I tip my glass and kill what’s left. Whiskey burns prettier in here. It doesn’t help. I slide the tumbler toward the middle of the round table like it’s an offering and immediately wish I had another. The lounge soaks up sound; beyond the gold lattice, the casino floor hums—a big animal breathing.
“We checked her trailer,” Storm says, reading my next thought before I finish having it. “Nothing. Place was cold.”
“Spencer’s with her,” Atticus adds. “Plus two of our new security. If she’s with him, she’s as safe as she can be without us.”
“Doesn’t change shit,” I growl. “Safe isn’t here. Safe isn’t with us.”
I rake my hands through my hair and shove back from the table, chair legs scuffing the carpet. Out past the lacework of the lounge partition, two of our guys hold the line by the lobby—Cal and Herrera. I jerk my chin at them, then at a third and fourth posted farther out.
“Look at this,” I say with a sweep of my arm, words riding the alcohol. “She’s got half our security in love with her to the point they followed her, and the rest won’t tell us where the fuck she is.”
Cal pretends not to hear. Smart man. These operators don’t have to pretend; they’re ghosts when they want to be.
A cocktail waitress glides up with a tray—honey-colored hair, quick mouth, eyes too knowing—and for a split second my heart stops because I think it’s Phoenix. It’s not. The smile is wrong.The eyes don’t cut the same way. I still lose half a beat to the punch.
She leans in. “Refills?”
“I can’t be here,” I tell the air. Then, to my brothers, “I keep seeing her. Everywhere. It’s like she’s right fucking here.”
Atticus meets the waitress’s look with a soft apology and covers my glass with his palm. “We’re good, thank you.” She floats off, hips gentle like a lullaby, and I hate the whole world for the half-second of hope she delivered.
Storm’s mouth tightens. “You’re not wrong,” he says. “Every corner, she’s there.”
Atticus finally looks up. “That’s not just you. This place wears her like a second skin.”
I put both hands flat on the table and press until the meat in my palms complains. “Fuck that noise,” I say, low. “Let’s go get our bitch of a brother and make him man up about his feelings for his supposed sister.”
Storm’s brows go up. Atticus tilts his head. I shrug, drunk on love and fury, not whiskey. “It’s not like she’s my sister,” I add, because spite helps me breathe. “And it’s not like they were raised together. Fuck this. She’s ours. Who gives a fuck what that stupid test says?”
Storm raises a finger. “Actually, about that?—”
I keep going, reckless. “So they don’t have kids. That’s the main thing?—”
“Maverick, God-Jesus—” Storm groans. “It’s not as simple as that. We can’t just V.C. Andrews this thing. But anyway?—”
“We need to make Conrad come to his senses, or there’s no way to get her back,” Atticus cuts in, crisp now that the choice has a door to walk through.
“Good,” I say, shoving my chair back and standing. “Then what are we still doing sitting here?”
Storm is already rising, shaking his head. “Let’s go.”
We cut out of the lounge into the casino’s pulse. The floor’s a river of light and regret; I push through it like I’ve got right of way. At the doors, I throw a look back at Cal and point two fingers at my eyes and then toward the lobby—watch, and keep watching. He nods once. The operators don’t nod. They adjust by half-steps in a way that still reads like disappearing.
The elevator drops us into Atticus’s office hall, then out the service corridor to the garage. My head is a hive; anger, fear, the kind of stupid hope that dresses like confidence and smells like gasoline. The car growls awake, and I peel us out into the heat.
On the way, I can’t keep my mouth shut. “We went to her trailer like idiots,” I mutter. “We looked under the bed like the monster was gonna be polite about it.”
“She’s with my dad,” Storm says. “We know this.”
“She shouldn’t have had to leave in the first place,” I fire back. “We should’ve put our bodies between her and the test and let the paper hit us first.”
Storm spins his knife. “We can’t fix yesterday. We can only decide what to do with it when we get to him. What we are.”
“I know what we are,” I say. “We’re the guys who don’t let her do this without us.”
Savannah opens up, hot and bright and full of opinion. Atticus calls three times but Conrad doesn’t pick up. He texts once with no answer. My temples hammer in sync with the lights.
“We’re taking him out of his cave,” I say. “Even if I have to go in there and drag him by his perfect collar and smash my fist into his face.”
