The Salvatores Collection: A Steel Saviors MC Romance

by Ethan Egorov

  Unfortunately, he recognized that she was also a clue in all of this, and there was no getting rid of her in that regard. But as much as he could, he had to find a way to push her out of his mind and focus on the logical issues at hand.

  If only it were that easy.

  He wished he had never gone to the hotel to begin with, but the damage was done.

  While he waited on the driver, he leaned back against the brick wall of the alley by the hotel. He didn’t know what kind of champagne he drank, but it certainly packed a punch. Normally, he could drink almost an entire bottle of liquor before he was even tipsy. Trent was sure by that point he had been drugged. But with nothing to do about it now, he called his driver, got picked up, and then called one of his brothers.

  “Hey, Tommy, I know you’re there. Tell whatever hooker you’re with to wait and call me back.”

  Trent looked at his phone, impatiently. He suddenly had a thought and pulled up his social media. He looked at Kristina’s page. She put on a good front as well. From her profile, she seemed vivacious and outgoing, listed her career as an independent contractor, and sometimes referred to herself as a consultant.

  He shook his head. He couldn’t believe she had turned into the woman she is now. She’d changed somewhere along the way.

  But before he could think about her any more, his phone began ringing.

  The face of Tommy, Trent’s brother, popped up on his screen.

  “Hey, brother,” Trent said, hoping he didn’t sound like an exhausted, sleep-deprived mess. “What’s going on?”

  “Hey, Trenton. What’s up? You never call unless something is bothering you.”

  Ain’t that the truth. Or when I’m so fatigued and so tired that I can’t even think straight.

  “Have you talked to Dad or Pop today?”

  “Dad, briefly,” Tommy said, confusion in his voice. “He was going to dinner with a colleague. I think he was going to a place on the other side of town. Why?”

  “Well,” Trent said, swallowing. “I think there’s something wrong. I can’t get in touch with him.”

  But Tommy didn’t sound the least bit concerned. It was as if Trent had called to say he had trouble finding any place to eat in the area. In fact, Tommy actually laughed at Trent.

  Doesn’t he have any . . . no, no, he doesn’t.

  “Maybe he’s asleep and turned off his phone,” Tommy said after laughing a bit. “You know he has trouble forgetting to charge it. I think you’re overreacting, Trent.”

  But after getting shot at, after losing the love of his life again, after losing everything but his life, Trent wasn’t having it.

  “I think you should cut your poker weekend short. It isn’t safe.”

  Tommy groaned, finally starting to realize Trent was serious.

  “You’re paranoid, brother. Geez. I’ll come home if there’s something wrong with Pop.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Trent said, realizing he had to describe everything that had just happened. “I just spent the last couple hours getting shot at in a hotel. I think this feud has escalated to another level, Tommy. I’m on my way to Dad’s now. Meet me there.”

  Tommy finally seemed to get the hint.

  “The fuck, Trent? Jesus. Okay, I’ll be there in a few.”

  Trent finally arrived at his father’s mansion, pulling out his Colt in preparation for the worst. He held the cold metal against his palms and looked around before walking to the door. He was wary and on edge. There was something that felt amiss to him, but at the same time, he questioned whether or not Tommy had a point. Was someone really after Kristina in the hotel, and he just happened to get in the way?

  You know that’s not likely.

  But then again, how likely was it that any of the shit that has gone down would actually go down?

  No, I’m not paranoid. I’d be paranoid if I imagined those shots. I most definitely got fucking shot at.

  He continued into the house, quickly turning from corner to corner, staring through the sight on his Colt. If there was an intruder, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

  As Trent wandered through the house, he noticed it was eerily quiet. Even the housekeeper seemed to either be gone or sleeping. There was no one in the living room or the parlor. He made his way to his father’s office and swiftly opened the door. His father’s desk chair was empty, and his computer was turned off.

  His father was usually fastidious about his work. Had he finished early, or did he just decide to take a break? It didn’t appear he had any pressing work on the top of his desk. Trent retreated from the office and shut the door. It was still peculiar that nothing seemed out of place.

  Too peculiar. The fact that nothing was out of place and it seemed perfectly clean was as much a red flag as anything else.

  He picked up his phone and, while walking to the kitchen, dialed his father’s number again. There was no answer, and he didn’t hear it ringing in any of the adjacent rooms. The kitchen was cleaned and there wasn’t any sign of meals being prepared. There was only one cup by the coffee pot, and Trent assumed his father had made a cup at some point during the day and returned it to that same spot. It was empty.

  Maybe Tommy was right.

  Trent walked upstairs to the bedrooms. He rounded the corner, still with his gun leveled. Finally, a sign.

  Unfortunately, not a good sign.

  His father’s bedroom was a mess. The dresser drawers were pulled out, and his father’s clothes were scattered on the floor. The bed had been destroyed, and the sheets and covers had been thrown on the floor haphazardly as well. It seemed as if his closet had been ransacked the same way.

  Someone on the inside is doing this. Someone who knows the layout of this place.

  We’re going to have to clean out the staff here. There are too many goddamn risks.

  Seconds later, Trent heard footsteps. He whirled the gun around, but he lowered the barrel instantly at the sight of his brother turning the corner.

  “Tommy, this isn’t good,” Trent said as Tommy calmed himself after having a gun pointed at him. “There’s no way Dad would have let this go on if he were here. I hope someone just broke in while he was out. What restaurant did you say he went to?”

  “You know how Dad is when he has his mindset on a good steak. Del Vincento’s.”

  Guess that’s our next stop then.

  “You think I’m paranoid now?”

  Trent may have been right, but no one was laughing.

  “It looks like they were looking for something,” Tommy said. “Any idea what?”

  “I don’t know,” Trent said. “Last time they left something behind, it was a fucking baby blanket. So for all I know, they might have left a coloring book here.”

  Trent walked down the hallway to the master bathroom and opened the door, nervous about what more he would see. Thankfully, this room looked undisturbed. The pristine white shower curtain had no moisture remaining on it at all. He did see his father’s comb and pomade on the sink. Trent opened the medicine cabinet and found a bottle of aspirin on the second shelf.

  He looked at his reflection in the mirror. He looked like hell. He appeared as if he hadn’t slept for days. His hair was disheveled and there were bags underneath his eyes. His head ached, and he still didn’t feel like himself.

  Ever since he had had drinks with Kristina, he felt odd. He felt like he was standing outside himself, watching all of his actions play out like it was a dream. He took a few minutes and splashed some water on his face. It woke him up a little, and a little was all he needed for the moment.

  And it gave him an idea.

  “Hey, Tommy, I have a hunch,” he said, jogging back to meet his brother. “Do you still have the keys to the attic on your keychain?’

  “Yeah,” he said, trying to make sense of Trent’s request. “I do. But why do you want to go to the attic? Let’s just go to the steakhouse and pick him up.”

  Trent didn’t want to waste time. Even just a few
seconds were likely to matter.

  “Make your brother happy and roll your eyes later.”

  “Fine,” Tommy said. “Whatever you think. Let’s go.”

  Trent pulled down on a dangling chain attached to the ceiling. When he did so, a ladder dropped down. He then climbed up the ladder and took Tommy’s keys. He popped the key in the lock and twisted.

  Trent pushed up the hidden panel to reveal the attic above.

  “Okay, looks clear. There’s something we have to look for.”

  Trent climbed the ladder and stood in the attic. It had been years since he’d been in it. He really didn’t have a need for anything stored up there. Like every family, they kept mostly family mementos in there that had no place in the sitting room or the living room. He fumbled in the darkness and ran his hands along the wall until he found the light switch. Once the room was illuminated, he extended his hand to Tommy and helped him climb into the loft.

  “Jesus, Trent,” Tommy said, trying to avoid banging his head on the ceiling. “What are we doing up here? I haven’t seen this room in years.”

  “I haven’t had the opportunity to tell you,” Trent said, starting to connect the dots in his head. “Whoever burnt down our warehouse and stabbed Saul’s wife has been here. I found my baby blanket in the abandoned building. The last time I saw it, it was stored with Grandma’s things. I know she kept things in a trunk up here.”

  Tommy started to connect the dots.

  “So,” Tommy said, trying to summarize what was being said. “You think whoever took that also may have taken something else.”

  Trent nodded. It seemed like a pretty logical leap. After all, it wasn’t like this was a series of events. This was a single, albeit massive, gut punch.

  “There’s a problem with that theory,” Tommy said. “I’m the only person other than Dad who has a key to the attic, and I assure you, I haven’t given anyone my keys. I haven’t been up here in a million years either.”

  But Trent wasn’t convinced he was wrong so easily. Just because only two people were supposed to own a key didn’t mean that other people couldn’t easily procure one for themselves.

  “What if you lost your key and didn’t notice it for a while because you don’t have a need for it?”

  Tommy visibly flinched at that before deflecting the possibility.

  “I don’t understand why it’s so important to find the one person who did this anyway,” Tommy said, although his words sounded like he just wanted to avoid responsibility for potentially losing his key. “I say we go old school and storm their warehouses and their homes guns blazing. I don’t think all this detective work is necessary. I mean, I don’t think they would be very considerate in this spot.”

  “Because we’re not those people, Tommy,” Trent said. “That’s not how Pop and Dad raised us. We were raised to only take action when provoked or backed into a corner. Jesus, you just can’t shoulder your way through life and expect to be rewarded.”

  “It’s been working for some people.”

  Trent sighed. He and his brother had a tendency to butt heads. He could have easily continued arguing, but the two would have never reached a resolution. Whether it was natural fraternal combat or something deeper, Trent couldn’t quite say.

  But with what happened with Kristina, his newfound desire to help in family matters, and Saul’s wife still in the hospital, he needed to focus on what mattered.

  “Come on, Tommy, let’s look through all this crap and see if we can find some more evidence.”

  The pair looked at all the photographs that were displayed on the walls and briefly allowed themselves to smile. Most of them were from generations lost long ago and were solemn black and white posed portraits. The boys were dressed in their Sunday best and the girls, of course, had their best dresses on.

  As they walked through the attic, they saw Trent’s old baseball trophies and Tommy’s old letterman’s jacket. They looked through stacks of old papers. It also appeared that their father’s secret cash pile hadn’t been touched either. Their cocaine stash was still safe in the attic as well. Perhaps all was not as lost as they had thought. The damage was still significant, but it wasn’t permanently crippling.

  Trent then opened another trunk and smiled. His father’s antique Tommy guns were still safe in storage.

  “I don’t know what moment you’re lost in,” Tommy said, interrupting Trent’s thoughts. “But didn’t you say we had to hurry? I, for one, want to go find Dad. If you’re as concerned about him as you seem to be, this can wait until later.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking . . .”

  Right. The blanket. That’s the clue that led us back here.

  “Go ahead and open that trunk of Grandma Mon’s things. That’s where the blanket would have been.”

  Tommy sighed for a moment before doing as he said. Tommy jingled his keys and popped open the antique trunk that smelled of mothballs and old papers. There were various newspaper clippings, her marriage certificate to their grandfather, and their wedding pictures, a sight that brought a brief smile from Trent.

  Trent and Tommy rifled through the contents of the trunk. It seemed more spacious than it should have been like there was definitely something missing. It took a few seconds to realize that their grandmother’s sterling silver broach was missing, another artifact that had seemingly been stolen along with the blanket. But unlike the blanket, which had deliberately been left out as a sort of message to Trent and the others, the broach was nowhere to be seen.

  “Tommy,” Trent said nervously. “Do you remember Dad or Pop selling Grandma’s broach?”

  “Nah,” Tommy said dismissively. “Pop would never do that. He wouldn’t part with any of her things. It was like pulling teeth to get him to even consider donating some of her old clothing, remember? He insisted she would have felt the need to keep it just in case it would be needed in the future. It took Dad sitting him down and explaining to him that even when we had wives, they wouldn’t want any of her dated articles of clothing. Besides, her other jewelry is in here along with her pearls and wedding set, so why would he sell just the broach?”

  Trent knew he was right. Whoever had taken the broach had deliberately focused on that and the blanket, despite all the other expensive items in the box. He just hated that was the case because it meant there was no easy suggestion.

  “That’s a good question, Tommy,” Trent said, even though he knew it was a question that had no good answer. “I just can’t make heads or tails of this. I can tell you this though, we’ve had an intruder here. I’m so damned tired of playing cat and mouse.”

  He sighed.

  “Come on. Let’s lock up and go find Dad. I think it’s time we take the fight to our enemies. I’m tired of just sitting still. But first, Tommy . . . do me a favor? Bring that trunk of guns with you when you come down. This is serious business.”

  Tommy didn’t need Trent to tell him. The eeriness of having only a couple items stolen from a box of extraordinary value was more than enough to get all the boys in line, knowing they had a task to do.

  Tommy followed him down, holding a cache of weapons from the attack, and they took their time locking up the residence once more. They loaded the trunk in the back of one of their many cars, and Trent threw Tommy the keys.

  “What?” Trent said when Tommy looked surprised. “You’re the better driver. I’ll admit that.”

  “Trent, what were you doing earlier?” Tommy said suddenly. “You said you were in a hotel and felt weird? Did you get fucked up or something? Like what all happened?”

  “No,” Trent said. He didn’t want to mention that Kristina was back in town. He didn’t want to raise suspicions about something he had been unable to follow through on.

  Unfortunately for him, that desire was not so easily met when facing pressure from his own family.

  “It’s nothing like that. It’s . . . did you know Kristina’s in town?”

  “Oh shit,” Tommy said, s
ounding concerned. “No way. You know that’s always trouble. What is she in town for, did she say?”

  But if Trent knew the answer to that, he would have had more clues than he had now. The fact pissed him off, but it didn’t stop him from doing his best to keep a level head.

  “Nah,” Trent said. “She just said she had a job and was meeting a client at the hotel. We had some champagne, and I found myself dodging some bullets on the way out.”

  Tommy was shaking his head in disbelief. It wasn’t unheard of for Salvatores to get shot at, but getting shot at in a hotel room like so, that was up there for rare events. Trent hadn’t even mentioned the part about her breaking into his apartment, dropping off a “gift,” and getting him blitzed off champagne.

  Sometimes, fact was stranger than fiction.

  Tommy suddenly took a sharp right, and they could see the glowing sign for the steakhouse in the distance. It was rather unusual for their father to go out after midnight, but he did occasionally have his moods where he didn’t feel like communicating with anyone. Granted, Trent knew he might have been seeing a client as well, but his father also had a tendency to use “client” as an excuse for alone time. And, unfortunately, it wasn’t like the family was swimming in business after the previous night’s attack.

  Tommy accelerated and passed a car turning off, then eased back over into the turning lane, pulling into the steakhouse with ease.

  “That’s how you do it,” Tommy said, bragging about his unusually aggressive driving skills. “But . . . I don’t see any of Dad’s drivers here, do you?”

  Trent gazed at the parking lot, both in the valet and the self-park. There were no black cars, no other “undercover” vehicles. It was a little disconcerting. Maybe their father had gone home early or had never shown up.

  Or, perhaps, he was so undercover he hadn’t even spoken to one of his drivers. Given that everything that had happened seemed to be the result of an inside job, Trent really couldn’t blame his father if he had made that choice.

  “No,” Trent said, trying not to show his concern at that observation. “Maybe he’s having them pick him up later instead of waiting. Come on, let’s go see what’s happening.”