Goddamn, I was stupid to have thought I’d be able to quit her cold turkey after the retreat. Quite frankly, I didn’t want to quit her at all. After seeing her pain and the way she’d carried it all on her own, I found for the first time I didn’t want to see someone squirm. I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable. I wanted to shoulder the weight with her, to show her that she could handle it all.
And if she couldn’t, I’d be there to handle it with her. Because I saw how impulsive she could be, how she dealt with her feelings around me, how she needed an outlet. I gave her that. And it kept her sane while she kept me humane. Without her, I would watch the world burn and not give a single fuck so long as my family wasn’t involved.
She made me want to see our world succeed and thrive. It wasn’t just a job to me now.
But without me, she was chaos. She needed me to push her, to pull out the real her. Without the real Izzy, the world was less brilliant, less crazy, and so fucking boring.
Even if she hid it from the world, she couldn’t quite hide it from me. Izzy was a mess.
Dirty.
Filthy.
Chaotic.
Beautiful mess.
And I enjoyed the shit out of it.
Except for tonight. Because after I left that club, I went back to my office and stayed there until I got a notification at three in the morning from a damn street security camera. It alerted me to Izzy walking back to her apartment with Lucas. And they were both tanked. I considered whether she’d make it. Lucas was barely standing with his arm over her shoulder.
And fuck if I wasn’t going to look. Was she taking him home?
Because she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. We’d just agreed she was mine. Hadn’t we?
And my brain glitched there. It broke down.
I couldn’t love her.
I couldn’t.
I rubbed my hand across my oak desk and wondered if Izzy’s arousal still coated it. I growled at my mind wandering and woke up my computer screens.
Work. Not play. That’s what I needed to do.
JUNIPER was in everyone’s best interests. I dove into that instead of worrying about her. Until I checked her region and saw what she must have.
And she’d seen it hours ago. Izzy Hardy was a genius at finding information. I’d give her that. But she was a damn slob about what she left behind. Breadcrumbs led me right to her, which meant the Albanians were on her ass too.
Fury barreled through me like a bullet. And it got stuck in my flesh, burned at the skin, and spread like fear and blood would have had I really been shot.
They’d tracked her immediately, and they could move fast. The Albanians were ruthless and hungry for power. This was a perfect example of why I couldn’t want her, couldn’t have her tied to me. I couldn’t.
We couldn’t afford messes now. We were clean. We were businessmen.
I slammed my calloused hand on the desk and pulled up her apartment security. Of course, the cameras of her apartment were down. I kept tabs on most of my team in some capacity, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t check hers most.
I eyed the camera system of Liberty Greene Apartments on my phone. Beside the other squares on my screen, the inky black block mocked me. It’d been black for hours now, it seemed, considering I’d rewound the damn recording.
Fuck me. The responsibility of having data at your fingertips was sometimes all-consuming, tiring, and worrisome.
Apartment security systems were old and frustrating enough that I decided it made more sense to just drive over there. She lived within five minutes of my place anyway.
Even if I called Dante or Bastian, they’d tell me to handle it or dig through the security system to see whether it was just a squirrel chewing through something or it was a tactical move. I was betting the former, but I couldn’t be too sure. I’d have been a fool to rely solely on probabilities.
I jumped into my Tesla and hit the self-drive feature. I’d been given the new version of the vehicle because I’d helped the owner build the software. Living a great life, right? But I had to be sure my security was up to par—that no one could hack that system.
I was the best at what I did because I focused on it continuously. I didn’t have time to spare for driving when I could be figuring shit out for the company.
Or figuring out why Izzy’s system was down.
The problem was, the more I dug, the more something didn’t seem right.
So I did what any hacker would do. I breached her phone camera system. This wasn’t stalking, it was checking up on my employee. Of course, there was no sound and her phone must have been buried in her fucking purse.
The fact that she and Lucas had left together gave me enough reason to make my way over there instead of leaving it until Monday morning.
Call it intuition or call it plain old stupid luck.
She’d have been dead otherwise.
24
Izzy
“Get up, Izzy,” I heard Cade’s voice growl, venom in it. I jostled awake, not at all sure how Cade could be in my apartment.
Had I called him here? Please, God, I hoped to all that was holy that I hadn’t.
Fuck, my head hurt. And my mouth tasted like cotton and rum and maybe Cheetos after a whole night of rotting in my mouth. God, that was gross.
How I was still on the couch and Lucas was still under me not stirring was beyond me.
I jerked back to look at him and shook his shoulder. His strong chest shifted back and forth as I did, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Lucas.”
My first thought was no. My second thought was please, God, not again.
Déjà vu.
Cade sighed behind me, then rounded the corner to check Lucas’s pupils. “You guys enjoy yourselves? Because it looks like he’s not responding.”
My vision narrowed, the blood in my veins rushed, and the beat of my heart quickened.
“Lucas!” I screamed, grabbing his arm and vigorously shaking him. “We didn’t have that much to drink.”
I squinted, trying to remember. It’d been maybe two drinks and a shot. Lucas had consumed that much more than once with me, but I’d practically had to carry him down my hallway.
“He must have done something while you weren’t looking.” Cade wasn’t doing much other than dialing numbers on his phone, totally calm, as if this was normal.
My heart dropped, my breath shook, and my mind filled with what-ifs. “He couldn’t have. Lucas, you wouldn’t have, right?” I asked him, hoping he would answer. Hoping like hell my best friend could hear me and would pop out of his sleep and laugh. It would have been a cruel joke, but I’d have welcomed it.
Instead, he didn’t move, and my soul, my being, my mind, sloshed around in a river of disbelief. This had to be a dream. This couldn’t be happening.
As I tried to lay Lucas back down on the couch so I could do something, I screamed at Cade, “Call 911! God, what are you doi—”
Cade’s monotone voice cut me off. “Calm down.” And then he lifted the phone to his ear. “Yeah, we need an ambulance. One of my employees OD’d.”
“He didn’t do this,” I hissed at Cade. How dare he accuse him of it? My friend was sober; my friend was clean. We’d done the work, we’d put in the time, we’d had the meetings, the talks, the exchanging of promises.
I rubbed Lucas’s face, his strong jaw, his lips. Every part of him that was normally so full of life held death right at his doorstep.