Page 10 of We Will Rise

Kovu’s car blowing up.

The hole in our family that appeared the moment my best friend stopped breathing.

I roll to my side and realize Camilla’s no longer curled up between the three of us, which immediately has me shooting upright and looking around the messy room.

You’d think, seeing as we have a full-time housekeeper, that it would be clean in here, but Meredith started refusing to clean Kovu’s room after only a few weeks because he kept leaving his bloody weapons lying around the place.

We all agreed that was a fair reason to leave him in his own mess.

Crew gestures to me and pulls the phone from his ear, quickly putting it on speakerphone.

“Say that again, Wyatt,” he says as Bishop shifts beside us.

“Camilla’s in the basement torturing Todd Daniels. Elias got home a little while ago after leaving her to it, but I thought you’d like to know.”

“What do you mean, he left her to it? What if he hurts her?” I spring off the bed and start fumbling around for where I left my clothes last night.

“He’s chained to the ceiling, and she’s a well-trained Mafia queen. I’m sure she can handle it,” Wyatt responds. “But that’s not why I’m calling.”

“Did you call our allies?” Crew asks.

“Yes, and they’re on their way. All should be descending upon the city in the next day or so.”

“Did they give you any headaches?” Bishop chimes in.

“No, they were more or less happy to lend a hand. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I get it now why you made all those alliances around the country.”

“You never know when you’re going to need backup that isn’t loyal to anyone in the five families,” Crew recites the same way he has every time one of us has questioned him about just that.

“Just to be on the safe side, I did a deep dive into each of their recent financials and phone records to make sure Davenport or Caleb haven’t reached out ahead of us, but we’re in the clear.”

“What would we do without you, Wyatt?” Bishop falls back against the pillows and pulls his own phone from the bedside table, quickly tapping the screen a few times, and I realize he’s accessing the camera in the basement to check on Camilla.

I round the side of the bed to peek over his shoulder to see she’s standing in front of the restrained man with what appears to be his toe in her hand, blood soaking them both.

“Yeah, I think our girl’s holding her own down there.” Bishop chuckles.

There’s silence on the other end of the phone for a moment before Wyatt sighs. “Guys, I need to tell you something, but I don’t want you to freak out or get your hopes up, okay?”

“What is it?” Crew says.

“I went to remove Kovu from the security system at the compound and the casino because I didn’t want a repeat of what happened with Caleb happening again, and when I did, I just so happened to check his tracker, and it’s still active.”

“What does that mean?” I force the words out, barely able to process what he’s telling us.

“It could mean a few things. From what I could tell, no one saw a body, so there’s a chance one of Caleb’s men grabbed it and is going to use it to lure you guys out with false hope.” He lets out a heavy breath. “Or it could mean he’s alive.”

Silence falls over us for long seconds as we try to work through what we’re being told, but both options are kind of fucked up.

If it’s the second option, which I hope to fucking God it is, why hasn’t he come home yet? There’s no way he would betray us, no way he would just disappear when his obsession with Camilla is so strong, but it’s hard to think up any other possibility when a month ago we would have said the same thing about Caleb. Hell, I did think the same thing.

“I thought you should know. I’m keeping an eye on it, but it’s been stationary for a long time now, close to the site of the accident.”

“We should go check it out,” I say.

“But what if it’s a trap?” Crew asks.

“Then it’s a trap.” I push myself off the edge of the bed where I was perched beside Bishop and resume getting dressed. “But if it’s not, Kovu could be cold and alone and hurt, and we’ve all just been fucking sleeping.”

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