Scarlett started clapping. “Yes! Yes! Sal Rossi is the best!”
“That is all I have been saying, all my life.” I held out my glass for hers. “What time is it?”
She happily clunked her wine glass to mine. “Cheer time!”
“Yes, Dove!” I set down my glass—after a sip, of course—then jogged to a cupboard in the dining room.
Bare feet raced to follow. She was so excited, she bumped into me. “What are we doing?”
Rummaging through a drawer, I answered, “A tablecloth.”
“Wow.”
When I held up the tablecloth, her brows bunched. “Oh. A sheet?”
“Nope! A magic cloth.”
“Wow.”
I ran back toward the kitchen. “Come on!”
Pitterpat. Pitterpat. “Oops! I spilled my wine.”
I didn’t stop running. “We have more. Picnic time! We can clean later.”
At my first attempt, I had set the tablecloth on the floor next to the kitchen. Delighted, Scarlett sat on it but placing her on the floor seemed so wrong for my Dove. And she was too far from me. I wanted her so close I could reach out and touch her at any moment I pleased.
So, Sal Rossi the Great moved items from the kitchen’s island and laid the tablecloth down. From under her arms, I lifted and perched her up there. “Oh, yes, much better.” I kissed her cheek. “Lounge about, Dove. It is snack time.”
“So many times! Cheer time. Snack time. Pic-i-nic time.”
I laughed while digging through the fridge. “That’s right. Anything for Scarlett Giordano.”
By the time I had her set, there was an abundance of food between her legs and bare feet. Every expensive cheese, cracker, bread, fruit, wine, and even the oil dip she helped me make because it wasn’t ‘deadly’. She was over the moon. Especially when the front door opened and her Dark Angel returned home.
I drove for as long and as fast as I could to put some distance between us. For what I was about to do, it was needed. I crossed into Montana, then over the Canadian border, and then I kept driving.
What I hadn’t told Sal was that I had researched Steel Stallions the girl had whispered back when we’d rescued Scarlett. I had to. Those grey eyes were too haunting for me to ignore. I just knew that girl was important. There were not enough hours in the day to shower away the guilt for leaving the victims behind, especially her.
A part of me hoped that if I helped free her, maybe God, Mr. Giordano, and lovely Isabella would forgive me for falling in love with Scarlett.
Maybe, if I did at least this one girl right, I could find a way to make Scarlett mine.
It ended up being that Steel Stallions was the name of a Motorcycle Club located in Austin, Texas. How a pretty girl like that wanted to return to such heathens was beyond me, but I had to find out if they could help her.
It wasn’t easy getting a phone number to their clubhouse. I had no connections to rely on like I usually did, but searching for Scarlett for the last decade made me quite resourceful when it came to the internet and other means of researching.
“Who the fuck is this?” was how I was greeted over the phone. There was loud music in the background and boisterous laughter.
At the payphone called Bell, I cautiously watched my surroundings. The old gas station had no security cameras. “Someone who has information about a possible missing girl.”
I heard a shuffle, mumbles, and then a different voice. “Who the fuck is this?” May have been the same words, but this voice was deeper and more sinister.
Barely any sleep due to Scarlett’s eruption and being stressed as hell, I quickly lost my patience. “I am someone who dislikes repeating himself. Put someone on the phone who has more brain cells, or this conversation is ending.”
The man muffled the phone, but I still heard him yell, “Stalls. Now. This fucker is pissin’ me off.” Then he told me, “Hold on a minute.”
“You have thirty seconds.”
I heard, “Motherfucker—” then a click. I knew he hadn’t hung up on me. Whoever Grey Eyes was, they wanted all the info I had.
There was another click. This time, there was no background noise at all. “Still there, asshole?”
“For the moment.”
Without a shuffle, which revealed I was now on speakerphone, a third voice spoke, “This is Lynx. I’m the VP. You have my full attention. Understood?”
“Lucky me.”
“But you will lose it quickly.”
“Perfect. I hate games.”
“Same.”
I was either making the right choice or adding to my long list of problems. “I recently came across a young woman, possibly seventeen.” Unfortunately, I had seen so many girls of all different ages, I was quite good at figuring out ages. “Long black hair and the biggest grey eyes I have ever seen.” It was so quiet, I sensed they were all holding their breaths. I finally added, “She told me ‘Steel Stallions’.”
Disgruntled voices boomed in the background until I heard, “Shut the fuck up. Right fucking now.” The room they were in went immediately quiet. “Where?”
“No. I have a lot on the line by coming forward. I need to know if it is worth it. Is she yours or someone you want dead?” When a pause lingered longer than I liked, I snarled, “I thought you didn’t like to play games.”
The VP angrily replied, “She’s ours.”
“I’m not having her taken from one Hell to send her to another. Who is she to you?”
“No fucking way.”
“Apparently, no one important.”
The VP suddenly roared, “What country are you in?”
“If you keep speaking to me as if I do not have the intelligence to know you are already tracing this call, and know what country I am in, I will hang up.”
“You sure don’t sound Canadian.”
“Aren’t you proving to be a smart one? Let’s see if you can understand this as well. I hear one bike and I will disappear.”
With no self-control, he thundered, “Why didn’t you fucking help her?”
This was good. He wouldn’t have wanted me to help someone he wanted dead. “Because I had an Italian Royal on my hands, you fuck. No time for some biker girl.”
Hatred, which I understood and had dealt with during the years of searching for Scarlett, slithered over the phone toward me. “You and I will have our day.”
I attempted to act bored. “Blind threats and false promises.”
“When I get my hands on you—”
I was done with this asshole. “You will do nothing because I will be gutting you like a pig. And trust me, I know how.”
“Enough!” boomed an authoritative voice. “This is the President of the Steel Stallions.”
I rolled my eyes. “Congratulations.”
The other voice chimed back in, “Listen here, you little Guido.”
I smirked. “And you just lost the address.”
I went to hang up but then heard pain. Raw fucking pain from the President. “Wait! Anything you want. Anything. Name it. I swear it.” Whoever this girl was, they wanted her back. He asked, “Was she alone?”