“This isn’t about that.”
It’s a lie, of course, and we both know it.
My personal feelings have been in the way from day fucking one.
I end the call before he can say anything else or try to talk me out of it, then pull out the battery and SIM card from the phone and crush them beneath my boot.
There isn’t any time to second guess this decision.
I’ve already wasted too much of it looking for her when there wasn’t a chance in Hell of ever finding her if she didn’t want to be found.
As soon as I hit the top step, her jasmine scent hits me, mixed with the smell of sex and comfort we found together over the last several days. The pain that hits my chest is so intense that I double over, trying to find my breath.
“Fuck!”
I stagger to the edge of the bed and collapse there, burying my face into my hands.
You knew this would happen.
You knew she would figure out the truth eventually, that you would have to explain.
I thought I’d have more time.
I thought I could control it, that I could present it to her in a way that she would understand. But now, everything has blown up the same way Gabe’s car did the other day, and there’s no way to put the pieces back together.
But it doesn’t mean I won’t try.
I push up with one last longing look at the bed, then quickly strip out of my wet clothes and put on dry ones.
My eyes rake over all of Bishop’s things now scattered around my place so casually. She was comfortable here. She may still have been itching to get back to work, but she had settled in and stopped acting like I was holding her prisoner. She had finally begun to accept that everything I was doing was because I wanted to help her.
But now?
That all looks like a lie to her.
And it feels like one to me.
I tug open the drawer of my desk and snag the keys to the car I keep parked the next block over, then race back down to the shop and into the side room, where I grab one of the burner phones from the drawer there.
Snagging my leather jacket from where it rests draped over the seat of my Harley, I take a second to scan the shop in case I never come back.
It wasn’t much, but it became more of a home than I’ve ever had anywhere else during my adult life. And that was all because of Bishop.
I tug my jacket on, my hand slipping into the pocket and tightening around the metal there for a second before I step back out into the rain that has now tapered off into nothing more than a mist.
It may have washed away the path Bishop took when she fled from me, but I’m very good at finding people, and there’s only so many places she would go, where she would feel safe, where she’d feel protected.
Which means I’m about to walk into the lion’s den.
22
GAGE
Hawke Tower rises above me dozens of stories.
Fog and inky clouds hang around the upper floors, blocking my view from the street, but I know what waits in the penthouse.
This is the only place they would have brought her. The most secure and defensible position in their empire. Where they’ve kept Allegra locked up since it became evident her father knew about her pregnancy and would probably be returning for her.
