Page 79 of Mine

“So,” I said when I caught him in the kitchen, “me being gay is cool with you and your beautiful wife. How ’bout Rigel?”

His eyes flicked to me. “His stepbrother lives with him.”

I waited.

“His wife lives in Paris.”

“Okay.”

“And he can’t say, but I’m not stupid. I know how my eyes follow my wife when she walks into a room. His eyes do the same when he’s looking at his stepbrother, Omar.”

Well all right then.

“No more talk about gay or straight. Nobody cares. Besides, it will probably make you seem even less threatening.”

I chuckled. “That makes no sense.”

He shrugged and told me to get the hell out of his house. I went to kiss his wife goodbye before his driver took me home.

I felt good by the time I walked into my apartment and my phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Trevan?”

The sniffle I got made me wary because I already knew her voice. “Jocelyn?”

“Oh God,” she moaned.

That fast, my heart was in my throat. I had been so consumed with Gabriel all day, with my new place in the hierarchy, with what I would have to give up and with what I would reap, that I had forgotten about my boy and the fact that I never got a call from him when he got up that morning. It seemed small—he was with his family, he was safe—but now Jocelyn was crying.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ohmygod, Trevan, he’s gone.”

“Who’s gone? Landry’s gone?”

“Yes.”

“Gone how?”

“Taken. Kidnapped. We’re waiting to hear about a ransom, but it’s been hours and—ohmygod!”

“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up.

I called Conrad because I was certain he’d know what to do. I apologized for not calling when I got home, wanting to explain everything to him, and asked him to meet me in Vegas.

“No,” he told me. “I’m coming. I’ll pick you up. Wait for me.”

“I gotta go to the airport and get a ticket and––”

“Just stay there, I’m on my way. Don’t move.”

I waited and paced and called Jocelyn back and asked her to tell me everything from the beginning, very slowly since I was not absorbing words as easily as I normally did. It was hard to retain facts when you were no longer breathing.

Chapter 9

I SAT in first class the next morning nearly climbing out of my skin. The only thing that kept me grounded at all was Conrad’s presence beside me. Of course, after the first hour, I attacked him because he was geographically accessible.