Fuck.
In seconds, I’m gripped by two shadows after my Glocks are stripped from my hands, and we’re both lifted from the ground and ushered inside. The silence once we get through the front door has my heart clanging against my ribs. If she’s gone already, I can’t feel it. She has to be here.
Not knowing is killing me, and I resist the urge to call out to her to show the extent of what she means to me, to hide the fear in my voice. It’s when the hairs on the back of my neck begin to lift that I know, I just fucking know, I’ve been bested.
It’s confirmed a second later when Antoine’s voice sounds from the living room.
“How long are you going to make me wait, Ezekiel?”
Eyeing the two shadows just inside the entryway as I am hauled in, I spot a few more in the kitchen before I’m released at the doorway of the living room. My eyes immediately land on Cecelia, who’s standing on the opposite side just outside her bedroom. She is dressed in her pajamas, her hair still wet from a recent shower, her Beretta in hand. A dead man lays just feet from her—and from the looks of it—died by her hand.
“She was quite insistent on keeping her gun,” Antoine muses from where he sits opposite of her in the high back chair next to the roaring fire—the only light in the room. Antoine sits relaxed in the chair as if Cecelia doesn’t at all pose a threat with her gun, and from the looks of our situation, she doesn’t, because standing on either side of him are two familiar, armed men.
Palo and Julien.
Are David and Oz dead? Did they even make it to the airport?
I move to stand next to Cecelia to get a clear view of the three of them and meet Palo’s steady gaze, he gives me absolutely nothing. I can only conclude he’s again switched allegiances. If I had any hope at all, it was that I still had his. Then again, I haven’t heard a fucking word from him in weeks, which is indicative enough of where we stand.
The problem with buying men is that they can be bought.
They’ve allowed Cecelia to keep her fucking gun because they find it laughable. I study Cecelia, and her expression remains stoic as her eyes trail over me with relief and mine do the same.
She’s breathing. She’s unharmed and armed. It’s more than I could have asked for, and yet we’re still fucked.
Too soon. It’s too soon for us to be over. We didn’t have enough time. We’ve been robbed of it from the start. The reality of that rakes at my chest as I begin to mourn the loss of us and mouth ‘I’m sorry.’
She subtly shakes her head as I turn to face off with Antoine.
Where the fuck are my birds?
This can’t happen again. This can’t fucking happen again.
I glare at Antoine, who’s impeccably dressed, his frame frailer than the last time I saw him due to his age. Greg joins his side, a towel full of blood in one hand as he retrieves a vial from his pocket with the other and thumbs the cap off.
Coke.
Which explains a lot. The man can’t fight for shit, but the drug made him a believer. I grin at the fact that I’ve ruined his tool for consumption, and he glares at me as he tosses it to the back of his throat.
“I told you,” Antoine says, giving Greg a side-eye, “that you were running a fool’s errand.”
“He’s fucking here, isn’t he?” Greg snaps, his eyes drifting between me and Cecelia, whose gaze is zeroed in on him.
“Jerry’s estranged stepson,” Cecelia clarifies for me, loud enough for the room to hear. “He’s here for me because I cost him his inheritance. Oops.”
I glance over at her, fury coiling through me, she caught it, and I missed it due to jealousy. But by putting a bullet in Roman’s old business partner before I got here, I set off this chain of events and help put this into motion. In my haste to get back to her, I left a loose end.