Page 65 of Cinderella and the Daddy
"Boss, you need to see this."
The urgency in Tony's voice has me following without question. He leads me to the Mustang, already pulling on latex gloves—never leave prints, even in your own garage. He crouches beside the rear wheel well, his movements precise and professional.
"Don't touch it directly," he warns, producing a pair of needle-nose pliers. "Could be rigged."
My blood turns to ice. A fucking bomb? In my garage? Where Leo plays?
Tony extracts the device with surgical precision, holding it up to the overhead light. Relief and rage war in my chest when I see what it is.
"GPS tracker," he says, turning it to show me the manufacturer's mark. "Military grade. Korean tech—the kind that costs five grand a pop and requires government connections to acquire."
I take the device with my gloved hand, feeling its weight. Sophisticated. Expensive. Professional. This isn't some amateur job with commercial equipment. Someone with resources wants to know everywhere my family goes.
"How long?" The question comes out deadly quiet.
Tony's jaw tightens. "Based on the battery model, it could be anywhere from three days to two weeks. I'll need Dimitri to run diagnostics for an exact timeline."
“How long has it been there?”
Tony shrugs. “I don’t know. I did a security sweep last week. Never expected to find anything on the car.”
The implication hangs in the air.
Cindy.
He’s not saying it, but he’s thinking it. I know he is because I am. She had my car all night.
"You think—" I start, but the words feel like poison in my throat. After last night's confessions and promises, the idea that she might have planted surveillance equipment on my own car feels impossible.
But in my line of work, impossible things happen every day.
"I don't know what to think, boss," Tony admits. "But the timing..."
I take the tracker from his hands, turning it over to examine the construction. Professional grade, definitely. The kind of equipment that requires serious resources and technical knowledge to deploy.
Just like the tracker that had been in her necklace.
“Do another sweep,” I order. “I want every inch of every fucking car gone over.”
My phone is in my hands before I consciously decide to make the call. Grigori picks up on the second ring.
"Boss?"
"Where's Cindy?"
"Pharmacy on Fifth Street. Like I told Viktor, she needed?—"
"Go find her. Now. Bring her home."
There's a pause on the other end of the line. "Boss, is everything?—"
"Now, Grigori."
I hang up and immediately dial Dimitri, my hacker.
He answers. “Boss?”
"I need you to analyze something," I say without preamble. "GPS tracker. I'm sending someone up with it."
