CHAPTER 47 CADEN
CADEN
I run straight to Alfie’s room, heart racing and thundering in my ears. I burst right through the door, and he jumps up from his bed.
“What is it?” he says, alert and wary in an instant. “What’s wrong?”
I pace his room, running my hands through my hair, pulling it, willing composure back into my body. If I suck on the inside of my snakebite any harder, I’m going to yank it straight through my fucking lip.
“Cade, brother, talk to me.”
The sickness in my stomach swells to my throat and I force myself over to Alfie’s bed, flopping down. “I almost killed her.”
“What?! Where is she, what did you do?”
I know it’s bad. I don’t need Alfie’s frantic terror in his questions to tell me that.
This girl has wormed her way into my brain and set up camp where my senses were. All I’ve done is hurt her since she’s got here, she’s pushed me to the edge every single fucking day. But I should have done better. Should have been better.
When I was staring down the gun at those stupidly shiny blue eyes, filled with resignation and defeat, I was still so close to ending it all.
Just exterminate the parasite she’s injected into my organs.
Put her out of her own damn misery. But it was the prospect that she really had given up, that I had driven her to that, that stopped me.
Why did it get to me so much? Why did I care?
She’s been nothing but a nuisance since she moved in.
“Caden, you best start talking. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, Alf.”
He visibly deflates next to me. “So, what happened?”
“Did you know she was going to leave?” I turn to him for the first time, look into those troubled eyes.
Bewilderment covers his expression. “No, what do you mean – you won the bet?”
“The bet didn’t mean shit.” I shake my head. “She’s been moving money to a separate account from the transactions. Taking money from my cut. By the amount she had, she’s been doing it for a while before she came here. Fuck knows how she got the rest of it.”
Realisation dawns. “That’s what you meant, isn’t it, when you told me I didn’t know what you knew? You knew about the money.”
I nod, wiping a hand down my face. “I noticed it when I watched her work. Fiz was oblivious, clearly you were, too.”
Disappointment smothers him. “So, what, she was just gonna do a runner tonight, you mean?”
I nod slowly, still getting my head round it.
He blows out a long breath. “Fucking hell. After everything we’ve – I’ve – done for her… it still wasn’t enough.”
“It was either leave or death for her. She’s too far gone.” I drop my head into my hands and lean my elbows on my knees.
A firm hand comes onto my shoulder and shakes it. “Hey, no one’s too far gone. We know that better than anyone. You can fix this, Cade.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to fix it?” I throw my hands up from my face. “She hates it here that much, she begged me to shoot her tonight.”
His grip on my shoulder weakens. “Fuck.”
I sigh, drop my hands again and lean over, letting the revelation pummel me as I say it.
“I know I wanted to do this for my dad, for the business. But this feeling… this fucked up twisted, sick feeling in my gut right now, that’s not just from the idea of failing.
I don’t know what it is, but it’s more than that. ”
Alfie scoffs. “You’re such an idiot sometimes, you know that? You know what it is, Cade.”
I shake my head, rub a hand across my forehead.
“You do. I’m going to ask you again. It’s a simple question. Why did you give up your bedroom for her?”
I run my tongue over my bottom teeth, then sigh. “It made me feel better. In a weird way. I knew she was safe there. I don’t know. Everything’s fucking weird when it comes to her.”
“Weird is one way to describe it. I’d say it was pretty simple,” Alf mutters, then repeats, “You know what it is.”
I close my eyes. The thought of killing her curdled my insides tonight. The thought of losing her… “Yeah, I think I do.”
It’s crept up on me, slowly, just like an infesting parasite. It’s turned my senses to mush, stripped me of everything and reduced me to nothing but a primitive beast, only focused on her. Everything, every second, every thought, it’s all been on her.
“So, what you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. The fact she’s been stealing from me should be enough to send her a one-way ticket to the execution block. But… urgh, I don’t know.”
Alf makes a sound that tells me he’s so over my denial.
“Fuck the money. It’s not like you need it.
Fuck everything. It doesn’t change anything and you know it.
So, you’re gonna go to your room, Cade, and you’re gonna apologise to her.
A real one. You’re gonna swallow your stupid pride for just long enough to give her that, and that’ll be the first step. ”
I exhale a flat laugh at the idea. “That won’t be enough for her, she’ll throw it back in my face.”
“And what? Of course she fucking will. But you’re gonna grit your teeth and bear it, because she deserves a hell of a lot more than that and you’re gonna give it to her, bit by fucking bit.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh my fucking God.” Alf gets off the bed and circles round to me.
“You know, if there wasn’t this dumbass law I’d have beaten the shit out of you at least ten fucking times, and that’s just since she moved in.
Stop being proud, stop being petty. And go and apologise.
To. Your. Fiancé. Now.” He claps his hands as he speaks as if he’s directing a child to go put his shoes in the cupboard.
I know I’m acting like one, but still.
I fiddle with my piercing a bit more.
“Caden, I swear to Lucifer if you don’t get your ass out my bedroom in the next five seconds, I’m gonna get Fiz to come and beat your ass for me with a baseball bat.”
I puff my cheeks out, beg for some will power here. Beg for my ego to sit this one out.
Finally, I push up to my feet. “Fine.” I start to walk towards the door and feel Alf behind me. I turn back. “I can do it on my own, Alf.”
“Like fuck you can.”
I roll my eyes and continue down the hall. We walk into my bedroom and circle round to the other side of the bed.
We both frown and turn to look at the bathroom in sync. It’s wide open. We walk through and see she’s not there.
“El?” Alf calls, as if there’s anywhere else in this room she could go where we wouldn’t see her.
Nonetheless, when the response doesn’t come, my heart rate picks up a few speeds.
Alf locks his eyes with me. “Fiz?”
“Fiz.”
We both run out towards Fiz’s bedroom, but not only do we not find Elodie in there, we don’t find Fiz either. For a split second I panic, the thought spearing through me that he’s taken her somewhere, but then I remember I watched him on the camera pass out on the couch a little while ago.
“Downstairs.” I say, running out the room.
We get downstairs and find Fiz where I expect him to be. Still unconscious, mouth open and snoring on the sofa.
I rake my fingers through my hair before darting off. Alf goes in the other direction. Bruiser appears and follows him.
We cover the entire house, I even go down to the basement, but Elodie is gone.
We regroup in the kitchen, breathless and wide-eyed.
“So, what you gonna do, Cade, where would she go? How you gonna get her back?”
I quite like the fact that letting her leave isn’t an option for him.
It sure as hell would make our lives easier.
She’s already gone, why bother? But my mind’s on the same wavelength.
This house suddenly feels empty. Like the pulsating heart of it has been ripped out.
It seems she didn’t just infest me, she’d permeated herself into the whole house.
“I’ll get her back.” I grab my keys from the bowl. Alf goes to his shoes, but I stop him. “Let me do this, Alf.”
He halts. “Cade…”
“I promise. I will get her back. I need to do this by myself.”
He gives me a sad smile and claps me on the shoulder, shaking it a little, but his strength makes my whole body thrash. “Between a man and his girl.”
“Right.” I grab my shoes, give Bruiser a scruff between the ears and tell him to look after Alfie.
Alf bites on his fingernail. “She might not have got far. Without a car…”
Both our eyes widen at the same time. We didn’t check the car garage. We sprint to the end of the house. I can’t seem to stifle my smirk on the way there. If one of the cars have gone… I wouldn’t admit it, but I’d be impressed.
Sarge is by the door in his bed, looking at me with big eyes that make my stomach twist. If the guilt in them wasn’t enough to tell me what happened, then the jar of treats laying empty beside him definitely would be.
Alfie huffs a laugh. “Well, damn.”
I suck in a breath. “She’s braver than I gave her credit for.”
We fly through the door, and if I couldn’t stifle my grin before, there’s no hope of doing it now. She took my AMG.
Alf turns to me with a look of worry, but it dissolves when he sees my amusement. He goes to the bowl and chucks me the keys to his BMW, matching my grin.
I catch them and can’t help myself. “That’s my girl, right?”
He crosses his arms over his huge chest and nods slowly. “Damn right, she is.”
I go over to his truck and climb in, he follows and closes the door for me. “Where are you gonna look? She wouldn’t go back to her old man’s, where would she go?”
I shake my head, turning the car on. “I don’t know where she would flee to, but I know where she’d go before she left this place.”
He frowns, but I’m already reversing the car out before he can ask.
She may hate me, and part of me may hate her… but I’ve paid attention over these past few weeks. I know my girl like the back of my hand now. There’s only one place she’d go tonight for solace. To escape the monsters. It’s the same place I’d go.