The crowd closes in around her with a series of cheers and clapping, and Aerin vanishes from sight.
I sit up a little straighter, seeking a glimpse of her hair through the small group, but I see nothing. My heart stutters ever so slightly, but the crowd doesn’t part. They stay packed together for too long.
I’m off my seat in a flash, closing the gap and grabbing the sweaty, joined shoulders of two men.
Ripping them apart, the crowd stumbles apart with a chorus of drunken laughs and cheers. The middle of the group is empty.
Aerin is gone.
“Sorry, Grandpa!” laughs one of the men next to me. “Better luck next time!”
“Where did she go?” Grabbing him by the collar of his black net shirt, I drag him close to me as his eyes widen in alarm. “Where the fuck did she go?”
“Hey, hey! Easy! Let me go, man. What the fuck?”
“Where?” I yell over the music, drawing the alarmed gaze of several other dancers nearby.
“The fuck, let me go!”
“Not until you tell me where the hell she went.”
Another man tries to grab my arm to help his friend, but all it takes is one vicious shove to send him crashing to the floor.
“Hey, take it easy!” gasps the man in my grip. “I dunno, okay? They said they were gonna move the party elsewhere. That’s all I know, I swear!”
If the thick, alcoholic smog drifting from his lips is anything to go by then I’m not getting anything else out of him.
“Hey!” Hank yells from behind the bar. “Don’t make me call security!”
Releasing the drunk lad, I step over the cowering man on the floor and shove through the crowd.
Protocol dictates I have to call it in the second I lose sight of Aerin.
I can’t.
Guido was pretty clear about what would happen to me if anything happened to his daughter, and I don’t plan on handing myself in for an execution because she decided to try and shake me.
I’ll get her back. If that still gets me killed, then so be it.
I check the bathrooms, the private rooms, and the coat rooms, but there’s no sign of her.
By the time I’ve scoured the entire club from top to bottom, there’s been no sign of her for twenty-three minutes.
That’s twenty-three minutes too long.
Giacomo also appears to have vanished into the night.
“Shit.Shit.”
Everything is too loud.
The music.
The thump of people’s feet on the dance floor.
The clatter of obnoxiously large jewelry and the clink of glasses.
It’s all too loud and the air’s too close.
