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“No.” I pivot on my heel. “I’ll make some calls.”
Muttering under his breath, Dom heads back to the stairs and runs into Luca. The two of them mutter, casting sideways glances in my direction as I stride around them and slam the door to my office. The walls rattle, the sound settling something inside me.
A list. I run through names in my head, discarding the first three and pausing. There’s no one Willow connected to in Cyprus, and she hasn’t clicked with Thalia. But she has made a friend of my sister.
“Regina,” I yell, starting down the hall. My mentality was halfway between a rampaging herd of mafia beasts and a brewing toddler tantrum over misplacing his favorite toy.
“Rafe?” Regina sticks her head out her bedroom door, looking worse than Dom. Dark circles hang beneath her eyes. Her hand covers her mouth, and her skin turns a fascinating shade of green. “One … I’ll be right back.”
She flees into her bathroom, and with the door ajar I can hear her emptying her stomach into the toilet. A quick flush ‘n brush later, she’s back in front of me where I lean against the opposite wall, my hands in my pants pockets.
“Are you okay?” I tilt my head to one side, watching her. A familiar breed of paranoia slithers along my spine.
“Fine. Just travel and lack of sleep and grief. It’s all fucked-up.”
She waves my concern away. “What’s up?”
“Willow’s gone.”
“Huh?” Her mouth falls open.
I watch her reaction carefully, but her shock is as genuine as mine. “Yes.”
Regina blinks and rubs her eyes. “You mean she went out at this hour? What the hell for?”
“No, I mean she’s gone for good.”
My sister’s eyes narrow. “Did you fucking kill her? Because if you did, Rafe, I’ll bury you alive only to dig you up, cut off your cock, and stuff it in your mouth to do it all again.”
Any other day I would smile. “No.”
My lack of response stalls her. “She’s gone. Really?” Her eyes flutter closed and her hand covers her mouth a second time. “Shit. Fuck. Taken?”
“Voluntarily, I believe.” The corner of my mouth turns up in a smile I don’t feel. My entire face is numb.
“Where would she go?” Regina drops her hand to her stomach. Whatever happens there, she manages to steel back, though her face greens up again. “Where, Rafe?”
“Fuck if I know. Apparently, she’s not the wife I thought she was.” Let’s play the blame game.
Regina stalks forward and slaps my chest hard enough for the blow to sting. “You’re a shitty husband if your fucking wife runs from you. What the fuck, Rafe? It’s Willow!” she yells in my face. “She’s fucking perfect for you, for all of us. And you lost her? Where’s Luca,” she mutters, backing off a step. “I need a knife.”
My smile turns genuine. “You sound like her.”
My sister glares at me. “Don’t you even … Dom!” she screeches. “Luca!”
I snort, watching her do exactly the same thing I did minutes before. Then my humor drops. Because the house is listless without Willow in it. I’m lost. I don’t even know where to fucking start.
With the worst.
My eyes fall shut as my head tips back. I stare at the shadows lingering in the high ceiling above me. I checked my friends list, and she’s simply nowhere I expected her to be.
It’s time to call my enemies, and a favor owed.
****
Door-knocking is not my style. I knew that when I started my rounds of Rhode Island’s west coast, touring the dockyards and having a quiet word. Dom walks at my side while Thalia trails us, disappearing at random intervals. My healer has her own agenda that usually involves freeing up women who were stuck in the same vicious cycle of trafficking that kept her under lock and key for so many years. The trauma she went through is what she’s intent on fixing in others like her. Dom freed her alongside me and she frequently limpets to his side like a barrier between her and the world.
Which is what I thought I did for Willow, and the horrors she suffered at her family’s hands.
