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Risking this dream of mine for a girl I didn’t know anymore had been something I couldn’t do. But losing my heart by not running to Kelly’s side each and every fuckin’ time she sent a new message was fuckin’ impossible.
The time had come. I needed to find her. I needed to tell her the truth and ask her to give me a chance. At least if she rejected me, I could force myself to move on with half a heart, instead of living with my heart lost to the girl I loved.
I’d picked up my foot to turn back to my office, to grab my car keys and run to my Jeep, when movement at the front windows stopped me. Van yanked open the door, his gaze catching on me before he looked back over his shoulder.
My heart leapt to my throat only to drop to my stomach the second I saw who was there.
Carina.
There was no smile on her face as she scanned the room, eyes dancing over everything from the walls to the furniture to the people gathered there. Only when her attention fell on me did her lips curl into the softest smile, and my knees shook at what looked like her sympathy.
Before I could summon the courage to speak, Van stepped between us. “Found her.”
It shouldn’t have been loud enough for the entire room to hear him, but every last one of them had fallen silent before the door fell shut.
Every last one of them knew I’d tasked Van with finding Kelly after he’d come home from his grandmother’s funeral earlier that month.
Carina stepped up to Van’s side, her dark blue eyes taking a quick trip down my body. “You look like you’ve seen better days.”
Van mumbled, “Ain’t that the truth,” before I even opened my mouth.
Carina hooked her hands around my arm, using them to drag me closer so she could press her lips to my cheek.
“You found her?” I straightened, directing my question at Van.
Bastard was chewing his lip, looking like he didn’t want to tell me—same way he looked after coming home from that damn funeral and telling me he was involved in a shootout with his little FBI family friend—and I swore I was going to collapse to the fuckin’ floor. “Let’s go to a conference room.”
Much as I wanted to know right now, with the way everyone was watching us, I figured it was for the best. I led the way, scrubbing my hands over my head as I waited for the door to click shut.
“Where is she?”
“It’s good to see you too.” Carina took a seat in one of the chairs, crossing her legs and sitting back like she was a queen with all the time in the world.
“Don’t have time for this, Carina. Where is she?”
Van tossed his cell on the table, and I snatched it up. But one look at the screen had me falling into a chair.
Fuck. Kelly was beautiful.
Couldn’t stop staring at her picture, tracing the curve of her jaw with my eyes, wishing it was my fingers.
“I showed her picture to a few friends.” Carina waited until I looked up from Van’s phone to continue. “One of them told me she thought she was dancing at the club she works at.”
“Club?” I’d been to all of them I could find the last month, secretly searching for her. Desperately needing to see the face behind the words popping up on my phone screen.
“The Pink Minx.”
Holy fuckin’ hell.
Not once did I think to check fuckin’ strip clubs. Why would I? After what she’d been through? How could she have ended up working in a strip club?
Unless…
“She being forced? Is that what it is? She’s being forced to do this against her will?”
Carina’s sculpted brow rose, disappearing under her bangs. “On the contrary. Leni tells me she never wants to leave the building. She thinks Kelly has convinced one of the bouncers to let her live in the storage room.”
Why? Why would she do that? Vinny was still paying for the apartment Jen and Kelly had shared just in case Kelly needed a place to live. There was my safehouse. There was her parents’ house.
