Chapter Fifteen
Damion
A horn screeching blasts me back to the present, and the backseat of the Walker-driven SUV with Blake sitting across from me. I inch to the side and glance between the seats, grimacing when I realize we’re now the ones trapped. We’re solidly behind a delivery truck, unable to make progress, and I feel as if I’m going to climb out of my own skin. The idea of Alana shoved in some dark place is driving me wild, destroying me. I should have said, “fuck the pizza” that night years ago and just kissed her, and then I would have been with her when the lights went out. I would have kissed her the whole damn time the lights were out, and she wouldn’t have been afraid.
I reach for the door, ready to walk the rest of the short distance between us and Alana’s mother’s apartment, when Savage abruptly cuts around the holdup. I sink back into the cushion, my mind beginning to play chess with my father, and we are too evenly matched for my liking. Minutes later, I’m no closer to taking his king, and he is too close to mine, and already now, we are pulling up to the building. Blake disconnects from a call I wasn’t even aware he’d taken—that’s how deep I’d sunk into the mental matchup with my father—and he does not look pleased.
Tension and dread beat at me with a one-two punch. “What is it?”
“Relax, man, at least for the moment. It’s not bad news. It’s just not good news. Our man, Joey, got into a vacant apartment above her mother’s, we were hoping was the ticket to finding her. Unfortunately, it was not.”
Of course not , I think. Back to the mental chess match. My father knew we’d focus on that location. It’s too obvious. “Now what?”
“We’re going door-to-door.”
I scowl at this idea, my tone brusque, bordering on impatient. “A plan that gets us nowhere. The kidnappers are not going to open the door, and they’ll lie and say she’s not there. And what if we’re wasting time and she’s not even in the building?”
If Blake notices, he doesn’t indicate any such thing, rolling with my punches with no more than a blink. “My team is scouring the exterior cameras within a mile in any direction of the building. We’ve found nothing. We would have found something if she had left the building. She has not left the building, Damion. I need you to trust me.”
The problem is, I do trust him. He’s one of the elites, in demand across the world, and it sure as fuck seems as if he’s still been outsmarted by my father.
I’m at my limit and done with this guessing game. I pull my cell from my pocket and punch in my father’s autodial, setting the phone to my ear. He answers on the first ring, probably waiting for and expecting my call. “Son,” he greets.
“What do you want?” I grind out, a hollow place inside me that scares the shit out of me. It’s the space Alana fills in me that she has always filled, and it’s never been empty.
Until now.
He chuckles, as if I’ve said something that amuses him. “I want a lot of things. A hot blonde. A couple million extra on my investments a day. Why don’t you be a little more specific?”
“You know full well what I’m talking about. I want Alana back, safe and well. What do you want ?”
“Son, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I’m headed into the meeting with the board. I assume you’ll be here soon? I’d suggest you hurry. There’s important business to discuss. See you when you get here.” The bastard disconnects.
I blink and bring Blake into focus.
“I can tell how well that went,” he says tautly. “What do you want to do?”
“Fucking find her,” I snap, opening the door and exiting the vehicle.
Blake’s right behind me, stepping to my side, about the time Alana’s mother appears in front of me, her eyes bloodshot, voice weak. “I’m not a part of this,” she declares, picking up where we left off at the coffee shop.
I eye Blake, who takes a hint and steps away.
My attention returns to Alana’s mother, her long, brown hair fluttering in the wind, her pale skin flushed and her hands trembling. Some might fall victim to the puppy dog eyes she’s presently fixing on me, but she disgusts me at this point, and it’s all I can do to look at her. I dislike her type, a pretty woman who knows it a little too well, so unlike her daughter, who barely seems to know her beauty and worth. And no doubt, this woman didn’t tell her she should, either. Alana’s mother is no victim in this situation, and she damn sure used her body to her advantage with my father. A reality that only serves to irritate me all the more.
“Say something,” she pleads. “I didn’t have anything to do with this,” she repeats.
“Then what did you think he was going to do to her?” I demand.
“That question assumes I knew this was going to happen. I didn’t. Your father had been laying low and staying away for days after saying the press was too intense for us to risk being seen together. Then, out of the blue, he called and said he was coming over at the same time Alana was headed over.”
In other words, my father cut her off and left her floundering about, trying to win his favor by setting up her own daughter.
“I told him Alana was coming, so he had to wait,” she continues, “but he didn’t care. I think he was looking for a confrontation. That’s why I went to the coffee shop. I didn’t want her to run into him.”
“Why didn’t you call her before she got to your place?”
“After she went at him at the graveyard and on TV? No way was I risking her being just as eager as him for another confrontation. I had to force the issue.”
I’m not buying any of this. “I talked to my father. He isn’t on his way over here. He was never on his way over here.”
“He told me he was.” She reaches for her phone, and her hand trembles harder now. Because she’s lying? Because she prays I won’t look at her phone log to call her bluff? “I can show you he called,” she declares. “I think I even have a text. Yes, here . Here.” She shakes her phone at me.
I ignore her offer. “Whatever you show me means nothing. It’s all lies.”
She folds her fingers into a praying symbol, her phone in the center of her palms. “Please give me a chance here. I’m telling the truth.”
“You were willing to stand my father up, then? I’m not buying it.” I step around her and start walking.
“Damion, please!” she calls after me. “Please!”
I continue toward the building, and she reappears between it and me, holding up her hands.
“I really don’t know what’s going on, but I admit I’ve been far too absorbed in your father’s world, but it wasn’t by choice. He threatened my husband, and then, when I confronted him, he threatened Alana. A mother does what a mother must to protect her daughter.”
“Having witnessed first-hand how you treated Alana at the funeral, not to mention how you look at my father, I don’t believe you.”
She turns on the waterworks, and in a big, blubbering way. “I screwed up,” she sobs. “I let him control me, and he just owned me. I was confused and scared,” she swipes at her damp cheeks, “but I love Alana. Tell me what to do to fix this, and I will.”
“You don’t have the courage to do what needs to be done.”
She straightens, indignant, and already her tears are drying up. “I deserve more credit than that. It took courage to deal with your father. My husband couldn’t stop gambling. I had to do what I had to do to keep the goons away from him and Alana, and despite what you might think, it was degrading and horrid.”
She’s got to be kidding me. This woman all but fawns over my father, but I try to remind myself there are situations where captives become infatuated with their captor. Maybe it started one way and ended here, but I’m still far from forgiving right now. Alana is missing. She helped make that happen. “I don’t have time for this right now,” I snap. “Get out of my way.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to get Alana back,” she repeats, “but you need to know that he won’t talk to me. I’ve called him half a dozen times since you showed up at the coffee shop.”
“You want to help? Stop being a token in my father’s game. Stop being used by him to hurt Alana. Start there.”
“How? He’s like the mob. Once you get in, you never get out. How do you not know this ? Truly, how do we know whoever took Alana won’t try to come for me before you do?”
And there it is. Her real motivation for tracking me down. Herself. And as much as that makes me want to throw her to the wolf, aka my father, she’s Alana’s mother, and I can’t do that.
“Alana came here today to warn you.”
“Warn me? Warn me about what?”
“The heat is on my father. He needs a fall guy, and my guess is that’s you. You’re a perfect candidate for a well-timed, staged suicide. The poor, heartbroken widow couldn’t live without her dead husband. He’ll paint you as the killer who wanted the life insurance.”
She pales, her cheeks hollowing with the impact, one hand settling at her throat. “He wouldn’t. He can’t.” She gulps air. “You think—” Those two words come out as a rasp, as if her throat is raw with the acid burn of the truth she already knows to be upon her.
“ I know. And what you fail to understand is that none of this was ever about you or Alana. It’s about me and him and what he wants from me. Alana was a threat to my submission. You were a tool to control her, and therefore me. But now that he’s feeling the heat of bad press caused by your family, you’re in the way. You’re a problem he needs to go away.”
“Are you taunting me or offering me help?”
“I am only helping you because it’s what Alana wants. Go upstairs and pack a bag. My men will take you to the airport and get you out of the country on my dollar. You’ll hide there until I end this, until I know it’s safe.”
“I can’t leave,” she objects indignantly. “Not when I have no idea where my daughter is right now.”
“If you choose not to accept my help, be clear, I won’t offer again. You’re on your own.”
She blinks up at me, tears burning in her eyes again, before she shakes her head, but in contradiction, she hisses, “I’ll take your help,” and turns to the door and enters the building.
Unappreciative witch , I think, gritting my teeth. I’m saving her fucking life while she might well have ended Alana’s. If I lose her, I will only survive to punish her and my father. She better fucking hope she leaves the country before that kind of news would reach me. My cellphone rings, and I glance down to where it rests in my hand, an unknown number on caller ID. I rotate, and Blake is already in front of me, eyeing my phone. “Your line is tapped. Go for it.”
I answer the line on speaker. “Damion West.”
“We have your bitch. One million dollars, and you can have her back. We’ll call with instructions. We do this tonight.”
There is no doubt in my mind that this is a coverup set-up by my father. I can feel it in my bones. “Tell my father he has exactly one hour to return Alana to my apartment. If she’s not there, I’m calling the media and holding a press conference to which he will be the subject. The door will be unlocked in five minutes.”
The line is silent, seconds ticking by, until it goes dead. I pull up the app on my phone and unlock my front door.
On the outside, I’m cool and collected. On the inside, I’m screaming with fear for Alana, but I don’t dare show it outwardly, as we’re no doubt being watched. “Well played,” Blake approves. “It was a good gamble.”
“A gamble,” I repeat. “I just gambled with the woman I love’s life.”
“By necessity, not choice, and you had the good instincts to know that. Every second she’s gone lowers our risk of getting her back. It was a necessary gamble, Damion. It was the right move. She’s still in the building. They can’t get her out without us seeing them. We need to pull out of the building and let them do the logical next step—return her to her mother’s place.”
The problem with his conclusion is that it assumes logic when my father does nothing he believes anyone else will see as logical. That’s how he wins. That’s how he creates hell for others, including me.