Page 57 of Deadlier Obsessions

Reluctantly, all three of us walk to the other side of the store while they sign their books. Mav narrows his gaze at me. “I don’t like this. Can’t at least one of us be over there with them?”

Sebastian shrugs. “Let them have a few minutes, but not too long.”

We all stand staring at each other as we wait in the monster fucker section, seriously these books are actual monsters fucking women. It’s not bad enough that we have to compete with other men, but now monsters too? Mav chuckles as he flips through one of the books. “This shit is crazy. This dude has three tongues.”

I shake my head at him and glance at Sebastian. “How long has it been?”

He shrugs. “We should check out theirTikTok, then we’ll know when they are at least done with that.”

Obviously, that’s a good idea for three possessive assholes freaking out about being away from their women. Their pregnant women. I smile as I pull up their live show, which I didn’t expect them to do, because Stella is really weird about posting shit that can’t be edited. I watch, with Sebastian and Mav staring at my phone screen over my shoulder, until it ends. Switching the app off, I glance at Pretty Boy. “Five minutes. That’s all they’re getting.”

It bothers the fuck out of me, because they’ve never asked us to not be in eyeshot before. And I do not fucking like it.

“I gotta take a piss,” Sebastian says and I nod.

In under five minutes he comes running, looking pale as a ghost and clearly rattled.

MAV

“They’re gone,” he says through harsh breaths.

Glaring at him, I say. “What do you mean they’re fucking gone?”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Gone. They left us. We were played. They are writers, after all. They just wrote the greatest downfall. Only it’s not fiction. It’s our fucking real lives.”

If Sebastian looks devastated, Gage looks ready to tear someone to shreds. He chuckles humorlessly. “They have no clue what they’ve done. I’ll find them. Lock both of them up and throw away the key. This isn’t the end. It’s only the goddamn beginning.”

Why do I always have to be the voice of reason? “What if they didn’t leave?”

Gage looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, and honestly, I might have. Both our women gone might be the end of any sanity I had left. “What?”

I shrug. “They like to think, for some reason, that they aren’t popular enough for anybody to really care about them or what they’re doing. After that book they wrote together though, they gained quite the following. I’m just saying, what if they didn’t leave on their own?”

Gage growls, “Fuck,” as he takes off to I don’t know where, but both Sebastian and I storm after him. He barks at the shop owner, “Where’s the back room?”

She visibly shrinks from the glare he’s giving her, and points to the other side of the store and we walk into the back room, and Gage says quietly, “Why the fuck is there blood on the floor?”

We all stare at it as realization sets in, someone took our pregnant women, and at least one of them is hurt. The mixture of fear, anger, and heartbreak is potent. We only have room for one of those emotions right now. We will find them, and whoever took them is going to regret ever laying eyes on our girls.Ours.There’s one thing the three of us will never tolerate.If you fuck with our family, you are fucked.And not only did they take our women, but our children too.

“We should ask to see their cameras.”

Gage responds with, “Fuck that,” as he takes his laptop off his shoulder, and sets it up at a table in the back room that I assume is for employee breaks. I don’t have to ask what he’s doing, because he’s Gage, and I already know. He’s not asking permission because he’ll simply do what he always does, take what he wants, and hack his way in to find the video of our women, and whoever was stupid enough to take them.

SEBASTIAN

Did I think they’d run from us, maybe realized that they were safer away from us, or that they shouldn’t bring babies into a family like ours? Of course I did, because hadn’t they had doubts recently? Their doubts, and the unsettled feelings between us, has been fucking up my head for days. Gage Rage might be a thing, but I think there’s a version I suffer from too, because I really feel like I could have gone on a rampage when I first noticed they were gone. I mean, we left them signing books and doing their live stream thing, and they were in their element, but seconds after they stop recording, they disappear? We’re supposed to be better at keeping them where we want them.

“Fucking camera angles are shit in here. I’m gonna check the street cams too. Mav, get outside and look for them, just in case.” Mav runs from the room, while I pick up my phone again, figuring I’ll rewatch that live stream, because maybe there’s a hint on there that we didn’t realize was a hint earlier, because our focus was where it always should be, on our ladies.

Before I can even open the old stream, a new one pops up from Stella’s account, and there’s no visual, but it says there’s sound, so I turn up the volume on my phone again, as I nudge Gage to get his attention.

“What?”

I shush him as Stella’s voice suddenly rings out in the silence.

“Seriously, this is the best you can do for a kidnapping? Where are the blindfolds? Are these actual handcuffs? That’s so last year, moron.”

That fucking woman is everything. Lucy starts giggling, and I hear a gruff man’s voice curse at them. That fucker will regret every fucking second of his life.

---