“Perhaps not,” Claudio agrees. “But if he had other allies…?”
“Like who? The Polish wouldn’t fucking dare cross me. The Mexican gangs have been too busy knifing each other in the back alleys to get involved with this. The motorcycle clubs are weak and disorganized. He’s got no other allies, Claudio.”
He runs a hand over his head. “There must be someone,” he mutters. “He had to go somewhere.”
We fall into silence again. I drink my coffee. It’s hot and thick and tastes like crude oil, but it’s better than nothing.
I look up at the window again, my face reflected back in the glare.
My eyes are deep tunnels of black, lost and searching. Then my gaze refocuses on the outside world. More cars pass by. The sun is beginning to rise over the city skyline in the distance.
An ordinary white sedan pulls up to a stop at the intersection right outside the diner.
But what’s not ordinary is the girl in the front seat.
I’d recognize that blond hair anywhere.
It’s Harper.
I leap to my feet. The table rattles, and my coffee careens over the edge. It hits the ground, explodes, mug shattering and black liquid flowing down the grooves in the tile floor.
But I’m already gone. Already moving.
I knock into another patron coming in through the front door.
“Hey!” he cries out, but I don’t stop to look back at that either.
All I care about—all I can see—is that white sedan and the blond-haired girl sitting in the passenger seat.
Why she’s here of all places, now of all times, is a question for later.
I have to catch her first.
I hop into our car, ignoring Claudio’s yelling from the diner, as I hit the gas and race off, following the white sedan as fast as I can.
Far ahead of me, the white sedan is approaching the on-ramp to the nearby highway.
“I’m coming for you, Kitten,” I growl under my breath.
I’m gaining slowly, and I push the gas even harder, ignoring the red traffic lights. I hit the on-ramp at high speed with car horns blasting at me as I merge recklessly into traffic.
I’m knifing down lanes, splitting cars, and veering wildly from left to right.
I ignore all the drivers cursing at me.
All I care about is Harper.
I swing all the way into the far left-hand lane, where I can get a glimpse of the driver. It’s a big man in a hoodie pulled forward and low over his face.
Is it Frank?
No, it can’t be.
There’s no way Frank could’ve survived that crash.
I watched the car drag his body deep into the river.
But who else could it be?
Fuck! I’m coming, Harper.
I won’t rest until my Kitten is back in my arms.
And then I’m going to put a bullet in Frank Fitzgerald’s head myself.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter under my breath.
I’m trying to coax the car to go faster, but I’m already maxing out the engine.
The sedan exits the city and slips off the highway. We’re out between the suburbs and the city proper now.
I have to hurry and follow them off the highway, crossing lanes without caring for other cars in my way.
Suddenly, my phone vibrates in my pocket.
I pull it out at the same time that I wrench around to take the same right turn that the sedan took just moments ago.
“What?” I growl.
It’s Claudio. “I don’t know what you’re pursuing, but I have men coming to back you up. We’re tracking your location, and they’re just five minutes behind you.”
At the far end of the block, the sedan turns into the parking lot of a motel. The doors open. Both of the car’s passengers are facing away from me, but that hair, that hair.
It’s her.
It’s them.
It has to be.
“I’m not waiting for fucking backup,” I growl, and I hang up the phone and chuck it onto the passenger’s seat.
Screeching to a stop in the parking lot, I leap out of the car with the engine still running and sprint to the door of the motel room that Harper just walked into. Right before it closes on me.
I’m already roaring as I bust it open and step inside, “Frank, you fucking monster, get your goddamn hands off—”
I freeze.
A man and his wife are looking up at me.
The man has pushed back his hoodie. He’s got dark hair, thinning at the crown, neatly combed-over. His wife has a square face, blue eyes, a full figure, and that signature blond hair that caught my eye.
But it’s not her.
It’s not Frank.
It’s just another pair of innocent civilians who are staring into the face of a furious, delirious Mafia Don while fearing for their lives.
A surge of guilt washes over me.
I was so sure it was Harper. So sure that Frank had recaptured her.
But I was wrong, so wrong.
Fuck!
“T-Take anything y-you want,” the man stammers. He holds up his hands in pure fear.
They think … I want their money?
His wife looks even more terrified. Her bottom lip trembles like she wants to say something, but she can’t remember how to form a word.
Fuck. What the fuck am I even doing? What was I thinking?
I raise my hands. “Never mind.”
And then I turn and walk back out the door and out into the parking lot.
Claudio pulls up at that moment in a blacked-out SUV. As soon as the vehicle stops, doors fly open and soldiers pour out.
I wave them back in. “Go back,” I order.
They all pause, confused, hands already reaching into their jackets to withdraw guns and knives and go take down whatever enemy their boss has corralled.
If only they knew how laughable that was.
Claudio emerges a second later from the front passenger seat. “Is it—?” he starts to ask.
“No,” I interrupt. “Forget that. Forget this.”
I stride past him, headed for the car I came in. I want to get home.
“Are you sure?” he asks quietly.
I nod, unable to answer his question without yelling at him.
I’m going to find Frank and chop off his head.
And I fucking swear right here and right now that I don’t care if I have to go to the end of the earth, I’m going to fucking find Harper.
And I’ll make her mine.
Forever.
Harper
Molly? My mother?
My head begins to spin the second I hear her name from this man’s mouth.
My mother … is alive? How can that be?
I remember the fire as if it happened yesterday. Our house went up in flames. I tried to save them, but there was no time, and I was suffocating in the smoke. How could she have survived that?
The more I think about it, the less I understand.
First, I find out my fake father is alive … and now, my fake mother is, too.
Why didn’t they ever try to find me and tell me they were okay?
Even if they stole me from my real father, that doesn’t mean I didn’t care for them. I always did.
Cillian’s eyes connect with mine through the rearview mirror. “We’ll be there soon.”
I don’t respond. I don’t know how. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be angry for being caught, or worried I will never be free again, or upset my mother is alive and well and that she never found the time to contact me.