"It's not just my story," he said softly.
Understanding dawned. "You're talking about Ronan's group."
His eyes widened slightly. "You know?"
I tilted my head at him. "I'm a cop, Dante. Did you really think I wouldn't figure out that the men who work for Ronan aren't just bodyguards?"
"So, what? You're just okay with it? With me … "
I leaned across the console and snagged him by the back of the head. He eagerly met my kiss and tried to follow me when I pulled back.
"I swear to God, Dante, if you question my feelings for you one more time-"
He kissed me to silence me and then pressed his forehead against mine. "Sorry," he murmured.
I nodded slightly and then pulled back to put some space between us. "I'm a cop second, Dante. I'm a member of our family first. And I always protect my family … "
Dante covered my hand with his and nodded. "Santero tried to kill one of his former victims, who also happened to be in a relationship with one of Ronan's men. Ronan stopped him and he made sure Santero and his brother wouldn't ever go after that man again, or either of his lovers."
Lovers with an 's.'
I considered his words for a moment and then realization hit me. "You're talking about Jonas," I said. "He's in a relationship with Mace and Cole. I met them at the wedding."
Dante nodded.
"After Ronan killed Santero and his brother, he was searching Santero's place for anything he could find about the trafficking ring Santero had assumed control of. He was there when I arrived." Dante chuckled. "I was lucky he didn't shoot my ass, especially after I went off on him for taking out the only lead I had. He ended up offering me a job and told me he'd do everything he could to help me find Aleks. The resources he had … " Dante shook his head. "We didn't find any information in Santero's records about Aleks. Ronan had the girl who handles IT for his group leak the info to the cops so that ring was taken down and they got a lot of kids out of there. But it's like they say. Cut off a snake's head-"
"And another one grows in its place," I finished for him.
"I went back to Chicago this summer before I started watching Matty, but I couldn't find Remy and none of the leads panned out."
I nodded and then pulled his hand up to my lips for a brief kiss. "This one's going to pan out," I said determinedly.
It had to.
Aleks needed to come home.
Aleks needed it.
Dante needed it.
And I needed to make it happen.
I sat back in my seat and threw the car into gear before casting a glance at Dante.
"Let's go get him."
* * *
In the three days it took to hear from Remy again, Dante was a mess. His anxiety was through the roof and he was afraid to be away from his phone even long enough to do things like shower. I'd offered on more than one occasion to keep the phone with me, but even then he'd struggled. I hadn't taken it personally, though, because I knew that this might well be Dante's only chance to save his brother and that fact trumped anything and everything.
Even me.
Once we'd landed in Chicago, we'd immediately started searching for Remy, though Dante didn't know enough about the young man to even get an idea of where to start. We'd gone to some of the spots in the city that seemed to cater to prostitutes and their clients, but it had been like looking for a needle in a haystack. For my own part, I'd been horrified at the sight of all the young men and women wandering the streets in frigid temperatures looking for their next paycheck. By two in the morning, we'd gotten a hotel room, but neither of us had been able to sleep. We hadn't talked either. We'd just held on to each other. I'd worried about Dante and Dante had undoubtedly worried about Aleks.
We'd spent day two searching the streets, but with the bitter cold weather, not many people had been out and about so we'd called it a day and gone back to the hotel. Dante and I had made love, but it had been different than all the other times … there'd been an underlying desperation between us as Dante had tried to outrun his demons and I'd done my best to help. Afterwards, we'd both fallen asleep, but Dante had jerked awake at every sound and then he'd frantically checked his phone, even though the volume was set as high as it could go. With another night passing and still no word from Remy, Dante had been pacing the room like a caged animal. He'd shot down any suggestion I'd offered to either distract him or to aid in trying to find Remy, but I'd been okay with that. If he needed to take his frustrations out on me, I was fine with it.
After a third day of searching, I'd finally convinced Dante earlier in the afternoon to lie down with me to get some much needed sleep when his phone had finally rung. But Remy hadn't been in the mood to talk because all he'd done was give us an address and a time to meet him the next day. We'd scouted the address only to find that it was a coffee shop on the south side of Chicago and had decided to grab a hotel room that was closer to the meeting location.
Which left us with one more night to get through.
"Bye, Pop-pop!" Matty said, tearing me from my thoughts. He'd been showing me all the gifts his fathers had brought him back from Greece and while I'd managed to tune in enough to make the appropriate comments here and there, I hadn't really been paying as close attention as I should have since my thoughts were on Dante. I'd hoped Remy's call would relax him a little bit, but he'd still been restless and abnormally quiet. We'd checked into our new hotel room almost half an hour ago and he'd been in the shower ever since.
"Papa, I'm done," I heard Matty yell and then I was looking at what I presumed was the ceiling in Hawke and Tate's house. A few moments later, Hawke appeared in the frame.
"Hey, how are things going?" Hawke asked as he straightened the tablet.
"Good," I said. "Nice tan. I take it that means you and Tate made it out of your hotel room after all."
Hawke chuckled. "Little bit," he said. "You guys heading home soon?"
Guilt went through me at the lie I was about to tell, but Dante had insisted we not tell anyone we were in Chicago until we knew if it really was Aleks that Remy had seen.
"Hopefully just a few more days," I hedged.
Hawke nodded. "Yeah, lots of details to deal with when you want to put a house on the market."
I murmured non-committedly, hoping it wasn't as bad of a lie.
"How's Dante?" Hawke asked. "You guys work out some stuff?" he added with a grin.
Bastard was having a little too much fun at my expense since he'd been the one I'd turned to a couple weeks earlier when I'd been confused by my attraction to Dante. "No comment," I said, but I couldn't contain the smile that spread across my lips.
"Yeah, I know that look," Hawke responded.
"Okay, I'm going."
"Hang on," Hawke said, his voice light. "I feel like as, your quasi son-slash-brother, I should be giving you some words of wisdom or advice or some shit like that."
I chuckled at the reminder of my conversation with him at the wedding when I'd asked him if I could walk with him down the aisle. I hadn't known what to call him. He wasn't that much younger than me so I'd pointed out that it wouldn't be like a father walking his kid down the aisle, but he'd clearly decided to have some fun with the pseudo father/son labels. "Um, that's really not necessary."
But Hawke ignored me and said, "Okay, I've got this. Make sure he buys you dinner before you put out, use lots of lube and-"
I hung up the call and laughed. Damn, it was good to have family …
I got off the bed and went to the bathroom. I could still hear the shower running so I didn't bother knocking on the door since I doubted Dante would hear me. The sight that greeted me tore at my insides.
Dante was sitting on the floor of the bathtub as water from the shower cascaded over him. His legs were drawn up and he had his arms covering his head. His forehead was resting against his knees.
I reached into the shower to turn the water off and then grabbed several towels.
"Dante, talk to me," I murmured as I reached in to wrap the first towel around him. When he didn't respond, I leaned forward and curled my arms around him and pulled him to his feet. He automatically wrapped his arms around my neck and I ignored the water that seeped into my clothes. At least he hadn't run out of hot water because his body felt warm against mine.
I used the towel to dry off the parts of him I could reach before gently pushing him back and finishing the job. He stood mutely, his eyes on the wall behind me. I towel dried his hair as best I could and then led him back to the main room, leaving his sweats behind in the bathroom. Once I had him under the covers, I got undressed and crawled in behind him. The second I put my arms around him, he closed his fingers over the hand I had resting on his belly.
I skimmed my lips over his shoulder a few times until our bodies began to warm up beneath the blanket.
"What happened, baby?" I asked softly.
"Bringing him home isn't going to undo what's happened," he whispered.