Page 11 of Flowers and Moonlight

This isn’t something we can fight. I would welcome spillingblood right now instead of feeling like my heart is being ripped out of my chest. Tony’s eyes are wild as he looks around the room.

I see the moment the gravity of the situation dawns on him. He rushes into the bathroom, not giving a single fuck that he’s still just as naked as I am. He turns the light on, and I hear the sound of the shower curtain moving, as if she’d be hiding behind it. When he comes tearing back into the main room, I almost feel sorry for him. If only we weren’t experiencing the same emotions.

His eyes are filled with the same primal need to hunt I feel rising inside of me. As he looks around, making the same assessment I did already, I start to pull my clothes on. We need to track down our woman.

Tony’s voice is pained, “Where the fuck is she?”

I wish I had an answer for him. He drops to his knees and looks under the bed, but I know he won’t find the woman meant to be between us as our hearts beat for the rest of our lives. When he stands, he’s holding the mask she was wearing.

“She’s gone,” his voice is defeated, but I feel hope for the first time since I woke up to find our woman gone because he’s holding a piece of her in his hands. “We can’t even check the hotel cameras since they were turned off to prevent any of the assholes at the ball from trying to blackmail someone. Since it’s not business, we’ll have to use different channels to find her.”

He's right, this isn’t about the family and I’m the one who put the fear of the Guidice name in the hotel manager. I watched him turn off the feed and disable the recording. I run my fingers through my hair and wish, for the first time since I started working for the family, I weren’t so good at my fucking job.

Pulling on my tux shirt, but not bothering with buttoning it, I stride around the bed and gently pull the mask out of his hands. I hate the slump of my friend’s shoulders as he starts to pull his clothing on.

I stare down at the mask, remembering the way our Moonlight’s whiskey-colored eyes looked back at us last night. The way pleasure glazed her eyes over as she came apart for us. The way satisfaction infused her gaze when she was between us.

I don’t think I’ll ever get the vision out of my mind, and I don’t want to.

The need to find her fills me, but it feels impossible. Could this mask be a clue? Almost everyone last night was wearing generic masks you can get anywhere. Even though masks were required, people wanted to be easily identified since attending the Guidice Ball makes them important.

Our woman was different. She didn’t want to be recognized; she didn’t want to be seen. How anyone couldn’t see her is beyond my comprehension. The moment my eyes landed on her, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

I turn the mask over in my hands, my fingers moving over where her skin was touching. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep. I thought she’d be here when we woke up and we could start finding a path for the rest of our lives. I was a fucking fool.

My finger runs over something near the side of the mask, an indented mark of some kind. I pull my phone out of my pocket and turn on the flashlight before shining it over the space.

“Tony,” my voice is strained.

Something about it pulls him out of his ranting and despair. He barks, “What?”

When he steps in front of me fully dressed, I thrust the mask into his hands and shine the light on the maker’s mark I just found, pointing it out to him. His eyes widen when he sees the ‘DD’, the one everyone in New Orleans knows.

“Donovan Durante made this,” his voice is full of awe.

Donovan’s masks are coveted in the city. He never makes the same mask twice and every one of them is made with his own hands. They’re also expensive as hell.

“Maybe he can help us find our mystery woman,” I suggest.

Tony is already nodding as he relinquishes the mask to me and pulls his phone out of his pocket. I arch an eyebrow at him, but he shakes his head before pulling up a contact on his phone and pressing it to his ear.

“Prodigal. I need a favor,” his voice is gruff, and his words clipped. “I need Hack to do a little work for me.” He shakes his head at whatever Prodigal has asked on the other end of the line even though he’s on the phone. “No, it’s personal.”

The need to get out there on the street to look for her is almost suffocating. We have a lead, and I can’t wait to track it down. Of course, it’s possible Durante won’t know who was wearing the mask last night. Once he makes it and sells it, he would have no idea where it goes then.

The thought of our woman out there without us at her back to protect her is making my blood boil. What if someone else sees how fucking gorgeous she is? I button up my shirt and collect the rest of my things quickly, the need to go and find her making it hard for me to breathe.

Tony tenses and then relaxes. “We’ll be by the clubhouse soon. I appreciate it.”

When he hangs up, he gives me a long look. I’m sure he can see just how close to the edge I am. I know how things can change in an instant. Someone you thought was safe can be taken. Someone who matters in your life can be killed.

“Zeno,” Tony’s voice is soft even though his features are hard. “We need to go and get changed before we go to the clubhouse to get Hack to work his magic while we run down the lead we might have found with the mask.”

“I know,” I grit out the words, barely able to keep my shit together.

We leave the hotel quickly, checking out on our way. When the hotel manager sees us, he gives me a wary smile. It takes everything in me not to punch him when I catch the double meaning in his parting words, “I hope everything about your stay was how you instructed.”

Does he know we lost our woman and now the hunt is that much more difficult because the cameras were off? He better fucking not, or I’ll be back to teach him a lesson about not rubbing salt in the wounds of broken men. I’m already hanging on by a thread.

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