Because I thrash the living shit out of my motorbike, I skid to a stop at the front of Demi’s building a record-breaking twenty minutes later. Although my phone hasn’t buzzed, I’m confident Caidyn got ahold of Saint. He isn’t wrestling Sloane into submission in the kitchen of her modest apartment. He’s dragging her away from her sports car like she isn’t scratching, kicking, and screaming at him.
“Let me go!” she repeats before she slings her begging, wet eyes to me. “Tell him to let me go!”
My father taught me to protect any woman in need, but I can’t this time around. Saint isn’t hurting Sloane. He’s trying to keep her safe.
“Do you know where she is?”
When Sloane shakes her head, salty blobs splash onto her cheeks. “No, but she wouldn’t just pack up and leave unless something bad happened.”
“She packed?” The shortness of my question can’t hide how airless her reply made my lungs. I feel like I’m being suffocated.
I suck in a relieved breath when Sloane shakes her head.
My reprieve doesn’t last long.
“But she left a check on the entryway table for three months’ rent and gave notice at Petretti’s.” More tears plop down her face when she mutters, “When we moved in together, we made an agreement that if either of us were permanently leaving, we were to pay three months’ rent, so the other half wasn’t burdened with the full amount. I agreed because I would never abandon her, but I also didn’t think she’d ever amass the funds to leave me.” She scrubs a hand over her wet cheeks. “If she was leaving for better things, why wouldn’t she take her belongings? She didn’t even pack her coat. It’s cold today.” She hiccups through her last couple of words.
She is so devastated, Saint wordlessly pleads for me to end my interrogation. I can’t. If anyone knows where Demi is, it will be Sloane.
“She isn’t leaving via her choice, Sloane. She’s being forced out.”
“What do you mean?” As her drenched eyes bounce between mine, her lips quiver. “She could have come home last night. I didn’t mean she had to stay away, and certainly not forever.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” She stops thrashing against Saint when I add, “You’re not forcing her out. Her—”
“Uncle is?” The redness on her face goes from devastated to murderous in under two heart-thrashing seconds, and just as quickly, she recommences her campaign to get out of Saint’s grip. She fights him with everything she has, her battle coming with a ton of words I’m certain she’ll regret within the hour.
It takes Saint lowering Sloane to the ground and hooking one of his legs around her waist to keep her contained. He’d rather face the battery charge she threatens him with than see her go against a man as evil as Col Petretti.
“A quarter a mile out of Hopeton, take a left on Sandy Plains Road. Halfway down, you’ll find a mansion hidden by tall hedges.” Saint’s words are chopped up by the brutal pounding Sloane is hitting his ribs with. She can’t punch him since he has her wrapped up tight, but she has no issues ramming her elbows into his ribs. “If anyone has the means to find Demi, the men inside that compound will.”
After lifting my chin in thanks, I hotfoot it to my bike. “Once things settle down, call Caidyn.”
Saint replies, but the revs of my bike’s engine gobble up what he says.
With traffic light and my love of the throttle at a pinnacle, I make it to Sandy Plains Road in under three minutes. I lower the revs of my motorbike long before I spot the hedges Saint mentioned. Stumbling upon two men with machine guns strapped to their chests is enough incentive to slow any man down.
“If you know what’s good for you, turn around and pretend you never took this route,” says goon number one while the sight on goon number two’s gun adds a Hindi bindi to the crease between my brows.
“I was sent here—”
“By whom?” goon number one interrupts before I get out half my sentence.
I curse Saint like I’m not about to put his life on the line before muttering, “Saint Walsh.”
The seemingly higher-ranked foot soldier pushes two fingers to his ear for barely a second before disappointment crosses his features. “Welcome to our humble abode.” He steps back, then fans out his arm like he’s inviting me to curtsey before the Queen. “We hope your stay is pleasant.”
Not having neither the time nor the care to work out his riddle, I glide my bike down the asphalt driveway he motioned at with his finger. “Jesus-fucking-Christ,” I murmur under my breath when the mansion in its entirety comes into view.
Calling this place a mansion is an understatement. It’s more like a palace.
A tattered-up man with a cropped beard, green eyes, and a shit-eating grin meets me at the stairs at the front of the thirty-plus room mansion. “The day has finally arrived. All the Walshs are falling into line.”
It takes me a couple of seconds to place him, but when I do, my plan of attack alters in an instant. You never stumble across Rocco Shay without laying eyes on Dimitri Petretti. They’re joined at the hip.
“What are you doing here, Ox? Dimitri ain’t got time for your family’s shit today.”
He stops rubbing his hands together like a man perusing a buffet of pussy when I say, “What about his family? Does he have time for that?”
“Fien?”
I don’t know who the fuck Fien is, and in a way, I’m glad. Rocco looks seconds from murdering me where I stand.
“Demi.” I articulate her name as roughly as Rocco did Fien’s.
When Rocco’s dark brows pull together, I use his confusion to my advantage. “Does he have time for her? She is his family, after all.”
He waits a beat before lifting his chin. When he spins on his heels, I dismount my bike and follow him inside.
“Wipe your fucking feet,” he says after splaying a tattooed hand across my chest, stopping me on what must be an invisible welcome mat since there’s not a single bristle to be seen. “Does this look like a barn?”
While I scrub my boots on the cobbled porch, I stare at Rocco like he has rocks in his head. He’s having a full-blown conversation, but not one of his words are directed at me. He’s talking about me, not to me.
“This way,” he says a couple of seconds later. “Dimitri is working out of his downstairs office today.” He shakes his head before adding, “Nah, don’t tell him. Let me surprise him.”
Once again, he isn’t talking to me.
One of his multiple personalities must give him the go-ahead because our arrival at a large office in the lower level of the mansion is met with a surly and aggressive Dimitri Petretti. “I said I didn’t want to be interrupted.”
He was a grouchy bastard when he was a teen, and it seems as if age made him even grumpier. Other than handing a wad of cash to Agent Moses after each of my fights, I barely see Dimitri. He wasn’t interested in a conversation, and I preferred saving my suaveness for his cousin.
“You always say you don’t want to be interrupted,” Rocco pushes out with a laugh. “But I know you’re full of shit. The only time you say you don’t want to be interrupted is when you’re getting lost in a hooker, which we all know you haven’t done since…” He stops talking at the same time Dimitri’s growl thunders across the room.