I want her in a way I’ve never wanted a woman, but in a way I can’t have her.
At least not until Fien is home. Not until she’s safe.
Roxanne’s needy breaths switch to a groan when I glue my hands to my side. If she thinks this is easy for me, she has no fucking clue how I operate. Excluding my search for Fien, I’ve never fought so hard in my life.
Something so simple shouldn’t cause such a catalyst of emotions, but the thought of never touching her feels worse than death. I’ve been drowning since the moment I studied Fien’s lifeless, upside-down face, now I’m being strangled as well.
Upon hearing my unvoiced rejection, Roxanne scuttles into the shower as fast as her quivering legs can carry her. She has barely left my side for a second when the itch to kill skates through my veins. I’m angrier now than I was when I agreed for a handful of my father’s clients to visit my compound unvetted. His request means I’m walking into tonight’s festivities blind. I have a list of aliases and their favorite kinks, but no indication of how they fit into the industry I’ve been trying to get my foot in the door of. All I know is that they prefer them young and unbloodied—just like Roxanne.
While working my jaw side to side to weaken its strain, I head to the closet to get dressed. Tonight’s festivities will run similarly to my previous event, but the women were hand-selected by my father. Roxanne was his first choice. The rest are a random variety of women. He didn’t do that for no reason. He’s testing the authenticity of my ruse, aware not every man will set aside lifelong dislikes for money. We’re not all like him. Sometimes we value people more than possessions.
Partway to the walk-in closet, a stack of papers on my desk draws my focus. They’re the sketches Roxanne showed me earlier. They are still separated into two piles. One stack is much higher than the other. They’re the group of people still in attendance after Roxanne left with a flood of tears rolling down her cheeks.
Too curious to discount, I head to my desk instead of the closet. My mind was spiraling too much earlier to give Roxanne’s drawings the consideration they deserved.
My cock hardens when I lift the first sketch off my desk. Roxanne’s attention to detail is phenomenal. Just like her nudes, only the grain of the cheap pencils she used gives away the fact they’re drawings. You could almost accuse her of tracing the images from photographs. I know she didn’t, though, because none of these faces register as familiar, and I’ve scanned the images from that night over a dozen times the past twenty months.
“Smith, how long will it take to do a facial recognition scan for around two dozen people?”
“Photographs or sketches?” The fact he asks that tells me he’s watching me. He better have logged into the feed after Roxanne entered the bathroom, or we’ll have more than words.
I try to keep my annoyance on the down-low, but it still echoes in my tone when I say, “I need to know who these people are.” I twist the sketch of a man with long-ass sideburns and a chipped front tooth around to face the camera in the corner of the room.
Even with the screen of my phone being as black as night, Smith’s reply comes through the speakers with precise clearness. “Have someone bring them down. I’ll get a start on them while waiting for the rest of Megan’s info to come through.”
Fuck! With everything going on, I completely forgot I sent him down that rabbit warren several hours ago.
While heading to the closet to get dressed in a pair of black trousers and a pinstriped dress shirt, I ask, “What have you unearthed so far?”
Smith’s disappointed groan tightens my jaw. “Her case is a fucking mess. There’s no body—”
“That’s not unusual. There’s never a body.”
A smirk tugs at my lips when he replies, “You’re preaching to the choir, but tell me one time a murder investigation is open and closed on the same day with no DNA, no witness, and no missing person report from a relative or friend?” He doesn’t wait for me to reply. “Something is off with this case. Megan rarely used a credit card before her death.” The way he spits out ‘death’ means he’s as disbelieving of her homicide as I am. “But there were sprinklings of her in other electronic means… bus tickets, online music purchases, an annual subscription for Rock Punk magazine.”
“Did she cancel her subscription?”
I can’t see Smith, but I picture him shaking his head when a whoosh sounds down the line. “That’s the thing. Her subscription was renewed last month.”
“Last month?” I double-check, certain the blood rushing to my lower extremities has affected my hearing. “Megan has been dead for over a year.”
“Mm-hmm. Don’t you know all dead people keep their rock obsession current?”
After a beat, I say, “Keep me updated on anything that comes in, however I don’t see us getting the answers we need from a computer. For now, shift your focus to the men arriving tonight and Roxanne’s sketches.”
“All right.” His chair clicking into place sounds down the line. “I’ve got everything ready to go, but I must warn you, Dimi, this won’t be as easy as you’re hoping. Facial recognition isn’t like it is in the movies. It takes time.”
“I can be patient.” When Smith’s snicker rolls down the line, my hands ball into tight fists. “I can.” His chuckles reveal he has no clue how much restraint I just exuded. It keeps him off my hit list—for the night. “I’ve waited this long for answers, so what are a couple more days?”
Before he can remind me that every second I’m away from my daughter feels like a year in hell, I toss my cell phone onto a stack of drawers next to the walk-in closet before slamming the door shut, blocking out anything he has to say.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dimitri
“Fuck me.”
For the first time tonight, Rocco isn’t swearing at me. His focus isn’t even on me. He’s staring at someone across the room with an unhinged jaw and bulging eyes.
My jaw doesn’t know which way to swing when I discover who has caught his attention. If it wants to tighten with fury, I’ll need to collect it from the floor first.
Like Cinderella arriving at a mafia ball, Roxanne floats into the parlor at exactly eight. The modest hem of a pale blue dress swishes against her thighs when she twists to face the group of thirty or so men watching her every move. Although her bangs remain fanned across her forehead, the rest of her hair has been pulled back into a high ponytail. Her makeup is basically non-existent. Only the slightest sheen of lip gloss glistens on her mouth. She looks nothing like the sex-pot I left hungry and impish forty minutes ago, and everything like the naïve virgin my guests highly crave.
With my suspicion high, I drift my narrowed eyes to Rocco. “What did you tell her?”
When Rocco returns my watch, my blood pressure goes through the roof. His eyes are massively dilated, ensuring there’s only one jaw about to swing—to the left when my fist lands on it with a crack. “I didn’t tell her shit.”
“Then why is she dressed like that? Why does she look like every dirty man’s wet dream?” My interrogation ends when my exchange with Roxanne before she entered the bathroom rolls through my head. I told her to smell the opposite to me, to smell pure. If that wasn’t a flashing red beacon warning her to the shitstorm I was about to thrust her in, I don’t know how much more obvious I could have been.