Page 65 of Scorned Beauty
Once outside, the brisk air failed to displace the foreboding festering inside my chest. It only expanded and tightened its band around my lungs, making it difficult to breathe.
I ran into Bianca.
“Dom, what are?—”
I ignored her and sprinted round the building into the alley. Conflicting emotions grappled inside me…of wanting the orange blob to be there, and wishing it had disappeared because that would mean Ginger was alive.
But it was still there. I stopped two feet away from it.
“Dom…what are you doing?” Bianca asked. Then she must have seen the form I was too chickenshit to approach.
“Oh, is that Sloane’s cat?”
A lump lodged itself in my throat and roughened the single word gusting past my mouth. “Yes.”
I took one step, and then another, until I sank to my knees and, for the first time since I’d met the feisty feline, touched its fur willingly, desperately.
Ginger moved and tried to raise her head to look at me. Then she laid it down again and ignored me.
“You’re alive.”
“She’s hurt?” Bianca’s voice trembled. “You think they threw her from the fifth floor too, like that guy?”
“Ginger,” I whispered gently. “Can I move you, girl?” I stroked her fur. She was able to move her head and gave me hope she hadn’t broken her back. There were no signs of blood on her coat or around her, and the biggest concern was if she was bleeding internally. “I’ll give you all the tuna you want.”
The wordtunadid it.
Ginger pushed up on her forelegs, struggling to lift her hindquarters, but she managed it. Her tail didn’t flick in sass, and she appeared to be hunched like an old cat rather than afeisty three-year-old. She also appeared thinner than last I saw her, and she was shivering.
Overcome with relief, I shrugged out of my tux jacket and wrapped it around Ginger. She didn’t protest and appeared to welcome the warmth of my clothes.
Cradling the bundle of fur in my arms, Bianca and I walked out of the alley where Sandro met us.
“That’s the cat?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “The fuckers must have thrown her out the window.”
“Well, they say a cat has nine lives,” Sandro said.
I stared at Ginger who seemed to be content and wondered how many of those lives remained.
“Do we have any leads on Sloane?” Bianca asked.
“I’m going to ask Trevor to review surveillance footage around the area, but I need a favor from you.”
“Anything,” she said.
“Take Ginger to the emergency vet and do a full workup.” Sloane would have wanted me to take care of her cat. Then I immediately did a mental headshake. I was talking about Sloane like she was already dead. I refused to believe it. Self-recrimination battled against the logical steps I had to take to make sense of what happened here.
Eventually, there’d be time to wallow in regrets, to figure out how I fucked things up so badly, but not right now. Sloane was out there and she needed me.
Chapter
Seventeen
Dom
It had beena week since the Russians had taken Sloane. From the surveillance footage, the fucker who’d captured her appeared to be Anton. Trevor was busy dropping hints to the feds on where to search for her, but so far, they’d been hitting dead ends. Kirill hadn’t been helpful in providing the name of the properties where Anton or Grigori could have taken her.
