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She’s got to be kidding me. This woman all but fawns over my father, but I try to remind myself there are situations where captives become infatuated with their captor. Maybe it started one way and ended here, but I’m still far from forgiving right now. Alana is missing. She helped make that happen. “I don’t have time for this right now,” I snap. “Get out of my way.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to get Alana back,” she repeats, “but you need to know that he won’t talk to me. I’ve called him half a dozen times since you showed up at the coffee shop.”
“You want to help? Stop being a token in my father’s game. Stop being used by him to hurt Alana. Start there.”
“How? He’s like the mob. Once you get in, you never get out. How do you not know this? Truly, how do we know whoever took Alana won’t try to come for me before you do?”
And there it is. Her real motivation for tracking me down. Herself. And as much as that makes me want to throw her to the wolf, aka my father, she’s Alana’s mother, and I can’t do that.
“Alana came here today to warn you.”
“Warn me? Warn me about what?”
“The heat is on my father. He needs a fall guy, and my guess is that’s you. You’re a perfect candidate for a well-timed, staged suicide. The poor, heartbroken widow couldn’t live without her dead husband. He’ll paint you as the killer who wanted the life insurance.”
She pales, her cheeks hollowing with the impact, one hand settling at her throat. “He wouldn’t. He can’t.” She gulps air. “You think—” Those two words come out as a rasp, as if her throat is raw with the acid burn of the truth she already knows to be upon her.
“I know. And what you fail to understand is that none of this was ever about you or Alana. It’s about me and him and what he wants from me. Alana was a threat to my submission. You were a tool to control her, and therefore me. But now that he’s feeling the heat of bad press caused by your family, you’re in the way. You’re a problem he needs to go away.”
“Are you taunting me or offering me help?”
“I am only helping you because it’s what Alana wants. Go upstairs and pack a bag. My men will take you to the airport and get you out of the country on my dollar. You’ll hide there until I end this, until I know it’s safe.”
“I can’t leave,” she objects indignantly. “Not when I have no idea where my daughter is right now.”
“If you choose not to accept my help, be clear, I won’t offer again. You’re on your own.”
She blinks up at me, tears burning in her eyes again, before she shakes her head, but in contradiction, she hisses, “I’ll take your help,” and turns to the door and enters the building.
Unappreciative witch, I think, gritting my teeth. I’m saving her fucking life while she might well have ended Alana’s. If I lose her, I will only survive to punish her and my father. She better fucking hope she leaves the country before that kind of news would reach me. My cellphone rings, and I glance down to where it rests in my hand, an unknown number on caller ID. I rotate, and Blake is already in front of me, eyeing my phone. “Your line is tapped. Go for it.”
I answer the line on speaker. “Damion West.”
“We have your bitch. One million dollars, and you can have her back. We’ll call with instructions. We do this tonight.”
There is no doubt in my mind that this is a coverup set-up by my father. I can feel it in my bones. “Tell my father he has exactly one hour to return Alana to my apartment. If she’s not there, I’m calling the media and holding a press conference to which he will be the subject. The door will be unlocked in five minutes.”
The line is silent, seconds ticking by, until it goes dead. I pull up the app on my phone and unlock my front door.
On the outside, I’m cool and collected. On the inside, I’m screaming with fear for Alana, but I don’t dare show it outwardly, as we’re no doubt being watched. “Well played,” Blake approves. “It was a good gamble.”
“A gamble,” I repeat. “I just gambled with the woman I love’s life.”
“By necessity, not choice, and you had the good instincts to know that. Every second she’s gone lowers our risk of getting her back. It was a necessary gamble, Damion. It was the right move. She’s still in the building. They can’t get her out without us seeing them. We need to pull out of the building and let them do the logical next step—return her to her mother’s place.”
The problem with his conclusion is that it assumes logic when my father does nothing he believes anyone else will see as logical. That’s how he wins. That’s how he creates hell for others, including me.
Chapter Sixteen
Damion
My father doesn’t want to kill Alana. He wants to scare her and force her submission.
But that doesn’t mean his goons won’t hurt and abuse her, and if I think about that too hard, I’ll be the one going door-to-door in her mother’s building and doing so with a gun in my hand. Or just a fist in a lot of faces.
The Walker team launches into action, putting on a show as they clear the building of their team, setting up the kidnappers to feel free to return Alana. We hope. I so fucking pray.
Alana’s mother herself remains in her apartment, with Joey secretly guarding her and, yes, protecting her. The irony of offering protection to the woman who didn’t give two shits about her daughter, and the woman I love, and in fact, set her up, still burns me up. But as Blake pointed out, some decisions today might be necessary, no matter how shitty they seem.
