Page 80 of Gatsby's Starlet
She’d been trying to get away.
And that changed everything.
My chest pulled tight as my mind snapped through it faster now, focused, cleaner, every detail hitting differently, she didn’t answer, Ruby didn’t answer, Mystic saw them get picked up, not leave… picked up.
My grip tightened slightly on the paper as something colder settled in, not the same anger from before, not the clean edge of betrayal, but something heavier, more complicated, something that didn’t give me an easy answer.
“She didn’t tell me,” I muttered under my breath, more to the room than anything else, my gaze dropping back to the note. “Didn’t trust me with it.”
That hit hard, because it meant she knew, knew something was coming, and she still didn’t come to me, didn’t give me the chance to fix it or stop it or do the one thing I should’ve been able to do, and yeah, she left the note, left me something to go on, but that wasn’t trust, not really, and it sat wrong in my chest in a way I couldn’t shake, my hand dragging over my mouth as I let out a breath that didn’t do a damn thing to settle it, because none of that mattered now.
She was in trouble.
That was it. That was the only piece that counted, and everything else shifted around it, because this wasn’t betrayal—not the kind I’d thought, not something simple I could get mad at and walk away from—but something bigger, something that had already been moving before either of us caught it, and I went still for half a second, then moved again, my attention dragging back across the room like I’d missed something the first time.
And I had.
It was small, easy to overlook, down near the floor, a scuff that didn’t belong to her, didn’t belong to anything that should’ve been in this house, and the second I saw it, it hit.
Someone else had been here.
She didn’t leave.
They took her.
My hand tightened around the note before I forced myself to fold it, slower than I felt, sliding it into my pocket because I was going to need it again, then I turned for the door, already moving faster, harder, everything inside me starting to line up in a way I didn’t like, because this changed things, not just with her, not just between us, but everything, and my jaw locked as I pushed through the house and out into the yard, not slowing as I got on the bike and brought it to life, the engine kicking under me while something in my chest settled into something colder.
Because none of us saw this coming.
Drago.
Alive.
That thought landed hard and stayed there as I pulled out, pushing the bike faster than I should’ve, the road stretching out in front of me while everything else fell away, because whatever this was now, whatever I’d been dealing with before, it wasn’t just about Evie anymore.
This was war.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE SOUND KEPTplaying, and no one in the room dared to interrupt, that soft, unmistakable voice threading through the space in a way that didn’t belong here, didn’t belong anywhere near him, and for a few seconds that stretched too far, Drago didn’t move at all, just stood there with the phone in his hand, watching the video loop again and again like he was waiting for it to change.
The stillness wasn’t calm; it was something tighter than that, more dangerous, like everything inside him had locked down at once and was being held there by force instead of control, and it spread through the room without needing to be named, settling into the kind of silence that made it hard to breathe.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t look at anyone, just dragged his thumb across the screen and listened again, slower this time, like he was pulling it apart piece by piece, making sure it was real, making sure it wasn’t something his own mind was twisting into what it wanted.
“I thought she was dead,” he said finally, the words low, almost to himself, but heavy enough that no one missed them. “I want her back.”
Ruby flinched, I caught it, small but there, and Drago didn’t even glance at her, didn’t acknowledge her at all, his attention still locked on the phone, on that voice echoing faintly between us, and when he spoke again it wasn’t louder, but it hit harder.
“Now.”
The word snapped through the room, hard and final, and Kane hesitated just long enough for it to matter. “We’ll get her back,” he started, but—
That was all it took.
Drago moved fast, the lamp on the table hitting the wall before I fully registered what he was doing, the crack of it breaking through the silence as it shattered on impact, pieces scattering across the floor while the shift in the room came all at once, the tension snapping from contained to volatile in a single, violent motion.
“Now!” he snarled, dangerous now, his chest rising and falling harder as he dragged a hand through his hair, pacing once, twice, like he was trying to outrun something that had already caught him.
