Page 90 of Rebel Heart

“Okay,” I agreed. “Go punch things. Have fun. Say hi to Luca.”

His lips brushed mine once more. “Will do. Good luck. I’ll be back in a few hours, tops.”

I watched him walk out, and then I went back to dialing every number on the list Rebel had made for me.

Over and over, I called each one, with no success other than draining my phone battery.

But I kept going. Refusing to give up.

When a masculine voice eventually answered with a, “Uh, hello?” I almost hung up on them because I was so in the habit of hitting redial.

I snatched up the phone, switching off the loudspeaker function. “Hello! Is this White Dove Rehabilitation Center?”

There was a crackle of static before the man answered. “Oh, um, yes. I’m sorry. I should have said that. I don’t actually work on reception, but the phone just kept ringing and ringing, and it was driving me mad.”

“Sorry about that,” I murmured. But hope had lit me up inside. I had gotten nowhere with the regular telephone operators at that place. They were all clearly well trained to not let calls in or out. But with this man, maybe I had a chance. “I’m Brooke Weston’s husband. I urgently need to speak to her.”

“Oh, I can’t do that. Patients in the intake wing aren’t allowed calls.”

I ground my teeth at the roadblock, but I wasn’t giving up that easy, when this was further than I’d managed to get any other time. I also wasn’t above lying to get my way. “Sir, are you close with your mother? Because Brooke is very close with hers, and the woman is on her deathbed. They need one last chance to speak with each other. Please, don’t take that away from them. There must be allowances for such situations, isn’t there?”

“I really don’t know. Can you call back?”

“There won’t be time. Please, sir. It needs to be now.”

I probably would have felt like an asshole for playing the dying mother card, but then I looked over at the card that threatened to chop up Rebel, and any lie felt warranted.

“Hold on, please. I’ll see if I can find her. I really am sorry about your mother-in-law.”

I muted the phone and fist pumped the air. “Yes!”

Rebel came running down the stairs. “You got through?”

Fang was close on her heels, and I waved them over, putting the phone on speaker again so they could hear.

Brooke’s voice was the next one down the line. “Vaughn? What’s going on with my mom? Oh my God.”

I quickly unmuted the call. “Your mom is fine. I’m sorry I lied, but it was the only way I could get through to you. They have you locked tighter than Fort Knox.”

She breathed a heavy sigh. “Tell me about it. I’ve been trying to call you ever since I got here, but there’s no phones in the intake wing. It’s zero contact with the outside world for the first thirty days.”

I squinted, trying to make sense of her words. “Wait, why were you trying to call me?”

Rebel’s and Fang’s faces were equally confused.

Brooke breathed heavily into the phone and lowered her voice. “Because I lied, and I wanted to warn you. It wasn’t me who cut my hair or my finger. I’m not the one blackmailing you. I never was.”

I gripped the kitchen counter tighter. “What do you mean? Why would you say you did then?”

“Because I needed to get out of there, Vaughn! The Guerra family is dangerous. They don’t just give up on debts, and it was becoming abundantly clear no one was paying mine. I didn’t exactly fancy losing any more body parts.”

I blinked at the phone. “So what? You just ran off and hid?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what I did. You should too. Take Rebel and run, because if they can’t get to me, they’ll just find another way to torture you.”

There were muffled sounds of Brooke talking to someone else in the background, and then she came back on the line. “The nurses just came on shift. I gotta go. If they bust me with the phone they might kick me out, and that’s the last thing I want. It’s not safe out there.”

“Brooke!”

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