Page 30 of Deceit & Destruction

Clenching his teeth, he grabs my wrist and makes the cut, sawing through the fiberglass.

~*~

Blackthorne was gone.

There was no trace of him anywhere on campus and Cassie never came home. Webber called Alex and the girls, and we all met back at our apartment. I didn’t know where to begin. A girl goes missing and the first thing you think is to call the cops, but she wasn’t gone twenty-four hours and we had nothing that pointed to Blackthorne. Not that it mattered, the Scorpio Society probably has them all on their payroll.

“Doesn’t Blackthorne have a son?” Alex questions.

I perk up at that, recalling my conversation with Cassie when I first visited her in her hospital room after the crash.

“Johnny Black,” I say, lifting my head to meet his gaze. “He’s on the fucking baseball team.”

“Yes, but he and Blackthorne don’t have a relationship,” Mila reveals.

“How do you know that?” Victoria questions.

She shrugs a shoulder.

“When Cassie first told me about Blackthorne, I did some investigating. I tried to get as much dirt on Blackthorne as I could, but the man covers his tracks good. So I befriended Johnny, hoping I could crack him.” She pauses for a beat. “He hates his father.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know where he may have taken Cassie,” I argue. “Maybe Blackthorne has properties that he knows of.”

The truth is, we’ve got nothing.

~*~

We found Johnny Black hanging out with the rest of the baseball team at Dizzy’s. I waited for him to go to the bathroom before I unleashed my fury on Blackthorne’s son, cornering him against a urinal.

The kid didn’t know what the fuck hit him, but when he turned around and looked me in the eye, he knew exactly who I was. More than that, he knew his father was having an affair with Cassie and the baby she was carrying was his fucking sibling.

I didn’t know what to make of it.

Mila was certain he was not part of the Society and I had nothing that proved otherwise.

When I told him Cassie was missing, he looked genuinely worried for her and that sparked a downward spiral for me. I stared into his eyes, eyes that were similar to his fathers, and I wondered if my daughter would share those eyes. I wondered if I’d ever know.

“If you have any idea where he may have taken her, I need you to tell me,” I said, my voice completely unrecognizable to my own ears.

Johnny revealed Blackthorne owned an abandoned distillery about twenty miles away from the university. The only people who knew it existed were the older members of the Scorpio Society which meant there was a good chance he enlisted help from the founding families.

Me, Webber, and Reggiano were no match if that were the case. Victoria suggested we call her gangster daddy, she said he and her Uncle Riggs would come—guns blazing. I knew that to be true, but they were hours away and I wasn’t willing to wait.

That’s why I enlisted Primo’s help.

If he helped me get my girl back, I’d move all the drugs in the world for him. No questions asked.

So here we are—Me, Webber, Reggiano and two dozen of Primo’s guys. We’ve got the distillery surrounded and Primo’s guys are packing.

It’s lights out for the dirty professor.

I just hope I’m not too late.

Chapter Eleven

Mike Robinson

“There’s onlyone way in, Baller,” Ace says, cocking his gun. “We shoot our way inside.”

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