"I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind, Zed," I whispered, hardly believing I was saying the words out loud. "He's been dead five years, and I'm seeing his ghost in every shadow. What the fuck is wrong with me?"
Zed shifted in his seat, and his leg brushed mine under the table. It was probably an accident, but a small part of my brain remembered how he used to do shit like that when Chase was in a mood and verbally abusing me. Zed would touch his ankle to mine or lean his shoulder into me, small gestures that reminded me he was on my side, that I wasn't alone.
"You're not losing your mind, Hades," he told me, his tone serious and his gaze direct. "But that's what someone wants you to think. They're playing up your biggest fear. That worries me. Who in the fire-breathing fuck knows the only thing the big bad Hades is scared of?"
It was a rhetorical question, but it didn't make me feel any better. No one. No one knew, aside from those I trusted: Zed and Seph. And I had a really hard time believing either my best friend or my little sister were tormenting me and destabilizing my operation.
"Fuck it. I need a vacation." I gave a bitter laugh, and Zed grinned. It was our running joke, that we both badly needed a vacation. Like that was ever going to happen. "Alright, tell me how the Timber build is going. I saw an email from Charlotte that they had to rethink the lighting for the poker room?"
Zed nodded, then shifted gears into his role as my group’s manager. He ran me through all the progress and changes on our new build, then gave me recaps of how all the other bars were running.
By the time we'd finished our meals, my head was pounding with a stress headache. While Zed had talked, I'd scrutinized what felt like every single man, woman, and child within my line of sight and found no one suspicious—or everyone suspicious. But I was no closer to putting a face on my tail.
"Are you going to Demi's for dinner tonight?" Zed asked as he paid our bill, knowing my schedule better than I did.
I shook my head. "Not tonight. I don't want to go bringing unnecessary attention to them." I chewed the edge of my scarlet thumbnail, and Zed tugged my wrist to stop me. "I'll send Seph over, but I told Demi to book a trip with Stacey and get out of town for a bit."
Zed grimaced but gave an understanding nod. "Maybe they should take Seph with them."
I wrinkled my nose. "You know that's not an option." Because if my sister was halfway around the world, how could I protect her? It was why I'd never actually send her to boarding school like I kept threatening to do.
"I know," Zed murmured, not sounding thrilled, but at least he understood. "Well, get some sleep or something. I can throw a guard on your building if you'd like."
We'd just reached the entrance to the restaurant and handed our tickets to valet, so I turned to him with an arched brow. "I think I've got my own security handled, thanks, Zed."
He rolled his eyes. "I didn't mean... never mind. Oh look, your boyfriend is here."
I scowled at him in confusion, then turned to see what he was looking at. Part of me thought I'd see Lucas there, then I needed to ask why the fuck I associated Lucas with the word boyfriend. That was a train of thought I didn't want to pursue, though. But nonetheless, I was surprised to see Cass striding down the sidewalk towards us.
"Not my fucking boyfriend," I muttered under my breath to Zed, and he snorted a laugh.
"Hades," Cass rumbled as he approached, his face like stone. "Bad news."
Great. Just what I needed.
19
Cass wasn't exaggerating when he said he had bad news. As much as I might have hoped he'd tracked me down just because he wanted to see me... that simply wasn't the case. He came bearing more information about whoever was using my name logo for their angel dust distribution.
I didn't want to discuss business on the side of the road and I didn't want to wait until we got somewhere more private, so when my car rolled up to the valet, I told him to get in. Zed looked less than impressed—there wasn't space for him to join us in my two-seater car—but I called him and put the phone on speaker so I wouldn't need to repeat everything later.
"The Wraith weasel that I've been squeezing for information finally cracked," Cass told me when he slid into the passenger seat of my Corvette.
"I didn't realize you had anyone left to squeeze," I murmured, pulling out of the valet area and merging into traffic. I'd stayed out of it; the Reapers takeover of the Wraiths, after I’d shot Skate a week earlier, was nothing to involve myself in. But I had kept my ears open, and I knew that Cass and his guys had been brutal in cleaning house.
He made a growly sound. "They weren't all two-faced, disloyal bastards. Just most of them."
I quirked a smile at him, then realized what I'd done and turned my attention back to the road. That was one of the major reasons I'd kept my feelings for Cass to myself for so long. The second I let myself explore the possibility of a romance with him, I would no longer hold him to the same standards as all the other gang leaders under my purview.
Then again, if I was being totally honest, I'd been giving Cass preferential treatment for years—well before he took over the Reapers from Zane D'Ath.
"So, your snitch started singing?" Zed asked from my phone speaker, and I cleared my throat. I'd forgotten he was listening for a second there.
"He did," Cass replied with a twist of distaste to his mouth. "But too fucking late. Couple of Skate's guys coming back to town from an East Coast weapons deal got jumped about an hour ago. Bastards never even saw it coming. Turned up to the money drop and got shot full of lead."
"Could have been any opportunistic fuck taking advantage of the Wraiths’ dissolution," Zed offered, not sounding like he believed that for a second.
Cass huffed. "Coulda. Except there was a message left beside their bodies, drawn in blood on the concrete." He pulled his own phone out to open a picture and held it out for me to see.
I stomped my foot on the brake pedal, then snatched the phone from his hand to zoom in.
"Motherfucker," I hissed.
"Let me guess," Zed drawled on speakerphone. "Darling?"
I was too angry to reply and instead just tossed the phone back to Cass and accelerated once more.
"I don't know what Darling means," Cass said cautiously, his eyes glued to the side of my face as I drove, "but I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume this means something to you both."
A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up in my throat, and I swallowed it down, coughing lightly as I shook my head. "Yeah, something like that. Anything else?"
Cass scowled, clearly pissed that I wasn't clueing him in. "Nothing. Just that they didn't even take the money, just shot the Wraiths full of holes, left that calling card, and disappeared. No one has any leads."
"Of course not," I said with a sigh.
"Text me the address," Zed ordered. "I'll check it out."
Cass made a noise that I assumed meant "Absolutely, sending it to you now!" then Zed ended the call a moment later, leaving me trapped in a small space with Cass.