Page 6 of The Mafia's Omega Queen

“You’re welcome. How’s Haylee? Anything?” The old man’s eyes are so hopeful it breaks me that I can’t give him a better answer.

“She’s good, still the same, though.” His face drops, and the hope bleeds from his eyes, taking on a hopeless light. I reach out and grab his wrist before he can move away. “She’ll be okay. I feel it here.” I rub at my chest, right over my heart.

Andre throws me a small smile, but it disappears as quickly as it came, and the hope I once saw doesn’t return. He exits the room as quietly as he entered and leaves me to my meal. Lunch? Dinner? I have no clue. Time doesn’t matter and won’t matter until my girl comes back to us.

Not long later, as I’m tearing up my last chicken leg, Arden enters the room looking absolutely wrecked and exhausted. Tonight is his night to sleep in Haylee’s bed, and as much as I wish it were mine, he needs the sleep before he keels over. I think his nights in here are the only time he actually does sleep at all.

“Goodnight, baby girl. I’ll see you in the morning.” I lean down and press my lips to hers, infusing my love into her body. I hope she can feel it, feel how much we love and need her. But just in case she can’t, we will keep reminding her every day so that way when she makes her way back to us, she’ll feel it the moment she opens her beautiful eyes.

Two weeks. That’s how long the house has been in limbo since the fateful day we rushed home to find our omega bleeding out on the floor. Sleep has been almost non-existent for me unless I’m curled around my sweets. If it’s one of the other guys’ nights, I spend all the rest of the time holed up in my office, trying to locate the bitch that caused all the turmoil roiling through us.

Somehow, someway, she’s disappeared. Poof. Gone. Finding her shouldn’t take as much effort, but it’s proving more challenging than I anticipated. Unbeknownst to Vinny, I’ve been checking his phone records to see if he’s been in contact with her, trying to protect her from the rest of us. But even that’s proved fruitless. Besides the one missed call on the day everything went down, she hasn’t contacted him since. The phone number has been disconnected, ruining every chance I have of locating her through satellites.

A light knock on the door pulls me out of my thoughts as Andre enters, carrying a tray full of Haylee’s favorite breakfast foods. He’s been making her favorites, hoping that it will rouse her from the slumber she’s in, but even that hasn’t helped. We’ve been eating the meals so they don’t go to waste and in hopes that it will put some kind of smile on Andre’s face.

After setting the tray on the bedside table, he brushes some of her hair away from her face and drops a kiss on her forehead. If he were anyone else, I would think he was trying to horn his way into her pack, but the fatherly love emanating from Andre warms my heart. From what Gavin has told us, she’s always been super close to her dad, and it’s been hard not being around him. But Andre definitely helps in that area.

“Anything?” Andre asks. It’s the same question he asks us day in and day out, hoping that one of these times, the answer will be different.

I shake my head, hating to dash the spark of hope in his eyes. He goes to walk away without a word, but I stop him before he can get too far away. “I need to shower and get back to my computer. Do you think you can sit with Haylee for a while? Maybe read her a book?”

He spins back to face me, a genuine smile lighting up his face, but then it quickly disappears, and he wrings his hands in front of himself. “I’m sure Hunter or Gavin will be here shortly, and I don’t want to impose on their time.”

Pecking her too-still lips, I climb out of bed and start putting on the clothes I shed last night. “They won’t be around until later this evening, and I don’t want to leave her by herself. You’d be doing us a huge favor by spending time with her while we are all busy.”

“I—I can do that. Yes. I’ll be right back.” He barrels out of the room, and if I know Andre, he’s probably flying into the library to find something to read to her.

Before he gets back, Gavin waltzes into the room, his eyes lighting up the second he sees our omega. He starts heading toward the bed to get comfortable at her side, but I stop him and quietly whisper the plan in his ear. “We need to make ourselves scarce for a little while. Andre needs this. He feels responsible for what happened to her, and we’ve spent so much time in here that he hasn’t really had a chance to. Hell, I don’t even think the old man is eating or sleeping. He looks like he’s withering away because he’s trying to make up for what happened. You can come back in a few hours, but we need to give him this.”

Gavin rakes his hands through his blond locks, tugging lightly at the ends. “Shit, I didn’t even think about that.” He walks over to the bed, and as he lightly presses his lips to Haylee’s forehead, Andre comes back in, a stack of books in his hands. His once almost happy demeanor drops when he sees Gavin in the room, thinking that he lost his chance. But before he can leave again, Gavin turns around, pinning Andre with a small smile. “Arden just told me that you’re going to hang out with Haylee while we get a few things taken care of. We really appreciate it. We didn’t want to leave her alone.”

Another smile graces Andre’s face, and I feel a little lighter, less stress weighing me down at the sight. We need to start remembering the others in this house. Especially Andre. He’s done so much for us, and not just since we were all kids. He’s taken point on everything since Haylee was brought into our lives, including supplying us with everything we needed while she went through her heat or whatever the hell that was. There were no questions asked; he just did it. He needs this as much as we need her.

Hunter takes that moment to stride into the room, Andre’s favorite wingback chair in his hands, and he positions it right next to the bed. If I had to guess, he was walking by and heard us talking and had an idea of what we were planning.

“Th—thank you,” Andre chokes out, emotion shining in his eyes as he looks between the three of us. “You boys have always been like sons to me, but I’ve always wanted a daughter.” He gazes at Haylee, unconditional love emanating from him in waves. “I’m going to be sad when you four leave for the west coast.” My eyes widen, not realizing that he’s figured that out already. “Do you think,” he sits down in the chair, “they will allow me to come for a visit?”

Gavin steps forward, placing his hand on Andre’s shoulder and giving him a squeeze. “I can guarantee they would be happy to have you. Hell, I think you and Rebecca, Haylee’s mom, would run circles around Thane.” He snickers as his eyes take a far-off look, remembering something that’s obviously happened in the past.

Jealousy curls in my gut, wishing I had those types of memories to fall back on. It quickly disperses, though, when I remember that I have the future to look forward to with Haylee and our pack. She’s going to wake up soon, I can just feel it. This isn’t the end of our story.

* * *

Codes flash across the screen in front of me faster than my eyes can keep track. It’s been a few hours since we left Andre to sit with Haylee while we all went about getting things done. I’m dying to go check in on her, but I don’t want him to think I’m kicking him out of the room. I just—fuck, I miss her. I miss her smile. I miss the way she looks at me. I even miss the way she stands up against Vinny.

The only good thing to come out of this whole situation is the fact that Bianca is in the wind. Granted, I would love to get my hands around her neck and choke the life right out of her for what she did to Haylee, but at least Hunter and I aren’t fighting her off with a stick. One of us should have taken said stick and just beat her with it before any of this could happen. But Vinny was happy with her, so we were going to leave them be and grow our lives with Haylee as our center. We would have rather had Vinny with us, but he’s a grown man, and that’s his decision to make.

My computer pings, and I sit up straighter, clicking my mouse a few times until the tracking program comes up on my screen. We’ve been keeping tabs on Lionel and Archibald Kilroy since everything went down a few weeks ago, and two days after Haylee’s accident, Lionel disappeared just like Bianca. So after a few clicks of my keys, I’ve had my programs checking not only Bianca’s call and text logs to see if we can figure out where she went but also Archibald’s for any clue about who he is in league with. Because that’s the thing. He has to be working with someone we know, as there is no other way he could have gained access to the compound with the ease that his crew did.

Tapping an impatient rhythm on my desk, I wait for the program to finish loading. It’s looking like I may need to upgrade some of my equipment because it shouldn’t be moving this damn slow. At this rate, a sloth would make it across a busy street before my program finished loading.

Bianca’s logs open up first, and I narrow my eyes as line after line of text messages and calls highlight, the number exactly the same in each and every one. And I’m not talking just a few texts and calls here and there; there have to be hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. After sliding my pointer to the second screen on my desk, I pull up a reverse search and type the number in. There’s a good chance, with how much she spoke to this person, that this is where she is hiding out.

And knowing her, she’s probably fucking the person too. After all, the bitch can’t keep her legs closed.

Ping.

It doesn’t take long—thank fuck—for the search to turn up an answer. I stare at the name, blinking my eyes owlishly, not sure I can believe what I’m seeing in front of me. There’s no fucking way.

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