He frowned. “Who?”
“Ben’s old lady.”
“Aston?” He set aside his coffee cup and rose from his chair as she came into his office. Used to seeing her so beautifully polished and preppy, he was taken aback by the snarl of blonde hair wound into a messy bun atop her hair. Her wrinkled loungewear, the top pulled tight around her pregnant belly, and the fuzzy pink slippers deepened his concern. “What’s wrong? Is it Ben?”
Aston shook her head as she leaned back against the door. “It’s Marley.”
“Marley?” He tamped down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t get a hold of her. I’ve been trying to call her and email and DM her for two days now.” She waved her phone wildly as she spoke. “I went by her mom’s place, and it’s locked up and dark. No car in the driveway. Boxes piled up on the porch. All the flowers and plants out front are dead. Something is wrong!”
“Marley’s mother has never been exactly reliable,” he reminded her. “Maybe she ran off to gamble after Marley left for her trip.”
“Okay, sure, but Marley is unreachable. That’s not like her! At all!” Aston insisted. “She calls or texts or emails me every day. She posts on Instagram or Facebook. At first, I was worried because she doesn’t know about Spider, but now, I’m worried that something happened to her over there.”
“Calm down,” Besian urged. “The baby,” he said, gesturing to her belly. “Take a seat. Please.”
Aston rolled her eyes and quickly crossed his office. After she plopped down, he took the seat next to her. “What does Ben say?”
“That I shouldn’t worry so much and that she’s probably somewhere without cell service or internet. Which, okay, maybe, but for two days?”
“Ben is probably right,” he tried to assuage her fears. “Sometimes cell service is spotty overseas.”
She rolled her eyes again. “I know that! I’ve traveled overseas every single year since I was, like, three!”
“Okay, okay,” Besian said, trying to calm her again. “Where is Marley now?”
Aston hesitated. “Albania.”
Taken aback, he asked, “What?”
“She. Is. In. Albania.” Aston spoke every word forcefully.
“But...why?”
“Are you serious?” She looked at him as if he might be the stupidest man who ever walked on the planet. “Why else would she go there?”
Besian wasn’t sure if he should find that encouraging or upsetting. Before he could fully process the idea of Marley exploring his homeland, Aston scrolled through her phone and flashed the screen at him. “This is where she was three days ago.”
His eyes widened as he saw the background of Marley’s snapshot. He snatched the phone from Aston. “What the hell is she doing in Bjeshkët e Nemuna?”
“Bjesh-what?”
“The Accursed Mountains,” he translated. “The Albanian Alps.”
“Hiking, obviously,” Aston replied saucily.
“She just had heart surgery!” His head pounded as he imagined Marley, still weak from surgery, climbing the rocky slopes.
“It was done in a cath lab! She’s not an invalid! She’s perfectly healthy!”
“We’ll agree to disagree on that,” he muttered. “Please tell me she’s hiking with a group?”
Aston hesitated again. “Not exactly.”
He gritted his teeth. “She’s hiking alone?”
“Yes.”
On the verge of absolutely losing his shit, Besian handed back her phone. Images of Marley injured in the woods or crumpled at the bottom of a steep fall raced through his mind. His stomach churned. What if something worse than a fall had happened? What if she had been robbed? Assaulted? Kidnapped?
“What are you doing?” Aston asked as he hurriedly logged off and shut down his computer.
“I’m going to get her and bring her home.”
Aston seemed startled. “You’re going to Albania?”
“Why else did you come here?” He slipped back into his suit jacket and grabbed his keys, wallet and gun from the top drawer of his desk. “Isn’t this what you expected I would do?”
“No! I thought you would make a call or something! Not run off in the middle of the night to Albania!”
“This isn’t something that can be handled with a phone call.” He gestured for her to stand. “You go home. If Marley contacts you, tell her to stay where she is and wait for me.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Aston asked nervously.
“I’ll find her,” he swore and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I won’t come back to Houston without her.”
Aston shocked him by hugging him without warning. He wasn’t the kind of man who liked intimate touch like this, and he awkwardly patted her back. “Thank you so much for taking this seriously.”
“You’re welcome.” He didn’t tell her that anything to do with Marley was serious to him. “Let me walk you out to your car.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t argue. Now that she had gotten what she wanted, Aston probably realized how upset Ben was going to be when he found out she had stormed her way into a strip club. He didn’t envy Ben trying to tame this wildcat he had chosen as his partner for life. Wealthy and spoiled by her late father, Aston wasn’t about to let any man curb her independence.
When they neared her vehicle, he was glad to see that she hadn’t driven something from her father’s obscenely expensive collection. Tonight, she was in the new Mercedes GLS she had recently purchased from one of Alexei Sarnov’s dealerships. He had questioned the couple’s decision to buy something that nice for a baby that was likely to destroy the entire second row with crumbs, milk and juice, but had kept his opinion to himself. Nothing good would come from arguing with Aston.
“Uh-oh.” Aston grabbed his sleeve and gave it a shake. “The Red Menace is here.”
Kostya. He eyed the Russian cleaner-cum-underboss who gazed menacingly in their direction. “Don’t let him hear you call him that.”
“What’s he going to do? Chop me up into little pieces and feed me to some sharks? Toss me into a vat of acid and make some gooey human soup?”
Besian grimaced. “You watch too much TV.”
“Ugh,” she groused. “You sound just like Ben.”
“More like Ben sounds just like me.” He walked her to the SUV, made sure she was safely inside and pulling out of the parking lot before he joined Kostya near his black Audi. “I take it you’re not here to check up on our club.”
“No.” Kostya scanned their surroundings with his hawkish glare. “I’m here for the same reason Ben’s baby mama was.”
He grimaced at how low-class that sounded. Ben needed to do the right thing and do it soon. He needed to marry Aston and give his baby the stability of the two-parent home he’d never had.
“Marley,” Kostya said, as if Besian couldn’t put two and two together.
“No shit?” he snapped back.
Kostya smirked. “So touchy about this girl.”