It’s enough to make my blood run cold.
“Is everything all right?”
Savage glances down the long table to me, and his jaw tightens, a muscle there ticcing. “I just got a text.”
For some reason, the food I ate turns to lead in my stomach, and all the conversation at the table dies as all eyes turn to him.
He glances to the empty chairs at the end of the table, where Luca and Byron usually sit, and the other, where Jude occasionally makes an appearance when he feels up to coming to these things.
They’re the only ones absent tonight.
I didn’t get a chance to ask where Luca and Byron were, but it seems evident that whatever’s going on has to do with them.
Gabe casts a look to Angelina. “Jude thought he saw someone prowling around The Grind tonight.”
Angie shoots to her feet, her chair sliding back on the hardwood floor. “What?”
Allie grabs her arm, urging her back to her seat. “Don’t freak out until we know what’s happening.”
Ang tightens her grip on the napkin in her hand, but allows her younger sister to pull her down.
Allie typically isn’t the one remaining calm, cool, and collected in these types of situations, but becoming a mother and moving in with Pope seem to have been good for her.
Good for all of them.
Pope wraps his arm around the back of her chair protectively. “Is that where Luca is?”
Nana releases a heavy sigh from the head of the table. “You know I don’t like this talk at the table.”
Savage cuts an apologetic look to her. “I’m sorry, Mom, but this is important.”
“That’s what you always say.”
She pushes back her chair with a huff, grabs her plate, and disappears into the kitchen, unwilling or unable to hear any more family business drama that she does not want to be involved in.
The matriarch of the Hawke family has suffered enough at the hands of people like Satriano and likes to pretend the suffering is done, even when things keep happening that leave all of us devastated—including her.
I worry at her age, her heart won’t be able to handle another tragedy.
Savage slides his phone onto the table. “Jude called Luca, and he went over to check it out with one of our security teams while Byron went to Jude’s, so he wasn’t there alone.”
Angie glares at him. “Is he okay?”
The panic lacing her voice slices through my chest, and I must not be very good at hiding my worry because Gage’s hand finds mine on top of the table and squeezes.
Jude’s anxiety can spiral, and after witnessing the explosion at the café and the shooting, another incident so close to home could easily send him to a very dark place. So Ang’s concern is warranted.
Gabe nods. “Jude is fine.”
“What about The Grind?”
Savage shakes his head. “Luca couldn’t find anything. No one there, nothing amiss inside or out that he could detect.”
Angie releases a heavy sigh of relief. “That’s good.”
He nods. “It is.”
Gabe shifts restlessly in his chair. “But…”
