Page 59 of Desperate Measures
I take a breath and then another, forcing air into my lungs. Rage is only useful if it doesn’t hamper my ability to think and plan. I glance at the door. Ali will come for me. If not today, then tonight. He can’t cement his power grab without appearing to bring me to heel, just like Jafar needed the appearance of doing the same. Always the pawn and never the queen.
Fuck. That.
I’m taking the throne now, and if I have to cut Ali to pieces in the process, he deserves nothing less. In fact, I welcome the violence.
I take a step toward the door before I catch myself and turn to the desk. I may have learned to pick the lock of my bedroom door when I was seven years old, but walking out of this room without a plan is foolish in the extreme. That’s the rage talking, and I need logic to guide my steps, even if the anger is what will give me the strength to do what needs to be done.
The strength to kill Ali.
19
Jafar
“She’s gone.”
After last night, I spent all day waiting for this call, knowing what we shared wasn’t enough to keep Yasmina at my side.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Keep a man on her for the time being.” As tempting as it is to track Yasmina down and haul her ass back to the penthouse, if I do that, I’ll break something between us. Something new and fragile and infinitely rarer than I could have dreamed.
I love her.
The truth should be cause for celebration. She loves me, too. She might not have said it aloud, but it’s there in the trust she places in me every time we interact. Relationships have been started on less, and ours has a whole hell of a lot of foundation—and baggage. It’s the latter that we have to work through, and right now that means Yasmina needs her space. When I put her in the penthouse, I wondered how long it would take her to figure out how to override the elevators. Her father tried to lock her up, too, but she always managed to slip free of the barriers he put in place. A locked door had nothing on that woman.
Yes, I love her, and that means I have to let her go.?1
Jeremiah clears his throat. “Sorry, Jafar, I wasn’t clear. Someone outside hacked the elevators to take her down to the parking garage. I have her getting into a car I’ve traced back to the Underworld.”
I go still. “Did she make a deal?” It’s more rhetorical question than anything, but Jeremiah answers me all the same.
“I don’t think so. It took us a few minutes before we realized she’d left the building, but they didn’t go straight back to the club. They took a detour to a hotel around the corner.” A hesitation, the only warning I get before he delivers unwelcome news. “They dropped her there. With Ali.”
My vision goes white for several seconds, and it’s all I can do to breathe through the fury. “Then Ali is the one who made the deal.”
“That’s my bet.”
I turn and head for the exit. It’s one thing for my woman to decide she needs some fucking space and take it. This isn’t that. Yasmina would never go to Ali, not willingly. If that was even an option, she wouldn’t have begged me to save her the first night. She wouldn’t have vomited after her encounter with him in the Underworld. To think of her in his hands right now…
I can’t afford to think about it. “Find him, Jeremiah. If he was in that hotel, then he left evidence. Find him right fucking now.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hang up and stare at the phone clenched in my hand. As satisfying as it would be to shatter it, it’s not worth the outward expulsion of anger. I close my eyes and count to ten, and then I do it a second time. My fury hasn’t retreated, the sharp edge of fear driving it on, but I can think clearer now. Jeremiah might be able to track Ali down now that we have an active starting point, but I know someone who will have that information at hand.
Hades was never one to leave anything up to chance.
I almost order my men to the car, but if my arrival appears like I’m launching an attack, that’s exactly how Hades will respond. The Underworld has only been under siege once before. It was before my time, but word has it that it lasted over a month before some sort of agreement was put in place. Yasmina doesn’t have thirty days.
She might not have even one.
It takes me twenty minutes to reach the club. I can barely hold myself still as I take the elevators up. I have never had a problem containing my emotions when my goal was at hand. Emotion is something to manipulate in other people. Letting it get the best of me? Unacceptable.
That’s not an option right now.
I keep thinking of the fear on Yasmina’s face that morning in the Underworld. The way she was willing to move to violence the night her father sold her in marriage to Ali. He will break her. I wasn’t lying when I told her that. I’m a monster, but at least I admit as much from the start. Ali plays the part of a hero, a good guy, and saves his dark deeds for private.
Meg meets me at the second set of elevators. She holds up her hands. “You don’t want to go up there looking like that.”
I plant my feet because I don’t trust myself to get close to her, not with Yasmina’s life and safety on the line. “You were there last night. You’re the one who put this into motion.”
