Romey shook me so hard my head snapped back and forth, causing me to accidentally bite down on my own lips.
Blood filled my mouth as I yelped with pain, surprising Romey so much that he released me and I crumpled to the ground in a heap pressing my hand to my lips as I tried to hold back tears.
“Perrie, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to…” Romey began, reaching for me again, but he never got the chance to touch me because he was being yanked back and punched by Rhodes hard enough to send him careening into the grass.
Romey lay on the ground holding his face and groaning, but I could barely pay attention to him as Rhodes was already cupping my face in his hands, his dark eyes taking in my expression and the blood leaking out of the corner of my mouth.
“Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” Warm hands slid along my face as he cupped it, bringing his own face closer than it had ever been as he tilted my chin back and forth to see where I was injured.
The scent of chocolate washed over me as my mouth dried and I forced myself not to press my cheek into his warm palm.
The alpha almost always kept me at an arm’s length and now he was right here in front of me and all of Edison’s scenarios that he would whisper in my ear as he thrust into me came rushing to the surface.
“No,” I said with a shake of my head, nearly forgetting where we were as I reached up to put my hand over his. “I just accidentally bit my lip.”
Rhodes’ jaw clenched as he looked around me at the party which had since come to a complete stand still, everyone now watching the altercation happening on the lawn.
“A fucking party, Perrie? Really?” he growled before scooping me up into his arms. “I thought you’d been kidnapped.”
The same guilt from earlier filled me again as Rhodes strode past the quiet partygoers and through the house. “How did you find me?”
“Tracked Kailey’s cell phone,” he told me gruffly as we passed by the girl in question. She was standing around the island with Dahlia, Jessica, Annie, and a gawking Meyers. She looked guilty as our eyes met. I broke eye contact first, tucking my face into Edison’s neck and inhaling another drag of his scent.
“You can do that?”
Rhodes’ grip tightened on my legs as he split the crowd of still-dancing college students with a single glare. “You’d be surprised what we can do, kid.”
A black SUV was idling on the curb, one of the many in the Keane fleet, and one of the security guys was already jumping out of the driver’s seat to open the back door.
As soon as Rhodes settled me into the seat, I finally looked him in the eyes. “What are the chances you’ll keep this from Edison?”
Rhodes’ lips thinned before he shook his head. “I’ve already called him and he’s on the way back to the estate.”
Then he shut the door to the SUV and I slumped back into my seat.
“Great,” I muttered, putting my hands over my face. “Just great.”
Twenty One
“Is everything all right?” Shuuhei Saito asked as I hung up the phone, squeezing it so hard that I heard the casing start to buckle and crack.
No. Nothing was fucking all right, but Shuuhei didn’t need to know that.
“I’m sorry, but we are going to have to cut this meeting short.”
Shuuhei blinked at me, clearly surprised as he watched me stand up from the table. “But we haven’t even really gotten started. Do you know how hard it was to arrange this meeting without the rest of the families finding out?”
He wasn’t wrong. Whatever information he was bringing to me about who had framed him and his guys for ambushing my weapons shipment had to be good if he was insisting on meeting in the next city over and disguising it with other business.
I’d spent the day busying myself with other work in anticipation of it while trying not to think about my wife who I’d much rather be with on a Saturday afternoon. The same wife that had now seemingly gone missing.
Just thinking about it made hot, acidic bile rise in my throat like I was about to throw up.
“We are going to have to reschedule,” I insisted, nodding at Collum who in turn said something into his earpiece.
“Edison—” Shuuhei began, so flabbergasted that he forgot that in official meetings he was supposed to use my last name. “You really need to know this.”
“It will have to wait.” I needed to get the fuck out of here and to wherever the hell Rhodes was.
I swept out of the abandoned office building where we’d set up our meeting, my guys falling into clip behind me as I strode towards the car.
“Boss, what do you need from me?” Collum asked as he opened the car door.
“Get into contact with Rhodes’ team. I need a minute-by-minute playback of how the fuck this could happen.”
She was just supposed to be going to a friend’s for girls’ night. That was about as innocuous as it could get, so I was struggling to understand the situation and how Rhodes of all people could have lost her.
It was an hour and a half back to the estate and the longer I sat in the back of the car stewing, the more I kept thinking about my own mother.
The story of how she’d been kidnapped by the Serbians was famous—almost legendary—in our circles.
It was two weeks after she married my father and she was out with a full security detail at a flea market.
All eight of her security members had been killed and she was taken.
War broke out with people falling in line and by the end of it the Serbians were gone and my mother was irrevocably broken.
