Page 55 of Lukas

Chapter Twenty-Two

Forty-eight hours later,Lukas was ready to put his fist through a wall. What a complete and utter clusterfuck.

After a day and a half of looking into the bottle bomb at the restaurant, the cops—and the paid men on the inside who were looking at it from a different angle—had come to the conclusion that it didn’t have anything to do with Lukas or La Cosa Nostra at all.

A turf war, but not his.

Evidently, this sort of property damage had occurred before in a few other Asian restaurants across the city. Lukas and Reina just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Which should’ve made him feel better, and would if he’d been able to get in touch with Reina to tell her the news. All day long she had avoided his calls, had been since he put her to bed the night before last, her secrets still between them.

He’d given her the benefit of the doubt yesterday and even this morning. Things had been crazy, too many details demanding his attention. He’d agreed when Reina told him she needed to go back to her apartment to get some work done. She’d been escorted by two of his best men, another set keeping watch full-time on her apartment.

He hadn’t had much time to call her yesterday, had just sent her a simple text to say good night.

I’m glad I won’t be in this bed without you much longer.

She’d answered with a simple: Good night.

Today he’d had more time to call, but she hadn’t picked up. At first, he hadn’t worried or even been annoyed: she was busy, had a career. He didn’t expect her to drop everything for a phone call from him.

But as the hours went on, he’d become concerned. Only the fact that his team assured him she was still in her apartment kept him calm. Finally, after dark, when he still couldn’t get through, he had someone from the team actually go check on her.

Only to find she wasn’t there.

She was fucking lucky a call from one of his men at Triple Threat came in just moments after he realized she wasn’t in her apartment. She had snuck out. Gone to the night club for crying out loud.

What the fuck was going on?

Later, when she had a particularly vicious little pair of clamps on her nipples, a large glass dildo up her ass, and was sobbing from his very thorough whipping of her thighs and ass with a riding crop, she could apologize for scaring him and ditching her protection detail. Right after she shared whatever secret was causing her so much angst.

He was on his way to the club now, Bruno driving since he and his brothers had agreed that no one went anywhere alone for a while, when a text from Brax came through.

You need to get to Deeper Threat right now.

Jesus. Something else.

What’s going on?

Reina.

Lukas waited for more of an explanation from his cousin, but nothing came. What was Reina doing in Deeper Threat? She couldn’t even get in there without him.

Except she could, couldn’t she? She’d done twice.

But why? Why would she want to go there now without him? It didn’t make any sense.

He was dialing Brax’s number to get more information when a call from Dominic came through.

“Dom. What’s up?”

“Do you have Reina with you?”

He could feel his heart begin to hammer against his ribs. “No. She slipped her security detail and was spotted at Triple Threat, then I just got a cryptic text from Brax that she was at Deeper Threat. What the hell is going on?”

Dominic muttered a curse foul enough to singe his eyebrows. “That anomaly in our computer system? Our guy figured out what it was. Someone was hacking, but it wasn’t being done remotely. The only way it could be accessed in that way was through the onsite server room.”

“Jesus God.” He couldn’t even believe what he was hearing. Knew what was coming before Dominic even continued.

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