Day by day, they were getting fuller and fuller as Coby put my credit card to good use after getting over her initial hesitation and realizing I wasn’t one measly shopping spree away from being broke. It would take a lot more than that—generations of bad financial decisions—before that happened.
It’s been a couple of weeks since my father threw down his ultimatum.
Two weeks and no sign or word from Hunter.
Unbeknownst to Coby, I’ve been spending every waking moment that I wasn’t with her looking for her roommate.
It was as if Hunter vanished into thin air after her confrontation at the hospital with Kellan. We eventually caught up with him, but Hunter’s been hard to find ever since. I’ve been writing some pretty fat checks to keep the police off her ass.
I didn’t want anyone else getting near it before me.
I’d tried calling the burner a few times since she stole it from Kellan, but Hunter must have ditched it by now because my calls always went unanswered.Smart girl.
The phone wasn’t traceable, but she obviously knew better than to leave herself open to temptation.
Because that’s exactly what she was.
A temptress.
Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare. Don’t youdarethink about it….
With some effort, the pawns on my mental chessboard scraped back into place, and I left the penthouse with Abel. We rode the elevator down in silence.
“We might need to refocus our efforts outside the city,” I said as we drove away from Glainne. “Have we looked far enough into Hunter’s past to figure out where she might be holed up?”Or who she might be hiding with.I let that dangerous thought pass as swiftly as it arrived. I wasn’t foolish or arrogant enough to believe that I could somehow accomplish what no man has been able to successfully pull off in the history of time.
One was enough.
One wasmorethan enough.
“Everything before she turned eighteen is sealed,” Abel told me. “We can get the information, but it will take time and money. A lot of it.”
“Do what you need to,” I responded with a sigh. Kellan was the one who handled this shit for me, but he was currently busy tracking down Hunter. The same as me.
Abel never complained, though, because he knew there were so few people I could trust, especially now with a regime change on the horizon—even my allies within and outside of theFolacould turn for not much more than the promise of a minor promotion.
Before Abel could get to work on it, he got a call on his phone.
“Whoa, say that shit again?” Abel screamed moments later. It startled Paul, who swerved a little but quickly regained control of the Denali with a mumbled apology. “Well, handle it! Nobody moves until we get there. Whoever isn’t accounted for fucking dies.” Hanging up, he punched the ceiling before turning in his seat to meet my gaze.
“What is it?”
“Someone just raided one of our caches.”
I was already pulling out my phone to start ordering executions. “ATF?”
“No. They said whoever did it was alone. This person took outfifteenof our men, made off with some weapons, and left a message.”
“Let me guess,” I stated coldly. “For Michael Black.” That trail was also getting colder by the day, but mysteriously, the raids on our flesh dens had also stopped. Maybe they’d chosen to refocus their attention.
“No.” Abel winced. “The message was for you.”
Fury wrestled with obsession now that I was forced to choose between finding out who raided my warehouse and chasing down Hunter.
I knew what I wanted to do, but I was heir to theFola. It was never about what I wanted.
Coby was the first slice of heaven I’d ever taken for myself, and I was determined to keep him no matter how many people I had to kill.
“Boss?” Paul questioned as he waited at the light that had already turned green. My driver’s hand hovered uncertainly above the turn signal that would take us to the apartment of a gifted hacker whom Hunter apparently met in juvie a long time ago. Horns behind us honked furiously as Paul waited for me to make a decision. Abel was noticeably quiet since he likely already knew my dilemma.
