In a quiet voice, Milo warned, “You can’t keep her, Felix.”
“You don’t think I know that?” He unlocked his phone. Killing his cousin wasn’t an option, so he had to calm down. Checking up on his girl was like a little calm down pill, so he quickly navigated to the chat he’d opened with her new security team.
The efficacy of his calm down pill wasn’t quite as potent when she continued to ice him out for some reason, but it soothed him all the same.
Or it would’ve, if there hadn’t been a notification waiting for him.
He’d been informed by the day crew that she and Cecilia had gone to the hospital in the afternoon. The update had driven him crazy, but he’d done his best to remind himself that normal people went to the doctor all the time.
Maybe she’d cut her finger chopping… whatever it was she ate. Maybe she had a gyno appointment and needed moral support while a doctor shined a light up there. Most people didn’t only go to the doctor for bolt gun wounds, stabbings, strangulations, concussions, poisoning, or missing eyes. That was just the people he hung out with.
Milo said she probably just had a cold or needed a shot. Felix couldn’t explain that even something minor like that made him antsy. He didn’t need his second being more concerned about where his head was at than he already was.
Gods help him if people started to think he’d gone soft.
The news that she’d returned to her apartment several hours later should’ve soothed some of his worry, but he couldn’t shake it. Dahlia had never been exactly forthcoming when she’d beensick in the past, but she’d been opening up more lately. She’d even let him send her soup once.
It was pathetic to feel so triumphant about something like that, but he had. And when she’d said thank you in that sad, sick voice, only to fall asleep on the phone with him…
He’d sucked up every little bit of her vulnerability like it was the sweetest blood. The more he got, the more he craved.
Felix had never had to work so hard to get a girl before. If they didn’t want him, he walked away, unbothered. But something about Dahlia kept him coming back for more.
She’d never told him to go away. Sure, she’d blocked him. She’d ignored him. She’d asked him what he thought he was doing, pestering her like he did. But she never told him to fuck off.
He was certain she loved him, and he’d been looking forward to proving it to them both.
Except now she wouldn’t speak to him. Her phone was off. He’d sent her another new one, hoping for some sort of reaction, but she hadn’t even answered the door to accept it.
He knew she was alive because he’d been given detailed reports of what could be seen the rare times her blinds were opened, but that was it. She’d become a ghost.
It pissed him off.
You aren’t allowed to hide from me,he silently warned her as he scrolled through her team’s updates.You aren’t allowed to be sick and not tell me. You aren’t allowed to?—
“Huh.”
He glanced at his second, who was frowning at his own phone. “What?”
Milo’s brow was furrowed. He didn’t look overly concerned, but he was stoic on the best of days, so it was hard to tell what was going on in his brain. “Our man in the Bowan house just got back to me.”
All business now, Felix placed his phone face down on the table. “Tell me what he said.”
“Alastair had the Patrol report on the hit pulled,” he explained, eyes flickering as he scrolled through the message. “Looks like it was just finished. Gods, elves move fucking slow. But that’s not every?—”
Milo cut himself off. His face, already pale, drained of what little color it had. Muttering to himself, he said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Instincts prickling, Felix sat up straight in his chair.
The Bowans were an old, aristocratic syndicate family. They’d been top dogs once and still had a considerable amount of power, but they hadn’t adapted well to the modern age. They were still a force to be reckoned with, though, and Felix had groaned when he found out Alastair, the head of the family, was the one to be injured during the hit.
They’d had to pay out the nose in tribute to make up for the damage and smooth ruffled feathers, but it could’ve been worse. Accidentally killing Alastair would’ve resulted in outright war. They were all lucky the old bastard managed to limp home.
Felix supposed it wasn’t necessarily unusual that the Bowans were looking into the incident, perhaps hoping to find out what Patrol had learned. He would’ve done the same thing. But something in Milo’s sudden stillness set his fangs on edge.
There wouldn’t be anything to find. His assassins were good, if a little showy. But not everyone could be Harlan Bounds or Atticus Caldwell. They were the best assassins the syndicate ever produced, and they’d been sworn to the Amauri family under control of Julius.
It was a damn shame his uncle was such a fucked up prick that he’d pushed two of their best killers to break from the family. He’d definitely deserved every bit of retribution Harlangave to him in that bar, but that didn’t make their loss smart any less.
