Page 18 of Unraveled Love

I slapped my hand toward the nightstand behind me until I found my phone.

5:30 blared at me in bright numbers on my home screen and I groaned, dropping back to the bed and shoving my palms against my eyes. Addi had tossed and turned all night after her nightmares, waking me with soft, pained cries I was certain I’d never forget.

Now that I was awake, there was no way I’d be able to fall back asleep.

Carefully rolling out of bed, I quickly and quietly grabbed clothes so I didn’t wake Addi. Her features were currently peaceful and relaxed, so much at odds with how she’d been during the night.

She needed sleep, and I needed coffee and a meeting with Jaxon to figure out our next steps and protection plans.

I ducked out of the room without making a noise. After using the restroom in the small bathroom off the living area of the suite, I wasn’t surprised at all to see Jaxon on the couch. He didn’t strike me as a man who slept much, especially when deep on duty like now. Papers were strewn in a messy pile in front of him, along with his tablet and phone. He sipped a cup of coffee and flipped through the pages.

He didn’t react to my presence, so I went to the kitchen and filled a mug. The irritating wait of the Keurig grated my bones and tightened my jaw. What was suddenly wrong with pots of coffee you could fill the second you wanted a cup?

Finally, after the hours-long wait, I brought it to my mouth, took the first tongue-burning sip, and closed my eyes.

“What are you looking at?” I finally asked, once the caffeine energized my veins and I was coherent enough for conversation.

“Photos.” Jaxon slid one away from him. “Look.”

The images were grainy, taken from street security camera footage. He seemed to be alone, and he had his shoulders hunched. He was preparing to enter a building through a door that was being held open for him, an arm bracing it from the inside. The photo, captured at one in the morning, only showed his profile.

“Where is this?”

“New Jersey. Close to one of the Mancussos’ businesses. I have Luca sending me anything he can find.”

The photo wasn’t clear, but I’d stared at the man’s picture enough to need to grit my teeth together to fight back the urge to tear that image in two.

“Daniel.”

Last we knew, he’d been heading south, but he could have been anywhere by now. That was a long damn way to drive, but not impossible, and the build made sense, even though he was looking down, head slightly turned in the other direction. Too bad the asshole didn’t have something noticeable, like a tattoo or visible mark anywhere above the collar of his shirt to solidify our assumptions.

“Could be. The place is a sex club, kinky shit, and in an area where auctions are done sometimes.”

The more I learned about the Mancusso family and everything they were involved in, the more I wanted to burn them all to the ground.

“If that’s the case, at one in the morning, it could be anyone.” I imagined, at least, that most of that disgusting kind of shit didn’t exactly occur during normal business hours.

“Possibly.”

I collapsed back into the couch, too exhausted to hold my head up. Running a hand through my hair, down my face, I let it fall to the back of the couch and closed my eyes.

My mind swirled with solutions. If he was in New York, how big of a threat was he?

With the media attention on Matthew, there was no way he’d return to Charleston. I assumed his mom was safely back in the Mancusso fold in New York, tucked away and protected. Her family would let Matthew swing for the sex trafficking, denying any involvement, and we already knew there wasn’t a lot of evidence to connect them.

Hell, even anything we had was circumstantial and guesses.

“So we don’t have shit. And we don’t have the manpower—”

“Or firepower.”

“Or firepower,” I repeated, “to do anything more than wait for them to leave New Jersey or New York.”

Which meant sit on our asses and wait for them to return. They wouldn’t let this slide. Their southern operation was in shambles. They’d want retaliation for the men’s lives we’d taken, for Matthew’s arrest, and for freeing Addi from their clutches.

“Unless we draw them out again,” Jaxon said.

“No.” I glared at him, whipping my head in his direction so quickly a pain sluiced along the veins in my neck. “Not again. No fucking way.”

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