“Don’t remind me.”
“—so I doubt they’d want to walk him into a restaurant or through the shops. So what else is on this street? Look for somewhere they could hide someone. Somewhere they could get him in and out of without?—”
“Notice. I know, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
Alessio gave a clipped nod and turned back to his screen. We worked in silence for several minutes, each poring over differentmaps and businesses that ran along Mott Street, looking for a place that would work when taking someone—no, not just someone, the Prince of Monaco—hostage.
“Here’s something,” Alessio muttered, and shared his screen.
“A storage unit.”
“Right. It’s at the quieter end of Mott, there’s twenty-four seven access, it’s the perfect place to hide something or someoneaway…”
“But there’d be cameras everywhere.”
“That this fucker has proven he could easily hack.” Alessio shrugged. “I’d be able to get in their system in seconds and shut them down. No one would have a clue.”
A storage unit. That felt almost…plausible.
There was only one problem: “How the fuck are we going to narrow down and see what’s in each unit?”
For the first time since this whole shitstorm with Theo had started, a spark entered Alessio’s dark eyes.
“Leave that with me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll search all the renters. I told you, I can get in their system in seconds and have their inventory and bank accounts in a couple of hours.”
Therewas the Alessio I remembered.
“You’ll call me?”
“The minute I’m done.”
“I feel good about this,” I said, nodding as I zoomed in on the picture of the storage map online.Are you really so arrogant you were going to bring him back tomycity?
“Don’t get too excited,” Alessio said, intruding on my thoughts. “I’ve hit several dead ends with this asshole before.”
“Not this time. You’ve got this.”And then I’m going to finish him.
Alessio gave a final nod before ending the call, and as I closed the laptop and looked over to where Theo lay in slumber, I vowed to avenge what had been done to him—but this time to the one who had orchestrated it all.
11
THEO
IWOKE UP the next morning to find Shep on a video call with the rest of our brothers, their voices elevated as they took turns firing off their plan of attack.
Wait—attack?
What the hell did I miss?
I barely remembered passing out on the couch, but considering I woke up in Shep’s bed, I must’ve stumbled into it at some point. Unless he carried my ass, which I would’ve paid to see.
What had they all been doing while I was out?
Ripping off the covers, I stumbled out of bed and over to where I could see Shep sitting at his office setup in one corner of the loft, each screen showing a different brother, which raised the question—why hadn’t he woken me up for this meeting?
