Page 17 of Mason

He gestures toward the bathroom. “She got a little mouthy, so I let her have another slumber party.”

I quirk a brow. “In the bathroom?”

He shrugs. “I like to leave them where they fall, you know? She looked snug.”

Fall? Fuck. We’ll pay for that. We’ll pay for every mark on the girl.

I cross my arms. “You can’t hurt her.”

Grunting, he shuts the cabin’s front door behind me. “Relax. She doesn’t have a scratch on her. From me, at least. There’s a handprint on her face. No clue how it got there.”

I pull a stray sprig of thorns from my jacket sleeve and move to toss it in the empty fireplace. “Where did you find her?”

Snatching Giambelli’s baby girl couldn’t have been easy. After he caught wind of what happened to Spencer, he probably had her rolling around with an army of bodyguards. Unless the slippery son of a bitch had something to do with the hit and knew she wasn't in danger. But the latter seems inconceivable. He has nothing to gain with Spencer dead. He knows Dad’s temper. He met with him this morning, for Christ’s sake.

“Drinking at Down Under,” he replies. “Don’t worry. Her friend was too busy getting fucked in a bathroom stall to notice. No one saw me slip out the back, either. It was a quiet operation.”

Shit.

“Down Under? That place has cameras out the ass.” The club is also Italian-owned, complicating matters. If Giambelli even guesses that our blood is behind his daughter’s kidnapping, he’ll show up with guns blazing at every Carlyle establishment.

He grins. “Had cameras out the ass. Give me more credit than that, Mason.”

He has a valid point. He isn’t an idiot. Growing up, Dixon’s plans always had plans. “What are you doing with her?”

Straightening, he glances at the bathroom door. “I figured you’d stow her away here for a few days. Maybe weeks. It all depends on the plot being sniffed out.”

“Wait, me?” I cough out. “Oh, no, Dix. No fucking way. I can’t have any part in…”

“Do you want to know who slaughtered your brother or not?” he asks, his voice clipped as he looks back at me with fire in his eyes. “Like it or not, this is the hand life dealt us. I want this motherfucker dead just as much as you do. If someone kills her, it makes that a lot harder.”

I pinch the space between my eyes, flustered. I can’t take care of a girl and chase down leads. Besides, the cabin is too far from the city to pop over whenever I want. Someone will know something is up after a few trips. “How are you so sure they’re related? Maybe Giambelli shorted one of his men and…”

“No one crosses Anthony for money. They know better. This is bigger than that.”

I pull my hand from my face, remembering the Russian fuck that waved a piece at me this morning on my way to my parents’ house. Dad brushed it off when I brought it up, but every lead needed to be run down. “Kozlov?”

He snorts, rolling his eyes. “Please. If it was those idiots, you would’ve heard them bragging a mile away. They’re too messy. They wouldn’t kill the girl, either. She’s worth more for their whoring operation alive than dead.”

“Other than Giambelli, they’re the only group we’ve had any issues with after crushing the Mexican pricks.” Repeated, ongoing issues that seem to escalate by the day. They blew into town like a sour wind and lingered.

Dixon eyes me critically. “You don’t have any men pulling away recently? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

I shake my head. “Honestly, after the Mexican shootout, everyone has seemed checked out some days. Even Dad. There’s no incentive to stay with the family other than loyalty. Giambelli has the money. Kozlov has the pussy and drugs.”

We have an alcoholic leader with an anger problem and a wave of old blood in our crew that’ll likely leave whenever he croaks. The newer generation knows it, too. Without Spencer, we’re completely off-course. Grady is next in line, but he doesn’t give a damn about anything but drinking and having fun. I wouldn’t be shocked if he runs off to Vegas for a life of booze and gambling. I won’t blame him, either. At least he won’t have a target on his head there. Seeing Spencer this morning might’ve been the final straw for him. He doesn’t want to be next, and neither do I.

“You don’t kill Anthony’s daughter for all the pussy, drugs, and money in the world.” He scoffs. “I need to go. I’ll be in touch. I grabbed basic supplies and stocked the place. It’s enough for a few days.”

I’m assuming by stocked, he means the two plastic grocery bags discarded in a corner next to the firewood stand. The rest of this place is a ghost town of cobwebs and dust.

“Where the fuck are you going? You can’t leave me with her. I have an operation to run.”

He narrows his eyes. “She’s contained. You don’t need to babysit. Just leave some food out every few days, and like any scared dog, she’ll eat. She has a toilet, too, so you don’t need to walk her.”

He’s too flippant about the whole thing, and it makes me want to put his head through a wall. He kidnapped Anthony fucking Giambelli’s daughter and plopped her in my lap like a cat with a dead bird. “And when this is done? Do we let her go run back to daddy to tell him how we held her captive?”

He chuckles, reaching for the front door’s handle. “We’re an hour from Biloxi. When the time comes, we get daddy’s little girl drunk off her ass, give her some happy pills, and drop her off at a casino. It’ll look like she went on a wild bender. She’ll say such nonsense that Anthony won’t believe a word she says.”

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