Chapter 1
Ryder
“Slow down, Holden,” I groan.
“No.”
“Fuck,bello.Stop,” I say, pulling away.
“What the fuck?” he explodes. “I wasn’t done.”
I gently grab his hands and unstrap his boxing gloves after I lay the boxing pads down. “Yes. You are,” I insist. “You’re going too hard.”
He gives me a hard stare before storming from the gym. Holden is a ticking time bomb the longer we go without finding Les. We’ve exhausted every possible lead, which led back to the same thing. Les is gone, and we have no idea where she is.
“Hey, man,” Dex greets, walking into the gym. I nod my head in greeting and start cleaning up the equipment. Dex scoops up the boxing pads and tosses them onto the rest of them. “Any better?”
I shake my head in answer. Holden snaps at everyone; we have to beg him to eat; he spends every waking moment tracking whatever he can and trains like a demon in the gym. Nothing we say or do helps the situation. He’s taking it personally that he can’t find Les; he feels like he’s failing her. We’re all losing our minds trying to find Les, and the only solid lead we have is that she’s with Zane.
We scoured every camera we could find, and when they dumpedthe phones, it was like they had just disappeared. No sign of anything until two weeks ago when we found Zane’s truck burning at one of our vacant properties.
Dex and I finish cleaning up the gym, and I know I need to find Holden to make sure he ate breakfast so we can start our search again. It’s the same thing we’ve done every day for the past six fucking weeks.
We narrowed it down to that it wasn’t Viktor because he wasn’t even in the country when it happened, and we’ve been watching his every move since then. Aldo has kept us in the loop about Nina if Nina herself isn’t calling for updates on Les. Alexey and Dmitri stepped up big time, helping in the search and dumping resources to help us find her. Marcella calls nonstop, and her sons, Giovanni and Vincenzo, come with us sometimes when we follow leads.
We have Ghost and the Vipers, the gang Les owns, on high alert, and Ghost proves himself to be very useful when trying to get information out of people. Squid with the Disciples has also helped turn every city upside down when we get a lead.
We have everyone looking, and anyone Les has ever had good contact with has jumped at the chance to help her.
We walk into the kitchen, and Micah is at the stove cooking breakfast like he does every day for every meal. He makes sure we eat so we can continue the search for his niece. Every day it’s getting harder and harder to believe she’s still alive.
“Sir,” Shawna, Les’ primary house staff, says in greeting when she walks around the corner. “Detective Jay Hoover is here to see you.”
“What the fuck?” Micah says, whirling around from the stove. “Again?”
“Thank you, Shawna. I’ll meet him in the living room,” I say softly.
“Yes, sir,” she says quietly, disappearing from the room.
I give Micah the evil eye for scaring her on the way out of the room. When I walk into the living room, he’s sitting on the loveseat like he owns the damn place.
“What do you want?” I ask while flopping down in one of the chairs. There’s no need for pleasantries; he knows I hate him here.
He narrows his eyes. “I was just seeing if you heard anything.”
“Don’t act like you give a fuck about her.” I sit up in the chair, leveling him with a glare.
This piece of shit started showing up two days after Les disappeared, saying they opened an investigation against Zane. Somehow word spread quickly that they were missing together. The police department Zane works for wasn’t too happy when they realized that.
“I’m not the bad guy here. Just because the department is looking for Zane doesn’t mean I’m not looking for her too.”
“Fuck off,” I growl.
Everything about him rubs me the wrong way. He dresses more for a magazine cover than a goddamn detective. He screams money even though Holden’s investigation into him showed daddy supposedly cut him off when he became a cop. He asks probing questions about us that aren’t any of his fucking business, including questions about Les. All with the excuse that it’s to help him find her.
“I know you guys are looking for her. Let me help you,” he says, and it’s almost believable that he cares.
“We don’t need your help,” I reply and stand up. “You can go.” I jerk my head for him to follow me, and he does reluctantly. I yank the front door open. “Don’t fucking come back.”
