He must have heard the car from the living room. The front door opened before I could even start up the steps. Dante looked furious, the light from inside the house casting sharp shadows across his face. His eyes blazed as he gripped the door handle with white fingers.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he growled, stalking down the steps. Grabbing my arm, he pulled me back into the house.
“Let go of me,” I snapped.
“Not until you tell me where you went.” He yanked me into the living room, towering over me. I could feel the heat of his anger burning through me.
David and Killian glanced up as we stepped inside, both looking worried. Killian half-rose from his chair, thinking of coming to help me before deciding against it. Dante was intimidating when he wasn’t pissed off. And when he was…he was downright terrifying. I’d never seen this anger directed at me before. Not like this.
“Well?” he demanded, shaking me a little.
“Let go, and I’ll tell you,” I replied quietly. I jerked my arm from his grasp, taking a step back just to breathe. Looking around the room, I avoided their gazes. “Gemma called me.”
“So?” Dante cut me off. “Why did you leave? You couldn’t just talk to her over the phone? You had to disappear without telling us?”
“Mateo is missing,” I bit out, shooting him a dark look. “She was frantic, saying she hadn’t seen her father in two days.”
“He could have just been out dealing with business,” Killian offered. “Our father used to disappear sometimes without telling us.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. There was a note…left by the Snake.” I pulled the ball of paper from my pocket, handing it over to Dante first.
His fingers deftly unwrapped it, eyes scanning the words before flicking back to me. He passed it to Killian, David reading the note over his shoulder.
“So, you think the Snake got him?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know if this means he was taken or killed. I haven’t heard anything at all. But if he was taken, then we need to get him back. We need to find the Snake now more than ever. I’m not losing another family member.”
Dante turned away abruptly, fingers running through his hair. “You sent your mom out to California?” he asked.
“And now Gemma as well. My mom will take care of her, and she’ll be out of the way in case the Snake wants to try and take out anyone else.”
“That’s good,” David cut in. “We can finalize the plan tonight before the shipment arrives tomorrow evening.”
I glanced over at Dante. “You found out when the job is?”
“Right before I found out you were missing,” he muttered. There was something else behind the anger in his eyes. Exhaustion. Worry. He’d been afraid when he realized I was gone.
A part of me felt ashamed that I’d left without telling anyone, but I knew they would try and stop me from going. Dante might have even kept me from going to her. It was too risky for any of us to go waltzing about the city, especially if the Snake now controlled most of it. So I wasn’t about to feel bad for doing what I had to do for my friend. Pushing away the guilt, my eyes landed on David.
“If the shipment arrives tomorrow evening, then I guess we better start planning.”
15
DANTE
The entire time we went over the plan, over and over again, I was shaking. I was furious. Seething mad that Sienna had just disappeared without a word and reappeared as if she hadn’t done anything wrong. She was the one who brought us here to keep us safe from the Snake…and she’d just thrown that out the window like her safety meant nothing.
But it meant everything to me. She might not give a shit about her life, but it wasn’t just her life she’d put on the line. Before, I would have trusted that she could handle herself. But everything changed the minute she’d told me she was pregnant and carrying my child. Our child.
It wasn’t just her life that I needed to keep safe anymore. I had to think about our future and our child’s future. And they wouldn’t even have one if she continued to risk her life with no thought or regard to the life growing inside her.
I waited at the kitchen table for the others to finally head upstairs to bed again. Killian cast nervous glances between Sienna and me, knowing that I was biding my time to unleash my wrath. It was honorable that he didn’t want to leave her here with me. But she wasn’t his wife. She was mine.
And she’d crossed me.
As soon as Killian’s footsteps faded away, Sienna started to stand. I was on my feet in a flash, already reaching for her. She gasped in surprise, trying to pull away, but I wouldn’t let her go. Not again.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I hissed.