Page 28 of Hate Me

Christ.

I checked my Rolex.

Four hours.

Four hours it had taken me to get everything out of my system, to re-center myself.

It was all this waiting.

It wasn’t sitting well with me.

It really didn’t agree with me.

And it felt like that was all it had been for the last two years.

Waiting on a lead on Caleb after I’d lost track of him. Now that wait had come to an end, but another had taken its place. Waiting on him to be ready to return, to come back where he truly belonged, to us, to me.

Waiting on a break in tracking Skylar down.

Her father had delivered a heavy-handed warning during the night of gala.

“I’ll be watching and if I don’t like what I’m seeing, I’ll take her from you all. Believe me, she won’t be found either should I need to go that route. Not even by you. When I hide someone, they disappear off the face of the earth.”

And he’d most definitely made good on that.

So far.

I’d find her.

If that wasn’t enough, there was also the waiting concerning mine and Dante’s plan against Elijah to reach fruition. We had teams of our own people within his organization now. But it was taking time for them to move up the ranks to positions that could impact him and affect change. They were getting there, moving closer to the actual belly of the beast, getting into position. To do it right without them being suspected, it had needed to be gradual. Elijah had thought that he’d had an effective and winning Trojan horse approach, but mine and Dante’s was next-level compared to that pathetic effort.

All that carefully managed work would result in a mammoth payoff. I just had to keep my focus on that, the endgame, the results.

Still, even knowing that, and especially with the factors of Caleb and Skylar, it had me feeling powerless.

It was a sensation that I hadn’t experienced since the day I’d lost my parents.

All the power I’d amassed over the years, the reach, the influence, and there were still things deemed even out of my control.

I couldn’t simply force us back together. Like I’d told Bastian, it had to be their decision of their own free will.

At least I’d had success with Bastian. I was keeping him on track, we’d grown ever closer, and he was doing really well. I could help him, I could control the outcome there to a high degree, ensuring he didn’t drown again.

I blew out a breath as I rounded the corner and reached the concealed parking lot.

Given the extremely late hour, I’d only expected to see my Maserati there.

And that would’ve surely been the case if it hadn’t been for the uninvited visitor now leaning against the hood of his vehicle, eyes on me.

Not just on me. Devouring me in my casual attire of my Balenciaga jeans and my fitted Tom Ford leather jacket, my hair loose, waves cascading about my face.

He pushed off his Ferrari as I approached.

He’d clearly come from his nightclub as he was still clad in his new go-to look where that was concerned. His extremely over-the-top look.

His Gucci bomber jacket—gold and black interspersed with python imagery—flapped around him from his wild, rapid movements, revealing his skin-tight black metallic tee beneath that clung to the packed muscle of his boxer’s physique. A golden tiger’s head belt buckle glinted, the thing so prominent that even the dim lighting of the lot was reflecting off it every which way. It was one of the more obvious insights into how highly he regarded himself, believing he held more power than he did, something I’d ensured he’d received a major wakeup call on lately. I also knew that it was a nod to his sexual prowess. More delusions of grandeur from him. Leather pants as form-fitting as his tee gave way to a pair of Chelsea boots, gold like his jacket.

“This is my downtime,” I ground out, as I stopped in front of him.

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