Page 199 of Keeping Kasey
“Oh, Consoli, you have no idea, do you? It’s notheryou need to worry about.”
I knew he was baiting me, but I still asked, “What are you talking about?”
My phone buzzed again, and as much as I dreaded what it would show me, I pulled it back to look.
A photo strip with three black-and-white images. Fuzzy gray shading covers most of each picture, but each has a circular black spot in the center, and within that, a small gray figure.
A baby.
“If you want the girl and your heir back alive, you’ll bring that list to the address I will send you. I believe our mutual friend left it for you before making her attempted escape.”
Attempted escape?
What the hell is there to escape from? She has her gun, phone, and privacy. She has to know—especially after last night—that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t have given her if she’d asked.
But it doesn’t matter. Whatever reason she had for leaving me doesn’t matter.
I have to get her back.
Leon gave me instructions to come alone and not tell anyone. He was explicit about not making copies of the list either.
My phone buzzes at my feet with the address and snaps me out of my paralysis.
When I pick up my phone—surprisingly unshattered—and see that picture of Kasey again, it feels like the breath is being violently sucked out of my lungs.
He hurt her.
He hurt Kasey, and I wasn’t there to protect her.
There’s a knock before the door to my office opens, and Damon steps inside with a solemn expression and an envelope in his hand.
The list.
I’m sure of it.
“I tried to stop her,” he says, handing me a picture from his pocket.
It’s of Isabella and me at the reception.
“She found this. She found out about the engagement, and”—he hands me the envelope—“she gave me the list before she left. I’m sorry, Logan, I tried to stop her, I did, but she—”
“I just got off the phone with her,” I tell him, forcing what I hope is a convincing smile. “She asked me to come get her so we can talk.”
Damon slaps a hand to his chest, and a whoosh of air leaves him as his shoulders drop. “And here I was sure you were going to bite my head off.”
“Not today,” I say, grabbing my keys off the desk and discreetly slipping a bottle of pain pills into my pocket. “I’m going to get her. Tell James to take over for the rest of the day.”
“I will,” he assures me, and his smile is full of relief and… pride?
I can’t remember the last time I looked to Damon for approval, but there’s something about how he regards me now that sends me back seventeen years, to the kid I used to be.
A kid who looked up to his brother as if he could slay dragons with a smirk and one hand behind his back. I felt safe when he was around—like the world was big, but my brother was bigger.
I’m not that kid anymore.
I haven’t been that kid since our mother was taken, and Damon abandoned all responsibility to wallow in self-pity. He chose to lose himself in a bottle over living up to the position that was his birthright. He chose himself over this family.
At least, that’s what I’ve spent the last seventeen years believing.
