Chapter 40
HATCH
The only two things I’ve done since Lucy left me is hate myself and put sweatpants on.
I’m still in her houseboat, sitting on the edge of her bed like a patient in a waiting room who already knows his diagnosis.
My phone’s face-down on the mattress beside me because she told me not to watch her.
Even though every instinct in my body screams to pull up the feeds Dash helped me set up on my phone and find her, I’m honoring her request. It’s quite literally the least I can do.
Chessy moved from the corner of the bed to plop his ass on my pillow and glare at me with all the contempt of a pampered little prince. Pretty sure he hasn’t blinked in the seventeen minutes she’s been gone.
But who’s counting. Certainly not me.
I fucked up. I know I fucked up. And I don’t know how to fix it. All I know is I need Lucy back, and the only thing giving me even a shred of solace is that her stuff is still here.
Her bag is propped against the kitchenette wall, ballet flats are by the door—really fucking hate that she left in just her nightgown, by the way—and her battered copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sits on the shelf beside me with its cracked spine and dog-eared corners.
Lucy is an efficient runaway, six months and fifty-two towns have proven that, but she’s also broke. She wouldn’t leave without her things.
Which is why I’m still sitting here like an asshole on her bed instead of tearing this island apart to find her again.
My phone rings for the umpteenth time. I know it’s not Lucy, which means it’s someone I don’t want to talk to.
Plus I’m pissed off at phones in general.
I never put anyone in my contacts by their real name for the very reason that happened this morning.
But apparently phone companies don’t understand the importance of hidden identities and nicknames, because every time these things do a fucking update, they change “O-faceless” back to “Orion Fury” and “Prince Dashing” back to “Dash Fury.”
I’m also afraid of what I’ll do if I look at the screen again. The temptation to check the satellite and hacked security feeds is so strong my fingers drum against the mattress while my other hand props up my forehead.
But when my phone rings for the umpteenth-and-oneth time, I finally turn it over.
The photo of me flipping off the Ace of Hearts card buzzes on the screen, and I wince at my should-be-father-in-law’s contact ID photo.
Kian McKennon is going to kill me. I don’t blame him.
I answer and brace myself to tell him the truth. “McKennon, I—”
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
My mouth closes as my mind races to figure out what the fuck I am thinking.
“Kian… I don’t know—”
“Don’t play coy with me. Someone sent me that video as an anonymous tip.” He gets the last word out with such disgust I nearly flinch.
Then the words register. My heart pounds.
“Which video?”
“What do you mean ‘which video’!” he shouts. “There’s more than one?”
I don’t answer, because yeah, if he’s going to be pissed at me, I’d like to know exactly how pissed. There’s Flower Room pissed, then there’s Sugar Room pissed, and then there’s…
My blood runs cold.
No. No there’s no way…
“Who the fuck is the bastard in that room with her? She’s obviously not in her right state of mind.
And why the hell are there mirrors everywhere?
What is that place?” His voice climbs and cracks at the same time.
“You were supposed to protect her, Fury. And you let her—” he chokes. “You let her get—”
“Stop,” I say as calmly as I can, because I can’t hear the word any more than he can say it. I force myself to stay steady. “How much did you see of the video, Kian?”
X told me the Smoke and Mirrors Room footage got downloaded, but we didn’t know why. Now I do. Castle isn’t just steps ahead of me. He’s leagues.
“Believe me, I saw enough,” he snaps.
“I’m not fucking around, Kian. How much, exactly?”
There’s a pause. When he speaks again, his voice has fractured into something raw and exposed in a way that I’ve never heard from the King of Las Vegas before.
“The toad-looking bastard… he…” I hear something crash on the other end of the line, porcelain or glass shattering against a wall. “He was about to pull out—goddammit.”
A deep voice murmurs something in the background, and Kian answers with acid on his tongue.
“I don’t give a shite, Merek,” he snarls at his friend and former security advisor. “That’s my fucking daughter. I will burn every single last goddamn finger off that rap—”
“He’s dead,” I say quickly. “Trust me. He suffered. And as for the video, I swear to God what you saw was the worst of it. I stopped it before it went any further and she…” I swallow past the thickness in my throat. “She still had everything on under the sheet.”
Pure venom spits back at me. “I wasn’t speaking about his fingers. I don’t trust a goddamn word out of your mouth after seeing my daughter drugged out of her mind in that hellscape.”
“It’s called The Rabbit Hole. A strip club and gambling den on a small barrier island off the Carolina coast called Wander Isle.”
There’s a beat before he asks, “Castle’s place?”
I jolt. “You know him?”
“Not personally,” he huffs. “But I know of every major betting player on this planet. I make it my business to know who’s pulling what strings. If you Furys were the mighty name you think you are, you’d start paying attention too.”
My jaw tics, but I let it go. “Well, I know him now. I just don’t know his angle yet. I’m ninety-nine percent sure he’s the one who sent you that video. Lucy works for him—”
“What! She knows places like that are dangerous without Troisgarde backing—”
“Yes she knows.” I cut him off before he can explode.
“She’s been gathering intelligence. Secrets, leverage, anything that might protect the Troisgarde from a distance.
Your daughter walked into a den of vipers on purpose, McKennon.
She found a place she can finally have agency to help the people she loves instead of being used against them like she was when she was a kid. ”
The silence on the other end shifts from fury to something heavier.
“She told you all this,” he says quietly.
I sigh. “Yeah. She told me everything.”
That lands before he growls, “What the hell happened to staying away from her and protecting her at a distance?”
“Look, Castle’s a crazy motherfucker, and I had to reveal myself, alright? Partially at least. It’s a masked venue, so I got a job as a bouncer to protect her.” He scoffs, but I keep going. “Whether you like it or not, your daughter trusts me.”
Trusted, I silently self-correct, but I don’t dare say that shit to her father.
“Did she trust you before or after—him.”
“She told me after,” I answer, not taking the bait. “Which is how I was able to put things together during my interrogation that he was the one who kidnapped Lucy when she was seven.”
“He… what?”
“Yup.” Then I give him all of it—every piece of information I’ve gathered that’s my story to tell. Frog’s confession, the Wilde connection, the Smoke.
The only thing I leave out is just how close I’ve gotten to his daughter. If Kian wanted to kill me before, finding out I took her virginity under the cold moonlight will earn me an even earlier grave than I’m due.
By the time I’m done, exhaustion bleeds through the phone from both ends.
“She was taken,” Kian says at last, his voice settling into something lower and rougher, scraped raw by what I’ve just told him.
“Just disappeared along with her cat from McKennon Hotel. No forced entry. Nothing on our cameras. Nothing. No evidence. Since both of them were gone, we thought… we thought it was a game of hide and seek.”
Emotions clog my throat, and I have to get up and walk around, pace the boat.
“When we realized she was missing, we tore Vegas apart. Hell, all of the West. There was nothing,” he says, every syllable weighted with the precision that comes from having told yourself a story thousands of times and never believing it once.
“No sign of her, no note, nothing to go off of. Just… nothing.”
I want to share everything I know, but Lucy told me she never disclosed the full truth with anyone, and I believe her. Hearing it confirmed straight from her father makes those confessions feel sacred, and I won’t violate that trust.
“We never knew who was behind it,” he continues. “We were never able to get answers out of anyone we interrogated. All we received were cryptic messages telling us to give the locations of the other girls and she’d be returned.” He swallows thickly. “We couldn’t do that.”
“Lucy would’ve never forgiven you,” I say, knowing it’s true. “And you know people who use children as collateral will never honor their word.”
“You’re right… but it meant we searched for nearly two weeks.”
I grip the edge of Lucy’s kitchenette counter so hard my split knuckles reopen.
“My wife, Lacey, she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep.
I kept telling her we’d find her, she’d come back.
But the longer it went, the less I believed it myself.
” He clears his throat, but his voice is still brittle when it comes out.
“Then one morning, she was standing in front of McKennon casino. Barefoot. In her nightgown. As far as we could tell, she’d walked home on her own. ”
He falls quiet. I press my fist to my lips, holding in everything that wants to come out.
As if he can read my mind, he asks, “Did she… did she tell you what happened? While she was gone.”
I close my eyes and slump against the counter. “You know that’s not my story to tell.”
“But she told you. Fuck.” Kian blows out a breath. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but when he continues by telling a part to this story I don’t know, I’m rapt with attention.
“She wouldn’t talk for a year,” Kian says. “Not a word. When she finally did, she stuttered so badly you couldn’t get a sentence out of her. We tried to help her. Therapists. Doctors.”