Heading to the front door, I look to the right and see The Hall of Remembrance. Tonight, there isn’t any arrangement, the telltale sign they don’t have a funeral in the morning. As I walk past, flashes of my mother’s funeral play like a movie, skipping parts, but seeing her lifeless, cancer-ridden body lying in her pearly white coffin, looking nothing like the woman I grew up knowing. Riddled with sickness and losing her baby girl was etched on every surface of her face at the end. Having to be a man and watch my father mourn another one of his girls. He couldn’t even come to her funeral, when all I wanted to do was scream and pull my mother out of her casket, hold her as she once held me. But I just sat there, stoic.
“Fuck,” I exhale as I step onto the porch, shaking the thoughts from my mind. Running my hands down my beard,wanting to pull at it. I close my eyes and listen to the night around me, needing to clear my mom and Lauren from my mind. I need only Damian to take up residence right now. He is my main priority. He’s still alive; they aren’t.
The darkness calls me, and I walk into it. Surrounded by the dead, I feel more alive than ever. Tonight, it could have gone way worse; I could have lost Rowan. So, I count my blessings for that. She has changed me in ways I never thought possible and given me a reason to be.
As I walk through the cemetery, I try mentally to strategize my plan. We know who has him, but we need to know where. Where do they have Damian?
Touching the screen on my phone, the light illuminates the darkness surrounding me, calling forth the bugs.
Sending a mass text to the guys, I type,*Find every address that is linked to Briggs. I don’t give a fuck who lives there now. We’re going to search it, even if we have to tie motherfuckers up.
I don’t wait for any replies as I pocket my cell and continue my walk around the cemetery. This is not where my mother is buried. We had her cremated, and my father now carries her ashes with him…wherever he is.
I only speak to my father every few months, if that. It’s a few words and then nothing until the next call. I’ve tried to find him, but he is the man who taught me all I know, so I won’t find him until he wants to be found. It pisses me off, but I know that is what he needed to do. Even if the only place I want him is here.
A mental checklist is forming. I need to find a place for Rowan to be safe. And I guess now is the time to show her my land and house. A place no one knew existed. Only Lauren and Damian.
I built my forever home on the land Lauren is now scattered across. Where our tree sits. The same tree that is tattooed on myback. That home was supposed to be where I retired, but Rowan is more important than anything, and that’s the one place I know she’ll be safe.
Deciding this evening, I’ll take her there after the guys and I formulate a plan. I don’t want her around anything that can go haywire, even though she thinks she should be right in the middle of everything. She did what she needed to do with the tomb, and J.C. Colt and Grant. She got the ending she so deserved. Now it’s time I keep her safe.
Rowan is feisty, hardheaded, and stuck in her ways, but if I have to tie her ass up, she isn’t involving herself in any of this anymore.
It’s time we finally ended this once and for all.
I don’t even want to know how many cups of coffee I’ve had while sitting in the kitchen waiting for everyone to wake up. My nerves feel like there is static running through them.
Turning my coffee cup in circles, I hear a noise in the hallway. Pausing, leaning my head back, I watch as Niko strolls in. He stops abruptly when he spots me, not expecting anyone to be in here.
“Good morning,” I mutter to him.
Niko isn’t anything like Matteo. Where Matteo is brooding, Niko is death. His eyes stare right through you.
Instead of giving me a word back, he just grunts as he walks to the coffeepot.
The chair scrapes before he sits down across from me, not pausing as he sips down the hot coffee.
I can’t help the face I make, knowing he’s burning his taste buds off with each sip.
Niko and I speak only when we need to. Other than that, I do business with Matteo.
I’m surprised when he talks to me.
“I had Catherine write addresses to go look at. It took some convincing, and with a little force, she gave them up.” He smiles, and it makes my stomach queasy. I don’t even want to know what he had to do to get the addresses.
I don’t like Catherine for what she did to Rowan and everything else she lives by, but…no, he can do whatever he wants. An eye for an eye.There are no buts about it, Luca, I chastise myself. Feeling sorry for a woman like that isn’t in our wheelhouse. For Rowan, Lauren, and every other woman who came before them. She deserves whatever Niko does to her.
“Thank you.” I reach out, taking the paper. Her handwriting is messy, but still legible.
As I read the addresses, none are ones we didn’t know about.
“This is it?” I question him as I read them over, hoping a new one will magically appear.
“Yeah,” Niko says gruffly.
All I can do is nod my head. This piece of paper is trash—nothing new, nothing to help us in finding Damian.
“Thanks,” comes out more curt than I mean. Clearing my throat, I’m interrupted by Niko.
