Ashton: She put in her two weeks.
I knew instantly who “she” was and where she would’ve put her two weeks in.
I’d stayed away for so long, needing to get a handle on the family business. My uncle knew about her. My father as well. Remmi. There’d been a concerted effort to put them all off her trail. I went on dates so many fucking nights in a row, and all of them had left me cold. Every one of them.
All of that was for her, so she was safe, but she remained at Katya. That gave me hope that she hadn’t moved on yet.
She was moving on now.
My phone rang right after. Ashton calling.
I answered, putting it on speaker since I was in my downtown office.
“That article came out today,” he said as a greeting.
“I saw.”
“There were pictures of you with different women.”
“I also saw that.”
“That means she still cares.”
“What’s the point of this call? You’re not saying anything that’s helpful.”
He laughed. “The attention’s been diverted. You could probably go and see her. It’s been months.”
See her? God, yes. Every fiber of my being wanted to see her, but it was pointless. “This shit’s not going away.”
“We’ve cleaned everything. Businesses. Phones. Computers. New security systems. We have men now on our relatives. We have the upper hand now. Remmi is in Vegas and quiet. If there’s a time to go see your woman, it’s now.”
“She is still working for the other side.”
“We all have our crosses to bear.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
He laughed again. “Go and see her. You’re becoming a grouch to be around. You could do with getting laid again. Remember how that used to feel? And then after, we can move on Bobby finally.”
Right. Bobby with his note saying that my mother was alive. My mother. Jesus. If she was alive? What Pandora’s box would that open?
We’d had to wait this long before reaching out. Suspicion and alarms were high with Uncle Stephano. I didn’t dare connect with Bobby about her, but Ashton was right. The last three times I’d seen my uncle, he’d acted like nothing had changed. There’d been no altercation with him. He was back to bringing up his health, me taking over for him, but there was no more mention of his timeline. All in all, nothing and everything seemed to have changed.
This shit was now my nightmare.
“Go see her. We’ll talk about it after.”
We hung up, and I checked in with a new security detail specifically for her. They were hired the same day we’d had her tracker taken off. It was at their request, stating the tracker would be found before they were spotted. They were specialized enough and trained specifically to handle law enforcement agencies, so we’d removed her tracker.
When it came to Jess, I wasn’t messing around, whether she knew it or not. She could hate me, as long as she was alive to hate me.
Me: Where is she?
Team Leader 1: At a studio.
His second text was the coordinates.
