Chapter 46: is

LUCA

My sweet Raven has been gone for three days now.

I don’t know where she is and it’s slowly eroded my sanity.

I do know who she’s with—fucking Kermit.

The last time I saw her, we were at her club. She’d just discovered that I was once a cop. We were interrupted by a disturbance out on the street and I left her alone for ten minutes. I asked her to stay inside the building where I knew it was safe. Where I knew it would take some time and noise for anyone to get past the locked doors.

The disturbance on the street involved two regulars who’d gotten into a fist fight. It was nothing that a bit of yelling and threatening couldn’t handle. Pretty much the moment they noticed me coming to settle the argument, they sobered up and wanted to leave.

However, by the time I’d come back inside, Raven was gone. She’d packed all the papers back into the manila envelope, but she was not there.

We searched every alley, every darkened corner, every single location locally for her. But deep down, I knew we wouldn’t find her.

Eventually, I demanded all the footage from the cameras that night.

I watched as she packed away the papers and then headed back to her office. She grabbed the garbage—I can only assume the cleaning staff missed it—and went to take it outside.

I’ve driven myself mad trying to figure out why she did it. I don’t know why she left the building. I had warned her not to because I figured whoever had sent the papers were likely after us, but she defied what I requested.

I’m not mad at her. I don’t care why she did it. It doesn’t even fucking matter anymore. I just want her back here safely.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the CCTV footage as she tossed the rubbish into the big bin outside. I noticed a shadowed figure on the far side just outside view, but she hadn’t noticed it immediately.

I’ve watched the footage so many times that I can see it in her face when she realizes that something’s wrong. Part of me wonders if she walked outside without thinking. That she made an honest mistake doing something habitual for her.

On my seventh watch, I realized that there’s an extremely faint noise. Like a heavily released breath. As if someone was building up courage.

And then he steps forward and smacks her across the back of the head with something and she immediately drops to her knees. Blood stained the concrete instantly.

Blood that I haven’t been able to scrub successfully. Blood that haunts me in my sleep.

The man struggled to lift her. He was thin, wasn’t too muscular. I heard a few rough, sharp sniffs.

If that wasn’t enough of a hint as to who it was, I then noticed the small piece of purple hair peeking out of his balaclava and I knew it was Kash.

The moment I had confirmation that it was him, I drove my fist into the nearby wall and nearly broke my damn knuckles. Rage strangled the air from my lungs like I’ve never experienced before.

Kash and Shaye, surely. It explains why we ran into them outside the club shortly before this damning envelope arrives exposing me, followed by a disturbance outside, and Raven going missing.

In the time I’ve had to think everything over, it’s occurred to me that it’s entirely possible that the two drunks fighting outside were paid for or ordered by Kash to distract me. To pull me away from Raven for long enough that it would provide him the access he needed to her.

I should’ve fucking known better. It’s the most classic thing. The most simplistic plan and I should’ve seen right through it.

I think with the tiny argument that Raven and I had had, that it’d distracted me. I wasn’t fully focused, nor was I thinking straight. Even though Raven wasn’t mad at me—and seemed to be understanding of everything and absorbing it well—it still threw me off. I wasn’t anticipating my past life being exposed. Not this far into the game. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. All those papers represent is the person I once was, not who I am now.

I have no way to prove whether the drunken regulars were part of Kash’s plan or not. I’d interrogated them, but they didn’t give anything away. Either they hold intense loyalty to Kash, they were paid so well they won’t crack, or they honestly are drunks who were a convenient distraction for Kash that night.

However, I knew that Kasimir had sent the paperwork. I have no fucking clue how he succeeded in getting access to papers that are classified and locked tightly away, but it doesn’t matter. He likely knows someone who’s a cop and paid him off.

In fact, I have my own connections and I had the paperwork fingerprinted to confirm that Kash’s prints were on the sheets. His prior arrests for public indecency, possession, and petty burglary helped prove he was the one who delivered the envelope.

Not as if that provided me with any peace of mind. Raven being in his hands is dangerous. He’s unpredictable, especially considering his love of coke. Add to that the fact that he’s attempted sexually assaulting her before, and I’m terrified for her.

Deep down, I recognize that Raven can take care of herself. That, if she was lost in the darkened woods with a starving wolf, the wolf would run. However, that doesn’t matter to me in this moment because she’s locked up somewhere with Kash and/or Shaye and I don’t have the faintest clue what they’ll do to her.