I let him read it as I type away on the keys on my laptop, trying to find her, but it looks like she’s switched off her phone, so tracking her is proving difficult.
“Fucking find her, find her now, man, I don’t care how you do it, just do it,” Connor yells at me then storms off into her bedroom.
Ronan, Killian and Bella are all watching me. “I’m fucking trying, don’t look at me like that.” I dip my head back to my laptop, trying to access her phone or the extra tracker that I placed in her necklace. Not that I told the others I did it, in fact I’ve done with all the women, Bells, Ma and Niamh, I just haven’t told anyone, the women would kill me.
She finally calls Connor. Telling him that she had to take off, that she couldn’t drag our family through her shit. I’m sitting at the laptop waiting for her to ping an email across, one she was sent, by Liam.
The moment I open it, my stomach flips. Bastard, I look over to Connor, my rage clearly evident.
I see his face fall when she hangs up on him.
“Brother…he threatened us all. There are pictures in this email of us in Ireland, pictures of Ma and Niamh, there’s another email with pictures of us when we all got back to New York…. the second email just says ‘we see you’.”
“And what does the first one say?” Ronan is raging, his demon is pushing through to the surface.
I look to Connor and Killian, to make sure they want me to read it out. They both give me a nod indicating to go ahead.
“Alex, did you think that my cousins would be able to hide you forever? You know we knew you were in Connors apartment the day J and I were there. We were going to grab you when we first got there, but that little prick Rory had already put a call in to Connor, and we knew we wouldn’t have time to deal with him and get you out of there.”
Connor gets up storming into the kitchen, slamming doors. I’m starting to get a headache.
‘Little prick Rory’…cheeky fucker.
Once Bell’s sorts Connor out with a whiskey, he sits back down next to me and nods for me to continue.
I take a breath, before continuing, “Now I know what J saw in you, you’re hot when you come. I’m going to enjoy fucking you before I hand you over…you see, we had you as a sale item in our upcoming auction, but we were asked to remove you from sale, and you’re making me a very rich man. But one of my stipulations of removing you from sale was that I get to have another taste before handing you over. That and I get videos of Marco breaking you, because pretty little lady, believe me, he will break you in ways you can’t even imagine.”
I take another breath to stop my stomach from churning before continuing.
“Bit of advice for you, find a way to walk away from them, because if we have to come for you, we’ll kill them and take Bell’s too. Choice is yours pretty lady. You…or everyone.”
I reach over and down the whiskey Bella poured for me, “That’s it, there’s nothing else.”
The silence surrounding us is deafening, none of say’s anything for at least ten minutes, then Ronan stands. “Rory, tell me you got a location from her cell?”
I look up and give him a pained look. “I got the city but that’s it. She bounced off a few cell towers which indicates she’s still on the move, but I should be able to track roughly where she might be headed. Trouble is, if I know, then so does Liam.”
Chapter 7
It took me two days before I found her, tracked her to some shithole town in Louisiana. Now I’m sitting here in Connor’s apartment, with the rest of the family waiting for Killian to bring him back from his fight.
It feels wrong waiting here in his home, ready to give him bad news, when we should be celebrating his win.
There’s silence in the room, Niamh is next to me, staring straight ahead. Ronan opposite, I can feel the rage radiating off him, and Ma, not sure who’s angrier her or Ronan.
Bells is over by the kitchen counter, she’s busying herself making drinks, but the tears are quietly falling down her face.
I can’t bring myself to comfort her. I should, someone should but we all feel more or less the same. Knowing Alex was taken, that we were just a little bit too late to get to her is hard to bear.
A little while later Connor comes storming into the penthouse, followed by Kill, who goes straight to Bells.
Ma tries in vain to convince him to not watch the footage, I know she’s doing it because she loves him and doesn’t want to see him hurt, but there’s no way he wouldn’t watch it.
Before pressing play, I give him a brief rundown of what I know, I need to try and prepare him, even just a little.
“Marco landed in Chicago four days ago. Both Liam and J left Chicago two days ago and arrived in Madisonville, Louisiana yesterday afternoon. Alex was grabbed outside of the local diner at around ten p.m. last night. She was dragged into a dark coloured SUV-without plates. I’ll play the footage, but before you watch it, I gotta tell you, it ain’t pretty, but she put up one hell of a fight brother.”
He gives me the go ahead, and I press play, averting my eyes from the screen. I don’t want to watch this again.
