Page 87 of Between Passion and Revenge: Part Two
“The second thing: Lakeland’s gone ghost.”
My eyebrows slam down.
“I’m not surprised.” I pause in front of the long bathroom counter, avoiding my reflection.
“Yeah. He left Isla Cara last week, and I’d tracked him to far upstate New York and then around to Los Angeles, which is where he called us from. The trail goes dead there. I can find anyone almost anywhere there is any type of camera, and I have an up-to-date photo, but he’s not pinging on anything,” Axel says.
“He’s hiding because he’s planning something,” I grind out. Lakeland was too gleeful to mention Shae in our last conversation, and I know he will try to hit me where it hurts the most.
She is my weakness.
I take a deep cleansing breath, then crack my head from side to side. Lakeland wants war, so he’ll get war.
“I’ll find him,” Axel says, unbothered. “But there’s something else. There’s some unusual chatter on one of the backchannels I follow. A bounty for five million.”
My stomach drops.
“You think it’s Lakeland?” I ask, dread filling my entire body.
“That’s the thing, it doesn’t look like it’s him,” Axel says. “But if it stinks, it stinks.”
Hypervigilance crawls out of my synapses like ants. I know Lakeland has as many eyes on me as I have on him. I know this because I know exactly where all his spies are.
My eyes roll to the ceiling as if I could see my children sleeping a floor above me.
And Shae. Shae’s there, too.
“More security. Here and…in Gold Coast.”
The silence over the line sings.
“Gold Coast…so you’re planning on going back home?”
The back of my neck itches when I think about returning to my parents’ home—the place I last saw them alive.
The place where I witnessed their deaths.
But the reality is, I can better secure their house than I can the condo.
“People. I need you to tap your contact list and get the meanest bastards you can to protect them. You have carte blanche to give them as much money as you need to keep them loyal.”
“They’re already loyal,” he says with a yawn. “They’re with me.”
My jaw twitches. There’sno oneI trust completely. Not when it comes to Shae and my kids.
My family.
“Shore up all the weak spots, Axel,” I say. I don’t have to say more about the risk to his life if he were to fuck this up.
“Ten-four,” Axel says, his keyboard clacking in the background, already at work to get things sorted for me and my family.
The concept hits me square in the back of the head.
Family.
I have a family.
My gut twists.
