47. Cassie
CASSIE
Jagger and I stood in the biggest room on the first floor, a room that might once have been a ballroom, several arches soaring overhead, multiple chandeliers casting glittering light over the crowd clustered around a glass case highlighting the fifteen-million-dollar diamond-and-emerald necklace on black velvet.
We’d already seen it up close and I’d been surprised to feel nothing as I’d stared at the expensive piece of jewelry. It was just a bunch of gold and polished rocks.
Pretty, I guessed, but ultimately meaningless.
I glanced at the ring on my finger, a ring that had been made for me by the Hawks, and felt something else: my connection to the three men who’d changed my life.
Who’d changed me.
“Do you think Bram’s okay?” I asked Jagger.
“He’s fine. If there had been a problem with security we would have heard about it by now.”
We hadn’t brought our phones (the Hawks said it would be stupid, just in case we got caught), and I hated being out of touch with my brother, knowing he was outside with a bunch of armed men.
It was stupid — Bram could take care of himself — but everything that had happened over the past few months had only driven home the realization that we were the last members of our family, and I really wanted to live in a future where Bram and I could do something other than try to overcome our shared trauma.
I looked around the room for the hundredth time. “I don’t think he’s coming.”
I didn’t have to use Dimitri’s name for Jagger to know who I was talking about.
“I’ve started to think the same thing,” he said. “But it’s okay. We have Alina now.”
A murmur moved through the crowd and everyone started heading for the terrace doors on the ocean side of the villa.
“What’s happening?”
“Fireworks, I think.” Jagger’s gaze was on Alina, making her way to the terrace. “It’s the finale to the night.”
He wrapped my hand around his arm and we headed that way, following her blonde head in the crowd.
“Where are Hawk and Vigo?” I asked as we stepped through the terrace doors.
The cool night air calmed my stomach, queasy from the champagne I’d been sipping.
“They’re around.”
We gathered with everyone else around the stone railing and a few minutes later, the first burst of light exploded over the water, an arc of gold and green that mimicked Maison Valmont’s new collection.
The crowd oohed.
I glanced at Alina, standing at the edge of of the crowd and saying something to one of the three men who’d rotated around her all night, watching her like she was one of the precious jewels inside that might be stolen at any second.
The security guard departed down a set of stairs at the side of the terrace, and my gaze was pulled into the sky as more light exploded across its inky darkness.
It was pretty but I was distracted, and I glanced back at Alina just in time to see her head for the terrace stairs.
“She’s on the move,” Jagger said, pulling me toward the edge of the crowd.
Alina disappeared a second later, and we had to force our way through the throng of people, staring as if hypnotized at the sky.
I trotted after Jagger, down the stairs and out onto the lawn at the side of the villa, and almost ran into Bram.
“That way,” he said, tipping his head toward the front of the villa.
We raced over the shadowed lawn, Bram leading the way, and spilled out into the front of the villa in time to see Alina stepping into the back of a black SUV.
One of the guards, shut the door and got into the passenger seat.
“Fuck,” Bram said.
“We need a car.” Jagger pulled me toward the cars parked in the gravel at the side of the property where several security guards leaned against the vehicles, smoking and chatting, waiting for their clients to emerge from the party.
A black SUV screeched to a stop next to us.
The passenger side window retracted.
Vigo grinned from inside the car. “Get in, losers.”
We piled into the back seat.
Hawk was in the driver’s seat, and he took off, careening down the mountain road that led to the water.
“Whose car is this?” I asked.
“No idea,” Vigo said.
“Where is she?” Bram asked.
“Five cars up,” Jagger said. “Black SUV.”
The description wasn’t helpful. We were in a line of black SUV’s, all with tinted windows, all making their way down the hillside as they left the gala.
I leaned forward in the back seat, my heart beating furiously in my chest as we inched down the mountain behind the other cars, my gaze locked on the SUV that was Alina’s.
“Where’s she going?” I asked when we were back at sea level.
“Marina, I think,” Hawk said.
One of the cars between us and Alina peeled off. Now there were only four cars between us, and I locked onto Alina’s SUV, hoping we hadn’t gotten it wrong.
They all looked alike.
Her car turned for the water.
“There she goes,” Hawk said.
“We need to break out of this gridlock,” Bram said next to me.
“What do you want me to do?” Hawk gritted through his teeth.
The road was too narrow, clogged with cars in both directions.
We inched infuriatingly along.
Alina’s car stopped. She stepped out of the back seat, her white dress a shimmery column in the dark, and stepped toward the pier with two of the guards.
Hawk bolted from the driver’s seat, leaving the car idling in the middle of the road.
It took less than five seconds for the rest of us to follow, piling out of the car and running toward the pier.
It was like chasing a butterfly, Alina seemingly oblivious, just out of reach as she hurried down the pier toward a waiting speedboat.
We were halfway to her when she climbed into the boat.
It pulled away from the dock with a roar, leaving a frothy wake in its trail.
We stopped running at the end of the dock, and I stood there, panting, watching Alina speed toward one of the waiting superyachts.
“Fuck!” Bram said.
Vigo clapped him on the back. “Don’t worry big guy. We’ll be able to follow her no problem now.”
“And how in the fuck are we supposed to do that when she’s getting on a boat with a helipad?” Bram asked.
“Because of the tracker I put in her bag,” Vigo said.
Hawk shook his head. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you’d gotten close enough to plant the tracker? I just spent thirty minutes chasing her down that fucking hill.”
“You seemed like you were having fun. Weren’t you having fun?” He looked at me. “Weren’t you having fun, mouse? I was having fun.”
I laughed because what else was there to do when you were part of the Hawks’ madness? “It was kind of fun.”
“See?” Vigo said to Hawk.
“I’m going to end you one of these days,” Bram said, turning to stalk down the pier. “And never, ever call me “big guy” again.”