“Danny!”
I startle and look at my dashboard. I’d forgotten about Brad. I return my eyes to the garage entrance. “I’m at—” The gates shift, and I sit up straight. The Lexus appears, the shadow created from the low ceiling of the garage hiding the driver. I quickly start my car.
“Will you fucking speak?” Brad barks.
I hang up, avoiding the inevitable shitstorm I’m about to create, and start to follow the car, my phone ringing persistently. All Brad. And then Rose flashes up on the screen, and I curse Brad’s traitorous arse to hell and back, torn between answering and not. My sensible side somehow gets past the reckless side ruling me as I weave in and out of the traffic, struggling to keep the Lexus in my sights. I answer.
“Hi, ba—”
“Get your fucking ass home now.”
I exhale my exasperation. If Brad wasn’t so sure I would never kill him, this wouldn’t be happening. “I can’t do that,” I reply calmly, hoping some of that calm might filter down the line and pacify my wife.
“You can,” she yells. “We’re getting married this weekend, and I swear, Black, if you die before then, I’ll kill you.”
I laugh. It’s the worst thing I could do. “It all feels a bit shotgun now, baby.”
“Danny!”
“Listen to me, R—”
“No, you listen to me. Get your murdering ass back here or I’m leaving, and I’m taking your baby with me.”
My cheeks blow out, my pulse beginning to boom dangerously. My wife sure does know how to push my buttons. “Do not threaten m—” The line goes dead, and I stare at the road disbelievingly. “She hung up on me?” Raging, I put my foot down, poking at the dial button on my steering wheel. I shouldn’t go into this with anything other than a level head. “Fucking woman,” I mutter as her phone goes to voicemail. I leave her a loving message. “Never, ever, ever, threaten to leave me again or it’ll be me killing you. We’ll discuss this when I get home. Start warming up those palms, baby, because mine are ready.” I cut the call. “Fuck,” I smack the wheel and wind down the window, welcoming the cool breeze that gushes into my car. Cool down, Black.
The engine of my car screams its protest. I’m getting too close to the Lexus, so I ease off the gas, my clawed fingers loosening around the wheel. It takes a left up ahead into the parking garage of a derelict building, and I’m forced to make a quick decision. I pull up across the road, get out, and turn my phone to silent, going to the trunk. I rummage through, looking for anything lingering that I can use. The best I come up with is a baseball cap. I slip it on, check the magazine of my gun, then jog across the road, keeping close to the face of the building when I make it there. I breathe in and slowly peek around the edge. The car’s stationary, the driver’s door open.
What I see next momentarily knocks me for six. What the actual fuck? A long, bare, willowy leg appears, the foot graced in skyscraper heels, and a woman slides out and flicks her hair over her shoulder. Fuck me, has he scoured the city for every single person who has a reason to hold a grudge against me?
My dead father’s lover looks as self-important as she always did. I should have known Shannon would find some kind of warped protection elsewhere after I threw her out the day Pops died. The day she confessed what we all knew in an attempt to maintain her place in our world.
You must know it’s always been about you, Danny.
But who is she meeting?
She walks with an air of cockiness across the parking lot and enters a metal door, glancing around her as she does. As soon as the door closes, I round the corner and jog after her. I pull the door open, my teeth clenched, hissing back air. I hear her heels hitting the concrete steps of the stairwell and look up to see a manicured hand sliding up the handrail. I keep to the outside and follow her up to the third floor, just catching the back of her cream jacket as she passes through an arch. I slow to a stop, gun poised.
“Hey.” Her purr echoes around the shell of a building. “I’m here. Where are you?”
I freeze, my heart beats increasing to an uncomfortable pace.
“I did it,” she says proudly. “I knew he’d visit his father’s grave. God, how he still worships that old bastard.” She laughs, and my finger starts to squeeze down on the trigger of my gun, my blood an inferno, my muscles tensing in an attempt to hold me back. She needs to die. Deserves to die. It’s fucking tempting but . . .
I throw myself back against the wall. Breathe.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
Don’t kill her. Do not kill her. There will be no roots left this time. I need the entire web and she’s going to lead me to the spider.
“Okay. Call me later.” I hear her heels again. Fuck. “I love you,” she adds.
I push my back off the wall and take the stairs fast but silently, breaking out into the daylight and breathing heavily. Instinct is trying to stop me, trying to send me back in that building to end the bitch’s life. Sensibility won’t allow it. I call Otto.
“The car’s registered to—”
“Shannon Pike. Get me her address. Get me everything.”
I make it to my car and throw my baseball cap on the seat. Brace my arms against the wheel. Breathe deeply. I’m about to make the biggest mess in Miami.
18
ROSE
* * *
By eight o’clock, he still wasn’t home, and I was exhausted from worrying. I couldn’t listen to Esther tell me that her son knows what he’s doing anymore. She’s as crazy as her boy. Daniel was occupied in his room playing on his PlayStation, and Beau seemed dead set on working out until she could no longer breathe, and then had dinner plans with her aunt so I took myself to bed and carried on being exhausted there.
I heard him come into our room at two a.m. I kept quiet and still when he crawled into bed. What I wanted to do was get up and go sleep elsewhere, if only to demonstrate how pissed off with him I am. But I didn’t. He would have only put me back in our bed.
I eventually dozed off around four after endless hours of wondering what the hell is going on that meant he ventured into the city on his own, and then kept him up until the early hours. A debrief with the men, no doubt. But what about? I get the feeling that to make it to paradise again, I need to go through hell. I have little confidence in myself to make the journey. Especially now when I’m feeling so drained. Mentally. Physically. I’m plain wiped out.
I wake up at noon. Danny’s side of the bed is empty, cold, telling me he’s been up for a while. And I hate it. For three years, if the bedsheets were cool, it didn’t mean that Danny could be in danger. It didn’t mean that he was plotting someone’s death, trying to ensure our questionable safety, or fighting for equilibrium. This daily aching pressure and emptiness didn’t exist, and I miss that . . . peace. That ease. His presence. Mentally and physically.
I shuffle to the edge and stretch, exhaling heavily, my arms slumping down to the mattress with a thud. Tomorrow, we get married. Right now, I feel about as enthusiastic about that as I know Danny is.
Unable to shake my despondency, my mind weighed down with troubling thoughts, my body heavy, I flop back to the bed on a sigh.