Page 41 of LA Reign

“My wife was here?” I snap as my heart starts to race.

“Yes, boss.”

“When?”

“About two hours ago. She left shortly before your father.”

Shit! She was here while we were having that conversation? Him, shouting his obnoxious views, and me…letting him. At least that’s how it might have sounded on the outside, to someone who didn’t understand our dynamic. My heart rate accelerates, and I tell myself to calm the fuck down. I don’t know what she heard, and anyway, we can straighten this out. Assuming I can find her. The fact that she seems to have snuck away doesn’t help the sense of panic I feel rising in my gut.

“What? Where did she go? You just let her walk out of here on her own?” I snarl.

“Like I said, she told me you’d asked her to wait for her in the bar. She said Hugo and Hank were waiting there for her at the elevator. Boss, I’m sorry if⁠—”

I cut him off. I don’t have time for his bleating. “Call the bar right now, and see if she’s there,” I say as I pull my cell from my pocket and dial her number. My heart sinks as it goes straight to voicemail. And no, I do not want to leave a fucking message.

“Fuck!” I snarl as I call Hugo.

He answers after a few rings. “Everything okay, boss?”

“That depends. Is Alana with you?”

“No,” he replies, just as Lorenzo shakes his head. Alana isn’t in the bar either.

I take in a deep breath, sucking in a lungful of air as I tell myself that she is safe. She is fine. She’s upset about what the doc told us and about what she may or may not have heard my father saying. She just needed some space, and she’s probably already back at the house. Knowing Alana, she wouldn’t have wanted to cause a scene.

“She’s not with you?” Hugo asks. I forgot he was on the damn line.

“No,” I snap. “Or why the fuck would I be calling you to look for her?”

“Sorry, boss, yeah. Look, this is how it went—she did some work over at the shelter, and then she said she wanted to come see you. Not my place to say, but she seemed a little upset. Not her usual sunny self. She said all she wanted to do was come and wait for you to finish work. I took her to your suite, escorted her inside, and closed the door behind me. She was safe. I thought she was with you.”

I hear the panic building in Hugo’s voice, and it does nothing to calm my bubbling anger.

“It is your fucking job to protect her. Unless you actually hand her over to me, or she is in the house, she is your responsibility!” I growl. “How could you just fucking leave her like that?”

Deep down, I know I’m not being reasonable. But my wife is missing, and I don’t feel reasonable. I feel fury and fear in equal measures. And below all that? Guilt. I should have insisted I spent the day with her. I knew she was upset, and I should never have let her out of my sight.

“I’m on my way back to the hotel, boss,” Hugo says. “I’ll find her.”

“No. I don’t think she’s here, and I have enough men on site to look for her in the hotel. Go check at the shelter. Or any other place she might be, anywhere you’ve taken her before. You’d better pray that we find her soon and that she’s fucking okay!”

“Of course,” he says as he ends the call.

I have so much anger fizzing away inside me I feel like an unexploded bomb. I turn to a nervous Lorenzo, grabbing him by the throat and pushing him against the wall. “How the fuck could you let her just go down to the lobby on her own? Especially with everything that’s going on with the Ortegas! What the fuck do I pay you for?”

“I’m sorry, boss. But she said…”

I squeeze his throat so hard he can’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t lift a finger to defend himself because he knows there’s no point. His life is in my hands, and I’m half considering ending it. If only he’d checked with me. If only he’d kept her in the suite. If only…

“I don’t care what she said. It is your fucking job to protect my family. She is my family. If anything has happened to her…”

I let him go and he gasps for air as he rubs his throat.

I step back and run my hands through my hair. My heart races. Adrenaline courses around my body as though it’s my lifeblood.

I’m wondering what to do next when I feel a familiar hand on my shoulder. I spin around to see Jax. “Hey, amigo. What the hell is going on?”

I pace up and down my office. Alana isn’t at the house or the hotel. She isn’t at the shelter. She isn’t answering her cell. Kristen hasn’t seen her since she left, Magda says the same, and Lucia says nothing because I can’t get hold of her.