“Dear, Emilee, let me put it to you like this. I’ve had years to plot my revenge over your father for imprisoning me and wiping me out of the Rossi family. You could’ve been murdered so many times and yet here you are, alive. I had years to create networks of some of the scariest assholes in the country. I snap my fingers and everything you love goes away. Now, prenups are helpful. But children? Children make it far harder for the woman to leave. Harder for you to keep me out of your business.”
He got closer, and I made an effort to move toward a door. I glanced at the handle, and he grabbed my hands and ever so sweetly held them in my lap.
“The doors won’t open from the inside. I am no fool. You are more useful to me alive, for now, than dead. Your aunt never understood that. She didn’t have to die.”
My interest piqued.
“Why did you kill her?”
Roman was right. I had no sense of self-preservation and I doubt I ever would.
“I don’t take lightly to affairs. She was mine and yet she loved someone else, and even after our marriage, she kept seeing him. It was embarrassing. It would have all been fine except she went and got herself pregnant and it was not mine.”
“So you killed her?”
He shook his head.
“She killed herself. I suppose I might have slipped her something that helped her hallucinate right off the balcony, but your father didn’t know that.”
Huh. Everyone had a moral compass. Even Daddy. I’ll let his soul know that maybe I gave him a tiny bit of credit for trying to be the good guy even once in his own story. Tragic really.
TWENTY-ONE
roman
The helicopter gotus to a small airport where I chartered a flight and came up with a plan. Funny thing about plans is that they only work when you’re the one in the lead. The fluttering of my heart in my chest was disturbing.
Was this what anxiety felt like?
I’d glared down the pilot as we boarded and flipped him off as we departed. If I thought it would have been faster to have one of my own planes, I would have. When even Parks wasn’t arguing with me, I knew this had been the right decision. I never second guessed anything until now. I knew I hadn’t been wrong, that I was in love with her. But this was a test, and I fucking hated it.
We still hadn’t come up with where in Colorado they’d gone. The plane landed at a small mountain airport. That was another issue, getting clearance into that airport with flight plans hours old. Did no one else in this damn state fly in and out at a moment’s notice?
“Any luck yet?”
Parks had been searching for the last hour and I’d been on the phone with my local contacts, which weren’t many. I was a businessman, but I didn’t have a lot of diversity in this region. Vegas, however? Well, too bad there was no reason to think he’d gone that way.
I called Gage next, needing something to keep me from losing myself entirely.
“How is my brother? There’s something he isn’t telling us.”
I knew Gage well enough to know he was probably glaring at my brother and smiling like it was Christmas. I think he hated the little asshat more than I did. He had good reason. Gage wasn’t from money. He’d been in the wrong place at the right time when we were teens. While I was busy trying to get my footing in my father’s businesses, he was the one trying to rob them. He had skills I needed, and I had the money he needed.
My brother had jealousy that no one needed and had tried to get him killed. Several times.
“He’s wet himself twice, but he still isn’t talking.”
Every damn nerve in my body was so fucking frayed I really needed to beat him myself, but I needed to find Emilee. The girl had no means of defending herself. Knives, guns, maybe some basic fighting skills, but as a prisoner?
“Gage, make him talk by any means necessary. I don’t need him anymore.”
“Did you hear that, sweetheart? The one thing that was keeping you alive just said he didn’t need you anymore.”
The quirk in my lip twitched as I heard my brother yelp.
“Gage, I’m done with him. Make sure he knows that he will never have her, even if he had nothing to do with this.”
“Done, boss. Want any souvenirs?”