“In all the years she’s popped around, she never stayed more than a day. I try not to worry since she’s young. She probably came to gamble for all I know.” He tried to laugh it off, but the worry in his eyes overshadowed it.

My heart started beating and I felt gut punched as I began to connect the familiar dots. It had to be a coincidence but even as I tried to convince myself, I found myself blurting, “What town?”

“Six Forks actually, your town. My men are trying to find an address as we speak, but I figured you could help. You must know her.”

Only too well.

“If she only stays a day, why did you wait an entire week to start worrying about her?”

“Son, I’ve worried about her since she showed up on my doorstep three years ago with a tattered suitcase, a paternity test, eighteen years old, and said I was her father, and no answers… or questions. But I always thought one day she’d get tired of running and find her way home.”

My mouth had gone completely dry, and I fought over my tongue to ask the inevitable, “What’s her name?”

“Willow. Willow Simon.”

I frowned with confusion since Willow’s last name is Waters. “Do you have a picture?”

“Uhh, yeah.” He pulled out his phone and quickly found a picture dated three months ago. It was definitely her in the picture. She was smiling and appeared all too happy and as beautiful as ever, but it wasn’t she who had my attention. It was the fucking, smiling prick with his arm around her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

WILLOW

“WELL DONE, LITTLE Tree.” I was standing over Keiran’s body slumped on the couch after he had finished the tea and had slowly slipped away just ten minutes before. I had been working out the next step when the door burst open and Esmerelda strutted in.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to collect the body.”

“Body? But you said you only wanted… a piece… of him. How did you even know?” The thought of butchering a person made me want to retch all over her Jimmy Choos and ruin them permanently. Her presence so soon had thrown a wrench in my plans.

“I told you we are always watching, and I’ve changed my mind. I must admit I had my doubts if you really could do it. I was prepared to kill you both.”

“I couldn’t do it.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s not dead,” I confessed. Esmerelda wordlessly stared at me. Rather than answer, she had one of her goons check his pulse. The man looked up and shook his head.

“He looks pretty dead to me.”

“I drugged him with a drug called Death’s Kiss. It—”

“I know what it does. It’s my product. My only question is why did you drug him instead of killing him?”

“I told you, I couldn’t do it but he’s helpless now. You can do what you want with him.” My words rushed out while praying she didn’t put a bullet in him right then and there. “I want you to leave my family alone now.”

I didn’t miss the flash of anger and malice in her eyes and reminded myself that she still had the power to hurt them.

“You’re not in a position to make demands. As I said, I want the body.” She snapped her fingers and the two men moved forward and roughly lifted Keiran’s body onto the shoulders of the biggest.

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Oh, Little Tree, your dainty little mind wouldn’t want to be bothered by the messy details. Since you left him alive, I get to play. I’m going to make him scream, Little Tree.”

And just like that, they were gone.

With Keiran.

* * *

I had to act fast. I had no idea where they would take him. I could only assume it would be the same warehouse where they’d taken me but I didn’t even know where that could be.

As soon as it was safe, I took the elevator, hoping to make it in time. I had only a moment to wonder how they made in and out of the building undetected when I was hit with the painful reality that they hadn’t.

Just inside the lobby door laid the door guard, face down in a puddle of his own blood. To the right, the receptionist’s lifeless eyes stared ahead from his seat as blood oozed from the single bullet wound in his head.

If they could do this to innocent people, I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to harm Keiran. I mentally pushed the dead men from my mind and burst through the garage entrance. There wasn’t time to call the police so I could only hope the silent alarm they tripped when they broke through the stairway would be enough.