by Shandi Boyes
“Demi?”
After scanning my room to ensure she isn’t hiding in the shadows, I head for the bathroom.
“Demi, are you showering?”
I tap two times on the glossy white door before entering the bathroom. I can’t hear the shower running, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t in here. When you have four siblings, you soon realize silence isn’t always a good indicator that things are swell.
“Are you decent?” I fucking hope not. Her body isn’t just dynamite, it’s downright explosive.
When my search of the bathroom comes up empty-handed, I race back into the main part of my room. Unwilling to leave anything to chance, I switch on the light this time around. It reveals most things are where I left them. My watch and cell phone are on the bedside table, but my wallet is no longer in my trouser pocket, and Demi’s ruined panties aren’t on the floor.
With the removal of my wallet the most obvious sign something is amiss, I snatch it up from the bedside table, then search for any clues as to what Demi was seeking when she removed it from my pants. I gave her unlimited access to it only hours ago, so I’m a little perplexed as to why she needed to go through it a second time.
My wad of bills is untouched as is the piece of paper Agent Moses’s latest cell phone number is scribbled on, but the card Col handed Demi yesterday is gone.
Fuck it!
“She’s gone,” I announce after returning to the living room, my steps slow and weighed down.
Sleeping with Demi doesn’t grant me the knowledge of all her inner-workings, but watching her from afar for years most certainly does. Her disappearance is very unlike her. The only time she vanished without a trace was when her father died. I thought she was grieving. It turns out, she was being bounced from foster home to foster home.
“What do you mean she’s gone? Where the fuck could she go? We’re in the middle of nowhere, and she doesn’t know how to ride a motorbike…” Caidyn’s words trail off when he leans to the side to peer out the big French doors that lead to the patio. His Jeep is usually parked a few spots up. It isn’t there today.
“Fuck!” I curse out loud this time around. “I hid your car keys in my room—”
Confirmation Demi has done a runner doesn’t steal my words. Caidyn’s fist does. “I thought you said last night was consensual.”
“It was,” I fire back, more panicked than annoyed at his assumption I’d ever hurt Demi like that. I wasn’t lying when I said last night was years in the making. I’ve been dreaming about last night for ages, and it was better than I could have imagined.
It also assures me I’m on the money with my assumption Demi didn’t take Col’s card for no reason. She did it because she experienced the same sensation that hit me when I sunk into her last night. There’s just one difference. She’d rather be assaulted by her uncle than see me become him.
“Then why did she leave?” Caidyn asks, averting my focus back to him.
I breathe out the heaviness on my chest before answering, “Things are more complicated than you realize.”
He points to the sofa my ass was planted on while Demi hatched her escape plan. “Then you need to sit the fuck down and explain yourself.”
I’d laugh about how much he emulates our father when he’s stressed if I had the time. “Call Saint. Sloane may know where Demi has gone.”
Although he looks like he wants to argue, Caidyn jerks up his chin before pulling his phone out of his pocket. “If he’s not with Sloane?”
“He’ll be with her.” Saint’s eyes were gleaming last night when Sloane galloped down the stairs of her building. More than his signature move was placed on the cooktop the past couple of days. I’m certain of it.
While Caidyn does as requested, I tug on a pair of jeans over my boxers, cover my plain white T-shirt with a jacket, snatch up my bike keys from the kitchen counter, then rejoin Caidyn in the living room. “Anything?”
He shakes his head. “My calls are going straight to voicemail.” He angles his head to the side when I fail to keep my expression neutral. Saint always answers his phone. Even when he’s balls deep in a female, he forever takes his brothers’ calls. “What?”
“Nothing,” I reply, denying the knot in my stomach its chance to speak. “Keep trying. If you get anything, come back to me.”
“I’m coming with you,” he announces while shadowing my sprint to the front door.
“How, Caidyn? Are you gonna ride bitch on the back of my bike?” When he makes a face like vomit is scorching his throat, I arch a brow. “Exactly. Besides, you’re better off staying here. If Demi has popped down to the market to gather supplies, who will let her in if we both leave?”
“True.” His reply is as unconvincing as my piss-poor excuse for Demi’s unexpected disappearance. My mom stacked our fridge only yesterday. There are enough supplies in the kitchen to feed an army.
“Keep me updated,” Caidyn requests while tossing me my cell.
After lifting my chin, I stuff my phone into the front pocket of my jeans, then gallop down the porch stairs, praying like fuck my intuition is way off base due to a lack of sleep the past forty-eight hours. As I hook my leg over my bike, I push down on the kickstart lever at the same time. Since I’m also twisting the throttle, I rocket out of the dusty driveway before my ass is fully in my seat. I don’t even have my helmet on, but I don’t give a fuck. Nothing I said or did last night was fraudulent. I would kill for Demi. I’d even send myself to slaughter if it guaranteed she’d leave the massacre uninjured.
Because I thrash the living shit out of my motorbike, I skid to a stop at the front of Demi’s building a record-breaking twenty minutes later. Although my phone hasn’t buzzed, I’m confident Caidyn got ahold of Saint. He isn’t wrestling Sloane into submission in the kitchen of her modest apartment. He’s dragging her away from her sports car like she isn’t scratching, kicking, and screaming at him.
“Let me go!” she repeats before she slings her begging, wet eyes to me. “Tell him to let me go!”
My father taught me to protect any woman in need, but I can’t this time around. Saint isn’t hurting Sloane. He’s trying to keep her safe.
“Do you know where she is?”
When Sloane shakes her head, salty blobs splash onto her cheeks. “No, but she wouldn’t just pack up and leave unless something bad happened.”
“She packed?” The shortness of my question can’t hide how airless her reply made my lungs. I feel like I’m being suffocated.
I suck in a relieved breath when Sloane shakes her head.
My reprieve doesn’t last long.
“But she left a check on the entryway table for three months’ rent and gave notice at Petretti’s.” More tears plop down her face when she mutters, “When we moved in together, we made an agreement that if either of us were permanently leaving, we were to pay three months’ rent, so the other half wasn’t burdened with the full amount. I agreed because I would never abandon her, but I also didn’t think she’d ever amass the funds to leave me.” She scrubs a hand over her wet cheeks. “If she was leaving for better things, why wouldn’t she take her belongings? She didn’t even pack her coat. It’s cold today.” She hiccups through her last couple of words.
She is so devastated, Saint wordlessly pleads for me to end my interrogation. I can’t. If anyone knows where Demi is, it will be Sloane.
“She isn’t leaving via her choice, Sloane. She’s being forced out.”
“What do you mean?” As her drenched eyes bounce between mine, her lips quiver. “She could have come home last night. I didn’t mean she had to stay away, and certainly not forever.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” She stops thrashing against Saint when I add, “You’re not forcing her out. Her—”
“Uncle is?” The redness on her face goes from devastated to murderous in under two heart-thrashing seconds, and just as quickly, she recommences her campaign to get out of Saint’s grip. She fights him with everything she has,
her battle coming with a ton of words I’m certain she’ll regret within the hour.
It takes Saint lowering Sloane to the ground and hooking one of his legs around her waist to keep her contained. He’d rather face the battery charge she threatens him with than see her go against a man as evil as Col Petretti.
“A quarter a mile out of Hopeton, take a left on Sandy Plains Road. Halfway down, you’ll find a mansion hidden by tall hedges.” Saint’s words are chopped up by the brutal pounding Sloane is hitting his ribs with. She can’t punch him since he has her wrapped up tight, but she has no issues ramming her elbows into his ribs. “If anyone has the means to find Demi, the men inside that compound will.”
After lifting my chin in thanks, I hotfoot it to my bike. “Once things settle down, call Caidyn.”
Saint replies, but the revs of my bike’s engine gobble up what he says.
With traffic light and my love of the throttle at a pinnacle, I make it to Sandy Plains Road in under three minutes. I lower the revs of my motorbike long before I spot the hedges Saint mentioned. Stumbling upon two men with machine guns strapped to their chests is enough incentive to slow any man down.
“If you know what’s good for you, turn around and pretend you never took this route,” says goon number one while the sight on goon number two’s gun adds a Hindi bindi to the crease between my brows.
“I was sent here—”
“By whom?” goon number one interrupts before I get out half my sentence.
I curse Saint like I’m not about to put his life on the line before muttering, “Saint Walsh.”
The seemingly higher-ranked foot soldier pushes two fingers to his ear for barely a second before disappointment crosses his features. “Welcome to our humble abode.” He steps back, then fans out his arm like he’s inviting me to curtsey before the Queen. “We hope your stay is pleasant.”
Not having neither the time nor the care to work out his riddle, I glide my bike down the asphalt driveway he motioned at with his finger. “Jesus-fucking-Christ,” I murmur under my breath when the mansion in its entirety comes into view.
Calling this place a mansion is an understatement. It’s more like a palace.
A tattered-up man with a cropped beard, green eyes, and a shit-eating grin meets me at the stairs at the front of the thirty-plus room mansion. “The day has finally arrived. All the Walshs are falling into line.”
It takes me a couple of seconds to place him, but when I do, my plan of attack alters in an instant. You never stumble across Rocco Shay without laying eyes on Dimitri Petretti. They’re joined at the hip.
“What are you doing here, Ox? Dimitri ain’t got time for your family’s shit today.”
He stops rubbing his hands together like a man perusing a buffet of pussy when I say, “What about his family? Does he have time for that?”
“Fien?”
I don’t know who the fuck Fien is, and in a way, I’m glad. Rocco looks seconds from murdering me where I stand.
“Demi.” I articulate her name as roughly as Rocco did Fien’s.
When Rocco’s dark brows pull together, I use his confusion to my advantage. “Does he have time for her? She is his family, after all.”
He waits a beat before lifting his chin. When he spins on his heels, I dismount my bike and follow him inside.
“Wipe your fucking feet,” he says after splaying a tattooed hand across my chest, stopping me on what must be an invisible welcome mat since there’s not a single bristle to be seen. “Does this look like a barn?”
While I scrub my boots on the cobbled porch, I stare at Rocco like he has rocks in his head. He’s having a full-blown conversation, but not one of his words are directed at me. He’s talking about me, not to me.
“This way,” he says a couple of seconds later. “Dimitri is working out of his downstairs office today.” He shakes his head before adding, “Nah, don’t tell him. Let me surprise him.”
Once again, he isn’t talking to me.
One of his multiple personalities must give him the go-ahead because our arrival at a large office in the lower level of the mansion is met with a surly and aggressive Dimitri Petretti. “I said I didn’t want to be interrupted.”
He was a grouchy bastard when he was a teen, and it seems as if age made him even grumpier. Other than handing a wad of cash to Agent Moses after each of my fights, I barely see Dimitri. He wasn’t interested in a conversation, and I preferred saving my suaveness for his cousin.
“You always say you don’t want to be interrupted,” Rocco pushes out with a laugh. “But I know you’re full of shit. The only time you say you don’t want to be interrupted is when you’re getting lost in a hooker, which we all know you haven’t done since…” He stops talking at the same time Dimitri’s growl thunders across the room.
While smiling like Dimitri fell right into his trap, Rocco says matter-of-factly, “Maddox is here about Demi. Shall I leave? Or can I join in on his beatdown?”
I give Rocco a look as if to say I’d like to see you try, before I move closer to the desk Dimitri is seated behind. I know who he is, what he’s associated with, and just how fucking dirty his hands are, but I’m praying like fuck his parents instilled some kind of values into him.
My strides slacken when it dawns on me how stupid I’m being.
Col Petretti isn’t just Dimitri’s uncle. He’s his father. He raised him.
The return of my smarts has me switching things up. “I’m here to get your permission—”
“To date my cousin? No fucking chance.” I assume Dimitri is taking the high road. I should have known better. That isn’t how his family operates. “Who she dates isn’t up to me. She isn’t on my payroll.” A glint darts through his eyes, but he’s quick to shut it down. “If that’s all.” He nudges his head to the door I just walked through, wordlessly giving me my marching orders.
“It isn’t.”
I step closer to him, grinning when Rocco announces his dislike at me not accepting no as an answer by ramming his gun into the back of my head. “The man said no, Ox. Don’t make me splatter my new shoes with your brain matter. I only bought them last week.”
I act as if he never spoke. “I wasn’t asking permission to date your cousin. I was approached by a fight promoter.” That’s a stretch, to say the least, but when you’ve got nothing, you must work with what you have. “A high-profile event is coming up. I want permission to fight at the event.” When confusion darkens Dimitri’s eyes, I pretend he takes more than a share of my profits each month. “If I get injured, I can’t fight for you. Figured you wouldn’t take too kindly to that, so I thought it would be best to seek permission instead of assuming.”
Dimitri drops his pen onto the paperwork in front of him before he slouches low into his chair. I’m confident he’s calling my bluff, so you can imagine my shock when he asks, “Who’s the promoter?”
“Your father,” I answer without pause for thought. I don’t have time to pussyfoot around, and in all honesty, I’m reasonably sure Dimitri would see through any bullshit I attempt to dangle in front of him.
Dimitri shakes his head. “You can’t fight for him and me on the same night. You might be good, Ox, but you’re not that good.”
“That’s the thing,” I reply, stepping even closer. “His fight is tonight.” Dimitri’s fights are held on Thursdays and Fridays. Today is Saturday.
“Tonight?” When I jerk up my chin, Dimitri snaps out, “Smith…”
I peer past my shoulder, anticipating for someone other than Rocco to be standing behind me. I’m shit out of luck. There’s only one fool with his gun directed at my head. That fool is Rocco.
After a couple of seconds staring into thin air, Dimitri locks his icy blue eyes with mine. “Where is the fight scheduled to take place?”
“That’s another thing.” I swallow to eradicate the annoying nerves in my voice before saying, “I lost the card he printed the details on.” When Dimitri’s jaw grits, I talk faster,
“I know it is in Hopeton and that I have to arrive at nine o’clock sharp.” Rocco snickers when I add, “I was hoping you could fill in the blanks.”
Dimitri leans forward until his elbows are propped on his desk. “Let me check if I have this right. You want me to grant you permission to fight after I unearth the location where the event is taking place, even with you being a no-show at my events both Thursday and last night? Is that right?”
Rocco calls me a fucking idiot under his breath when I lift my chin. “You need to learn the art of ass-kissing, my friend,” he suggests at the same time Dimitri says, “Not interested.”
“I’m willing to negotiate. State your terms.” When he orders Rocco to remove me from his office, I shrug out of his hold. He may have a gun, but I have unquenched desperation. There’s nothing more potent than that. “I’ll do anything. I’ll give you a bigger cut of the proceeds. I’ll even compete in your Friday night schedule if that’s what it will take for you to help me. State your terms, and I’ll agree with them.”
Dimitri slices his hand through the air, wordlessly requesting for Rocco to stop hauling me out of his office. “You want her that bad?”
Some may call me a fool for immediately nodding, but I can’t help it.
Lying isn’t my forte.
“All right,” Dimitri breathes out many prolonged seconds later. “But it’ll cost you more than a bigger slice of the pie.”
Having nothing to lose, I once again nod.
16
Demi
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I murmur to my reflection in the mirror.
I’ve scrubbed my face clean, filled in the gash under my right eye with liquid foundation, and done up my face as if I’m about to spend the night on the town, yet, only now is the real show about to begin.
I had hoped my life would never reach this stage, but I can no longer walk around wearing a blindfold. Everyone knew my life would eventually take this path, even Maddox. That’s why he fought so hard to make me forget last night, and it’s the very reason I fled the instant he snuck out of his room this morning.