Page 73 of City of Wind and Lies

"I told you, couldn't sleep." It's not a lie. My mind just wouldn't settle after knowing Wren's piece of shit ex had upset her, laid his fucking hands on her, and I wasn’t there to protect her. I ruminated on it, and without her presence to calm my storm, I had to do something else to dispel my monster.

"Bullshit," he chuckles, laying back and gripping the bar.

I blow out a breath. "I told Wren."

Rocco pauses, eyeing me carefully. "She didn't take it well?" he asks with a wince.

"Something like that," I mutter.

Standing behind the bar to spot him as he begins his reps, I tell him about Belluci's appearance being the catalyst to the conversation I'd hoped to ease into, and how it all ended with her wanting space while she thinks things over.

"This lifestyle is all we know, you've got to admit it'd be a lot to come to terms with," he says as the bar clinks back into place. "I'd be concerned if she wouldn't have needed time to let it all sink in."

"Yeah, just didn't think she'd need time away from me, too," I grumble.

Rocco curls up, sitting sideways and resting his elbows on his knees. "Aren't you the one who didn't want someone… what'd you call Isa?" He cocks a brow. "Docile and boring?"

I pin him with a look. "I didn't say Isa specifically. Just that the women raised in our world are taught to be like that. And I don't know. Wren's different."

"I get it, she calls you on your shit."

"Yeah, she does." I sigh, carding a hand through my hair. "Wren's strong-willed, and that's what I love about her."

The words leave my mouth before I've even had a chance to sit with the revelation.

Rocco's eyes widen and he looks up at me like I just sprouted another head. "You love her?"

Fuck, do I?

"Yeah, I do."

I wait for some smart-ass comment to come, but it doesn't. Instead, he leans back down, wraps his fingers around the bar for another set, and says, "Good for you, Bowie."

After a full day of scoping out the locations the burner pinged across the city, I drop Rocco back at the Monarch and head off to the silos.

Aside from the warehouse where we caught those kids with our stolen drugs, none of the other locations struck me as familiar. They all seemed rather ordinary- an older brick apartment building, a bar in a shady strip mall off South Racine, a handful of vacant warehouses, and a couple of houses that Belluci owns. None of them offered any further insight into the phone's owner.

Tomorrow, Rocco will organize the guys to sit on the locations looking for the SUV that crashed the gate or any faces that matched the unfamiliar ones we'd seen on the 708's security feed over the last few months.

Killing the lights, I shift my Escalade into park behind one of the out-of-commission grain silos and wait for O'Ryan.

He caught a case Friday night after he'd texted me, and this is the first break he's had. I really hope he's got something that lets me get my hands around Allen's neck soon. It's a fifty-fifty shot if killing the fucker will make Wren feel safer with me or just appalled by who I am. Regardless, his days are limited.

Headlights catch my attention in the rearview as a silver sedan creeps closer. I check my phone one last time before powering it down like some love-sick shit hoping for a text from Wren, but no dice. Dallas hasn't said anything either, but his silence is a good thing.

I pop open my door, gravel crunching underfoot as I round the hood.

"Sorrentino," he says, stepping out of his car with a manilla envelope in hand.

"O'Ryan," I greet, folding my arms at my chest and kicking a foot up to rest on my bumper.

"Sorry it's taken this long," he says, running a hand over his shortly cropped hair. "My captain's been putting pressure on me to solve the OD's, and with her constantly poking around my office, I didn't want to draw attention to you or anyone that might… disappear."

"I appreciate that." My lips pull up in a smirk as I tip my chin. "What do you have for me?"

"Right," he nods, opening the envelope and handing a stack of papers over. "So, Allen Patrick Whitmore, forty-six, born and raised in Chicago. Never married, a handful of parking tickets, a drunk and disorderly charge from ten years ago… other than that, nothing major."

Arching a brow at him, I flip through the stack of papers. Allen's DMV picture is paperclipped to his driving record, followed by cell phone records, bank statements, and other documents outlining his sad life.

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