin this on me. You put the target on your own back the day you called the feds on her and Ike, thinking it was me,” Puzo snapped. “I told you I had nothing to do with it.”
“But I didn’t escort her inside the gates of my family’s ranch and introduce her to Adam,” I snarled. “I’ve never wanted my family tied up with what happened in Vegas. They didn’t even know what really happened in that alley until this week.”
A soft hand twined with mine, and I jerked in surprise, twisting to see Sadie had come up behind me. I glared toward the tent where Parker stood, holding Fallon back with an arm around her waist.
“You’re not supposed to be out here. Go back inside,” I demanded. Sadie did what she’d done since I’d first met her. She ignored my bark and tucked herself up against me.
“What’s going on, Rafe?” But I didn’t need to answer once she saw the body in the truck bed being worked on by the EMTs. The men Puzo and I had both hired to protect our families stood there, useless. Maybe having the additional bodies had slowed Theresa down, but it hadn’t stopped her.
She’d still been able to strike. This time, it had been at her cousin, but would the next strike be at me? Had she been the one to shoot the rifle? Or had it been Adam?
My wound ached. Had it been Theresa that night in Vegas? I tried to reassemble the hazy image of the three people who’d attacked me. The two holding me had been wide shouldered and muscled. The person who’d wielded the knife had been tall and muscular as well, but it could have been an athletic woman. I’d done what every arrogant man before me had done—I’d assumed it had taken another male to bring me to my knees.
Panic wafted through me. The sea of bodies Puzo and I had hired no longer seemed nearly enough to protect our families. Adam and Theresa would just keep coming until they’d put us both in the ground. Was the simple truth that it really was Puzo and me who were putting our loved ones in danger? Was that what Puzo had really meant when he’d insinuated this was all on me last night?
Right before my eyes, the man seemed to be changing. I’d made him the villain of my story, and now every comment he’d ever made was trying to realign itself in my mind. The warnings he’d given me in the past carried so many different angles now. I’d never like the man. He’d never like me. But in some weird twist of fate, it appeared we were momentarily on the same side of the battle.
I didn’t know what bothered me more. That my years of hate had been misdirected once again or that I might have to trust my enemy to get a resolution to this entire debacle.
My desire to send Sadie and Fallon away only grew.
But did I really believe Sadie would go on her own? She’d insist on standing next to me, just like she had all week. Just like she had right now, sneaking past Parker and coming out amongst the ugliness draped over the back of a truck bed.
What would it take to send her away?
Would it take me putting on hold whatever this was blooming between us? Would it take me telling her a lie? Would I have to tell her I didn’t want or need her after I’d just demanded all her last dances from here until eternity?
I’d do whatever it took to make her go.
What. Ever. It. Took.
And then I’d beg her forgiveness after it was over. I’d lay down my heart and my life in any way she wanted. But right now, I needed her to be as far away from me as was humanly possible, and not even the other side of the country might be far enough.