Married to the Bad Boy(96)
“I’ll never forget this. You might as well leave town tonight, because I’m coming back for you.”
He lets out air through his nose. “What if I help you find her?”
“They could be anywhere by now.”
“Or he went back to New York.” A nervous edge trembles in Tommy’s voice. I know that he’s not supposed to place a foot anywhere near the city. “I’ll call Vince.”
“If you really want to help, you’ll come with me. I’m going now.”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck—fine. Let’s go.” Tommy addresses a waitress. “Clean up this shit and then put Jamie in charge.”
* * *
The drive toward New York is spent in silence, with only the sound of Tommy drumming his fingers restlessly against the car door handle.
“Can you give it a rest with that shit?”
He lets out a long sigh. “Sorry. I’m not exactly welcome in New York anymore.”
I look at him, watching the way his jaw tenses. “What did you do?”
And how are you still alive?
He gives me a dark look. “I helped whack the old New York boss.”
Elena’s father.
“So? You weren’t the only one part of that fucking disaster.”
“There were other things I did,” he says unhelpfully. “Things I don’t fucking regret, but still.”
“Call him again.”
He gives me a look before opening his phone and dialing the New York boss, putting the phone on speaker.
“Vince.”
“Hey, Vince, it’s Tommy again.”
“I haven’t found the little shit stain yet. He’s not at his apartment.”
“Listen, Tony and I are driving to New York right now.” He winces as he finishes the sentence.
The phone crackles with silence for a moment before Vincent’s indignant voice speaks again. “You what? No—turn back around.”
“Too late for that. We’re already halfway.”
“You lost your New York privileges, remember?”
“I’m just trying to help Tony.”
“What the fuck am I supposed to tell Paulie’s cousins when they find out your ass is in town?”
I don’t really care about Vincent giving Tommy shit about returning to New York.
“Vince, what the fuck are you doing to find my wife?”
“I don’t like your fucking tone, asshole. Maybe you should’ve kept better track of your wife—”
“Maybe you should have let me kill him when we had the chance. Then he wouldn’t have ratted me out to the cops, or hired bikers to try to kill me, you arrogant prick!”
Tommy’s face pales as the speaker screams in outrage.
“Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“She’s my wife, Vincent. She’s pregnant. What if it was yours?”
The phone goes silent for a moment and then it crackles with a sigh. “I’m doing what I can. I don’t know if he’s in New York, but I’ve been trying to find him for weeks.”
Slippery fuck.
“All right. We’ll call you when we’re close.”
The phone goes dead without a reply and Tommy gives me an angry voice. “Nice work. Calling the boss an arrogant prick was a really good idea.”
“That’s what he is.”
He grins at me. “Yeah, and I think you’re a hotheaded moron but you don’t see me calling you that. Oh, wait.”
Fuck, I can’t stand the guys in the life. I want to reach over and smack the stupid smile off his face, but my phone buzzes with a text.
“Read it.”
“It’s from Elena: Don’t come after me. Everything’s under control.”
He raises an eyebrow at me. “What should I say back?”
My heart clenches. I doubt the text is coming from her. “Ask her where she is.”
I watch his fingers fly over the phone. “New York.”
“He’s leaving us a trail of breadcrumbs, or he’s trying to throw us off.”
“I’m going to bet that it’s an ambush. Have Vince trace the call.”
Fucking finally. We’re one step closer.
ELENA
Duct tape is a lot stronger than it looks. It’s amazing, really. A couple strips over my mouth, and I can’t make a sound. My hands, feet, arms, everything. I’m like an insect struggling in flypaper.
Thinking about that is much more pleasant than thinking about the man I loathe, who sits on the bed with a gun trained at the door. I’ve already tried wrestling the gun from him, and he knocked me out. Couldn’t believe that I’d actually want to kill “the father of his child.”
Maniac.
He keeps glancing at his phone, waiting for some bit of horrible news about the ambush he has set up for Tony. First he made me get my father’s money from Tommy. Then he hired those fucking animals to kill my husband.