“He’s your brother, Silas. Please. Just let me go. You’re needed here. Just . . .”
She broke down into another torrent of tears. Maddox reached out to touch her hair and for the briefest of seconds, she could have sworn she saw moisture welling in Maddox’s eyes. But no, that was merely her own tears.
“Be well, Evangeline. Until we meet again. And we will meet again. You have my number. If there is anything you need, anything at all, I expect you to call me. If I find out you were in need and you didn’t call me, I’m going to be one seriously pissed-off son of a bitch. You get me?”
She nodded, her misery making her increasingly numb to anything else but the overwhelming pain and despair welling from the deepest part of her soul.
“Take care of her, Silas,” Maddox ordered softly.
“You know I will. Watch your six,” Silas said, his tone growing more rigid and furious with every passing second. “Until we know where the leak is, watch your six.”
“Watch yours—and hers,” Maddox said pointedly. “She’s a vulnerable target, at least until it gets out that Drake is flying solo, and it would be a good idea if we sped up that particular bit of news leaking, if it protects her.”
Evangeline flinched and went utterly still against Silas. How much longer could she simply stand there and hold it together when her entire life had just fallen apart around her, and now Silas and Maddox, no matter how well-meaning, stood blithely talking about leaking the news of her and Drake’s breakup as if it were nothing more than a weather bulletin.
Maddox cast her one last sorrowful look of apology and then leaned in to kiss her gently on the cheek.
“I’ll see you soon, sweetheart. Bet on that. I’ll come check on you as soon as I can.”
She didn’t respond, neither confirming nor denying his statement. He acted on the assumption that she had somewhere to go. That it was as simple as getting a hotel somewhere or finding another apartment on the spot to rent. Kind of hard to do either when she had no money, no job and no hope of either.
The elevator doors opened and she realized that she hadn’t even registered them closing or the downward slide to the bottom floor. The club was empty, cleared, no doubt, by the police raid. Confetti and an assortment of litter, drink cups, noisemakers, party hats and other random paraphernalia lay scattered over the floor. It looked as though a bomb had gone off. Appropriate, since the dance floor looked just like she felt.
Devastated.
Silas was on the phone with someone giving instructions, but she tuned out everything as the yawning, gaping hole in her heart opened wider, inch by inch, forming an abyss that would soon suck her straight down. How she longed for the welcoming veil of blackness, of unawareness to overtake her. Somewhere she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel and didn’t have to see Drake denouncing her in front of all his men, over and over and over again until she wanted to scream for it all to stop.
Silas escorted her into the back lot that was now mostly empty except for Drake’s car and one or two that belonged to some of his men. A car pulled up, the headlights bouncing over Evangeline, whose gaze was still focused on some distant point as a result of the shock and overwhelming numbness that had slowly invaded her body.
Surely it wouldn’t be too much longer before it finally overtook her and she could escape to oblivion for at least a while. It didn’t matter if it was cold and she had no place to go, no place to stay and no money to obtain one. Things like that only mattered to people who had . . . hope. A future or at least hope for one. As she’d had with Drake. For the span of a few precious months, she’d known what it was like to touch the sun. For that period of time, she’d looked forward to a future filled with everything she’d ever dreamed of. She should have known that at some point in time it would all be cruelly snatched away from her. But she’d refused to believe anything but Drake’s promise to her. A promise he’d broken not once, but twice, in the cruelest way possible.
“Evangeline,” Silas said, gently pulling her from the yawning hole in her mind that threatened to envelop her at any moment.
She slowly moved her unfocused stare to him and blinked at the very real worry in his eyes. And the savage fury swirling like a hurricane.
“I’m having my driver take you away from here. Where would you like to go?”
A hoarse sob broke free from her throat and it was a horrible, animalistic sound. Tears ran in never-ending rivulets down her cheeks. She wanted to laugh but she knew if she gave in, she’d never stop. She’d be in complete hysterics with no hope of ever pulling herself together.