Page 83 of Gatsby's Starlet
Mystic looked up then, his eyes locking onto mine, and there was something different there now, colder, harder, the kind of look that meant whoever walked into that room wasn’t the same man standing there now.
“The note said he doesn’t know Zeynep’s alive,” he said. “But that changes if he’s got Evie.”
“Yeah,” I said, even though my gut twisted at the thought of what that meant for her.
“We find their hideout,” Devil said, already moving that direction. “If they’re grabbing women like that, they’re not laying low anymore.”
“They don’t need to,” I said, my jaw tightening. “Not if they think we don’t know about Drago. I’m pretty damn sure they don’t know Evie left this note.”
Chain swore under his breath. “How the hell did we miss this?”
“Ruby was his way in,” Mystic said, cutting through it, voice calm now, locked in. “Question is how long she’s been feedin’ him.”
That sat wrong, because I’d never once thought she was capable of that, and if anything happened to Evie or Zeynep because of it, Ruby would pay right along with Drago.
My gaze dropped to the note again.
“He wants revenge,” I said, quieter now. “But when he finds out Zeynep didn’t die in that fire…”
I didn’t finish it.
Mystic’s face turned lethal.
“We’ll keep her safe,” Chain said, looking at him with worry.
Mystic didn’t answer, his focus already ahead, working angles, outcomes, everything that came next.
“She doesn’t leave the clubhouse,” he said finally. “Not even a step outside.”
“We’ll lock it down,” Devil said.
“That’s not enough,” Mystic replied, his gaze flicking to me for a second. “Drago will burn us all down to get Zeynep. Nobody is safe.”
I leaned back, folding my arms, everything lining up whether I liked it or not, urgency settling in hard. “They took the wrong girl,” I said. “I’m getting Evie back no matter who I have to kill.”
Mystic’s eyes met mine again, and there wasn’t a damn thing uncertain in them.
“Oh, don’t fuckin’ worry,” he snarled. “This time I’ll drive a stake through Drago’s heart and cut his goddamned head off to make sure he’ll not be walkin’ this earth.”
Devil pushed to his feet. “Call everyone in. War room. Now.”
Chain was already pulling his phone out.
Mystic stayed where he was a second longer, the note still in his hand, his expression set in a way that left no room for anything but what came next.
War.
And even with everything sitting wrong between me and Evie, with everything she’d done and everything I didn’t understand yet, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was letting them touch her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I DIDN’T KNOWhow long we’d been down there, because time didn’t move right in a place like that, didn’t stretch or settle the way it was supposed to, just sat heavy and unmoving, like the air itself had thickened around us, damp and stale and carrying a sour, earthy smell that clung to the back of my throat every time I breathed it in, the quiet broken only by the occasional drip somewhere in the dark that echoed louder than it should have, like it was marking something I couldn’t see, counting down to something I didn’t want to understand.
The ground beneath me was cold and uneven, packed dirt with something harder buried underneath, and the chill had already worked its way through my clothes, sinking into my bones in a way that made it harder to ignore the longer I sat there, every small shift scraping just enough to remind me this wasn’t somewhere people were meant to stay.
Not somewhere you survived.
“I can see why they call it a hole,” Ruby had said earlier, her voice too thin, too forced, like if she stopped talking she’d have to actually feel where we were.
