Saved Mafia Bride by Mae Doyle
Gavin
My brothers left a while ago but I’m still sitting in my living room, working on my laptop, digging up all of the information that I can on Nick Prince.
It’s not been difficult. For someone as smarmy as he is, he sure doesn’t mind being in the limelight. I’d have thought that he’d want to keep his head low and try to stay out of the papers, but he obviously doesn’t mind if everyone knows who he is.
Heir to a massive fortune, he’s the only son of the Prince dynasty. This means that all of their assets will one day go to him and that they would have gone right to Clara if she hadn’t run.
There isn’t much in the news about his arranged marriage. A few articles touch on it but they mention Clara by her old name, Audrey, without going into much detail about her. No pictures of her, no real information about whether or not she was happy with the idea of marrying into the Prince family.
So I search for her, and the number of articles that pop up are shocking. Not only are there tons of articles about her when she went missing, but also a number of them from when she was younger.
Seems like my little Clara is quite the accomplished pianist. I wonder how long it’s been since she was allowed to play an instrument. Her parents put her in lessons when she was really young and I can’t help but smile at the picture of 6-year-old Clara grinning after a performance.
All of that made the paper, but there isn’t much information about her parents. I’m clicking away, doing my best to find anything else that will give me clues as to how Nick is going to try to take her back when my phone rings.
“Johnny,” I say, snapping my laptop shut so that I can give him my full attention. “Tell me that you have something good for me.”
“Well, I have news,” he says, and I stand, walking over to the window to look outside at the gardens. “So I imagine that by now you’ve figured out that if we hadn’t killed the Jacobs brothers that you never would have been able to escape with Clara, right? They were supposed to guard her but only fell down on the job because they’re worm food.”
“Got that,” I say. “But tell me about Nick. What am I up against here?”
He sighs. “He’s a bastard, Gavin. I’m not saying that you’re not, but you need to be careful. Looks like he’s hired a few teams to find her and is offering a pretty high reward to whoever brings him information about where she’s located.”
A chill runs through my body. He’s smarter than I gave him credit for, that’s for sure. It’s a lot easier to get information when you have a number of people doing the work for you and aren’t the only one trying to uncover everything.
“So he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, am I right? Because that’s what I hear you saying.”
“Something like that. He likes to sit back and let other people handle things for him, but he has the money to make it all happen. Lorenzo and Dane went ahead and did you a favor and got the strip club where you scooped her up shut down.”
“That’s a generous favor. Thank them for me.”
He chuckles. “It’s no problem, but I’m sure they’ll send you part of the bill. The owners mysteriously came into a small fortune and have relocated to Europe, and we now own the building.”
“What the hell is the Accardi family going to do with an old strip club?”
“Good question. This is some hare-brained idea that the two of them are working on and I told them that I didn’t want any part in it. Watch, they’ll turn it into a multi-million dollar company or some shit and I’ll regret saying that to them.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “All the luck to them. But what do you know about these teams? Any of them getting close or are they just scratching their own asses?”
“So far, there’s only one that’s headed out west. It’s led by this real asshole name Peter West. I don’t know much about him except for the fact that he’s ex-military and didn’t really leave the army on good terms. Most of his information is redacted, but it looks like he was more than willing to torture to get the information that he needed.”
“Fucking great. Do we have eyes on this asshole?”
“He’s a ghost. I’ll send you his picture so you can get it out to you family and everyone can be on the same page. All I know is that the last he was spotted he was definitely heading in your direction. Chances are good that he has a lead on you as having Clara, so you might want to keep an eye out for him.”
“Thanks, Johnny. You guys are the best. Send me his picture and keep me up to date if you find anything else.”
“Hell yeah. Let me tell you, it’s just nice to not be the ones calling you for help all the time. We’ve got your back, Gavin, just let us know if you need us there. Right now I think it’s a good idea for us to stay here so we can make sure that we have our finger on the pulse of what’s going on.”
I agree with him and we hang up. A moment later my phone buzzes and I’m staring at Peter West. He looks like an asshole, with a buzzcut that he’s probably worn since he was in the army and a cocky grin on his face that lets me know that he’s got more confidence than he probably should.
I text it out to my brothers and then wander into the kitchen to make something to eat. He’s on his way here, that’s for sure, but I can’t just sit and stare out the window while I wait for him to show up. No, I need to eat something and come up with a better plan.
My mind wanders to Clara while I cook. It would be so easy to just hand her over and make all of this go away but there’s no way in hell that I’m going to do that. I found her, I took her, and I’m not going to let her go.
I cook quickly then eat my scrambled eggs and steak in the kitchen, staring down the hall to my bedroom where I have Clara locked up. I should take her something to eat but right now I want to keep her hidden away until I know for sure if Peter is actually going to be able to find me here.
The doorbell rings and I stiffen, putting my plate down and lightly touching the gun on my hip as I walk to it. I can feel the back of my neck prickle as I look through the peephole.
It’s not Peter, which isn’t really surprising when I think about it. He’d have to be very ballsy to just show up like that and stand on my front porch. Still, I’m careful when I open the door even though the woman standing out there holding flowers doesn’t look like a threat.
They never do.
Until they are.
“Hi, I’m looking for Audrey,” she says, squinting to read the name on the tag. “Is this her house?”
Really? Fucking flowers? And I thought that this asshole was supposed to be good at his job.
“Nobody by that name lives here,” I tell her, then point back down my driveway. “Have you tried down the street a bit? A new couple just moved in a little while ago and that might be who you’re looking for.”
She tilts her head a little and looks down at the tag again. “No, this is the address, I’m sure of it. They were incredibly specific when they gave it to me.”
Were they now?
She obviously isn’t going to budge from my door but I step back into the house and slam it anyway. Right as I do, a hear the sound of a window breaking.
