Page 89 of Even if It Hurts

My head bobbed in harsh nods as my mind raced. I wanted details. I wanted to know how bad and what all had been destroyed, but at the forefront of every thought were the girls no longer in my sight. “Get someone here now.”

“Monroe’s already on the way.”

“I need Gray with her,” I told him as I watched Lainey hurry back down the hall with a sleeping Kaia curled against her chest. Alarm shone in her eyes, but she just nodded when I pointed upstairs and started leading her that way because there was no way I was leaving her downstairs, closer to the elevator, without me.

“Lainey’s been living in a hotel a few blocks from me,” I explained to Rush. “I need one of them to be here with the girls and another to get Lainey’s things.”

“Done.”

“I’ll head out as soon as Monroe gets here.” I ended the call, then hurried to fill Lainey in before leaving her at the front of my bedroom to get ready.

“Do you think it has to do with the mafia wife?” she asked once I was stalking through the room again.

“I know it does,” I said as fear clawed at my chest—a fear I was wholly unfamiliar with.

But I’d never had this before. I’d never had a baby in my care. I’d never hadLainey.

“Have they done anything like this before?” she asked as I swept her out of the room and toward the stairs.

When I didn’t respond, she turned her worried gaze on me. Her lips pressed tightly together in acceptance at whatever she saw on my face.

Because, no, they hadn’t. The last time I’d had any real interaction with them had been years before I’d started the company. For them to do something like this? It felt like a warning of more to come.

I glanced at my phone when we made it to the main floor, but still didn’t have anything from Monroe or the night manager that she’d arrived.

“You can put Kaia back,” I told Lainey as I stole an anxious look at the foyer. “I just didn’t want either of you down here?—”

“I understand,” she said over me, but made no move to take Kaia back to her room. “I’m sorry you feel like you have to wait.”

My head snapped in her direction, but I forced myself to take a breath before responding, knowing my anger and fear were probably lashing from me in everything I said. “Making sure y’all are safe is my priority. If it wasn’t my company, I wouldn’t leave you at all.”

She nodded just as my phone chimed with a message from Monroe, saying she was about to head up.

“Monroe and Gray aren’t Rush, but I need him at the office with me, and you can still trust them,” I told Lainey just as the night manager sent a text letting me know one of my approved guests had arrived. “I don’t know why you’ve been living out of a hotel, but if they’ve gotten into my system and broken into my office, they have your files. They can track you to the hotel. So, either Gray or Monroe will get your things and bring them here, or wherever you wanna go.”

Horror dripped from Lainey when she said, “Then they’d have my address, Asher. They’d go there.”

I pocketed my phone and stepped close to her, cradling her face in my hand and waiting until her worried eyes locked on mine. “They’ll look for where youare. Not where youmightcall home.”

“A-and what about everyone else? What about Aunt Ada and the rest of your team?”

I ground my jaw as I thought of how to word this in a way that would be the easiest to digest while also driving home the severity of the situation. “If they’re coming after us now and like this, they know we helped one of their wives escape; and it isn’t even the first time. They won’t go after my team directly, they’ll find ways to hurt us. As for Ada?” My head listed just slightly. “Lainey, they aren’t looking for women like Ada.”

“I don’t—” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as she searched my expression. “What do you mean?”

I looked over my shoulder when the elevator arrived, but only watched long enough to confirm Monroe was the one stepping into my apartment before meeting Lainey’s stare again. “The coffee shop...I told you they planned on taking you. Yeah?” At the barest movement of her head, I gave her a meaningful look. “That’s what they do, Lainey. They take young women. They take little girls. They’re drug-and-sex traffickers.”

Lainey’s face paled, and as much as it surprised me that she hadn’t put it together on her own yet, I hated that I had to be the one to taint her world this way.

I’d grown up in a world where this was all too easy to accept because I’d witnessed it daily. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to go decades without the dregs of society marring your life, but it said so much about Lainey’s joy. About her quickness to believe the good in people, even when they showed her their worst sides.

Me included.

“You can still leave,” I reminded her when she lowered her head to Kaia’s. And even though every part of me wished she would for her safety, an iron fist was gripping at my chest at the thought of her doing just that.

A soft, weighted laugh fled from her. The sound and the smile tugging at her mouth contradicting the deep worry filling her eyes when she looked up at me again. “You expect that little of me?” she asked shakily, repeating her response from our earlier conversation that felt like a lifetime ago.

“Never, but I’ll always give you the option.”

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