chapter 23

"That could be good, right? If he loves her, he won't hurt her."

"You don't understand. Men don't like to be hurt. Men like Petrovich are more likely to kill her for her betrayal than forgive her for her indiscretions."

Silence fills the room as that news settles around us.

"He spends more time in West Africa than any other place as far as I can tell, which means—"

"It's probably where he'd take Dona if he got his hands on her," I finish for him.

"That's a little outside of our realm."

"What chatter have you heard from the Russians?" I don't ask for details about how he gets his info. I'm certain someone in the government wouldn't be happy with where he likes to dig. I'm working on plausible deniability.

"They've been silent. Not one peep. As of yesterday evening, it's like they all just disappeared."

"Or they're on to us," I mutter with another scrape of my hands down my face.

"I'm more careful than getting caught by a handful of Russian mobsters, boss," he grumbles. "You know that."

"Still. I'm going to call Cerberus for help. They're much better with international interactions, and we helped them a while back in Venezuela."

I stand to leave, needing to make this call in private in case Tug gives me shit and I have to pretend to beg. I don't need my men seeing me fall so far from grace.

"One more thing," Wren says before I can step out of the office, "Petrovich checked himself out of the hospital yesterday. It was against medical advice, but the bullet missed all major arteries. He'll be sore for a while, but he'll make a full recovery."

"That fucking complicates things."

"Maybe not," Wren says as he turns in his seat to face me.

"How so?"

"Maybe since no one died, they won't be so inclined to take a life." He shrugs, and I wish I had his optimism.

"I've seen guys kill over a can of soda and the last cigarette in a pack. Believe me, a couple million dollars in missing diamonds is more than enough reason to put a bullet in someone's head."

I shoot off a text to Tug, one of the guys that works for Kincaid, the president of the Cerberus MC in New Mexico. They do a lot of recon and recovery, mostly tracking women down that have been abducted and removed from the United States and forced into sex trafficking, and they have the resources I'll need if we're going to West Africa to get Dona.

As I wait for the return text, unsure if the Cerberus team is even on American soil, I can't help but feel like we might already be too late. I lock myself in my office, disable the cameras so Wren can't watch me, and have myself a little breakdown. I've gone years without Dona even popping up in my head, but I'd never wish her dead. I'd never want harm to come to her. I can admit that I wanted her to feel half of the emotional pain she caused me, but I'd never wish for something like this to happen no matter how much of it is because of her own actions.

****Anna

"Maybe it was something I said," I mutter as I look down at the still folded pile of blankets Dean used the other day.

I know it was something I said, and unfortunately, I remember every stupid word that came out of my drunk mouth. If there were ever a time to turn back the clocks for a do-over…

He hasn't been here. He was gone when I woke up, stayed gone the entire day, was still MIA when I went to bed last night, and telling from the untouched linens, he never came back last night either.

We've declined maid service since being here. Dean's idea of course because we can never be too careful about who we let in the room.

Me: Where are you?

That's the text I sent fifteen minutes ago that has still gone unanswered.

So, I made a comment about his mouth and tried to kiss him. Who cares? Is he like a man-child or something? He said no, I sort of accepted it. Now it's time to move on. He knows I was drunk. I'd planned to tell him I was joking when I woke up yesterday, only to find him gone. Things don't have to be weird. Things weren't weird until he made them that way by taking off and hiding away.

Dean the Dick: Working.

I narrow my eyes at my phone, squeezing it in anger until I accidently take a screen shot of the text.

"Stupid mother—" I make quick work of deleting the image and then erasing it from my recently deleted folder, all the while wondering if his boy genius of a hacker caught it in time before I got rid of it. Knowing that messy-headed kid, he's been tracking my phone and location since the second I got off that first phone call with Dean days and days ago.

Like an idiot, bored out of my mind, I run from one end of the suite to the other and back again, wondering if he can track the motion with his super-secret, high-tech spy computers. I mean, I'm only assuming he has that shit, but any guy worth his weight in the computer world would. I've watched Criminal Minds; I know how efficient Penelope Cruz is.

I try yoga, but it isn't the same at getting rid of tension alone in a room rather than in front of that sexy instructor down at the country club.

Television does nothing for me, and since I already spent a ton of time alone prior to this recent mess, I've already binge-watched just about everything on Netflix, and I don't care how much people were talking about it a while back, I refuse to watch a show about a dude with a mullet playing with tigers and working his way through straight men.