It was a good reminder that I needed to go see them. That I needed to hug the ones I loved and cherish them every single second of every single day. They deserved that and so much more from me. Self-loathing after addiction was a bitch to get over, especially when I could recall the way they all cried for me, how my mother’s face broke when she saw me high. It’s funny how blackout gone I could be but the hardest glimpses of my reality were still etched in stone.
Now I just wanted to make them proud, do something better for the world than be an addict. The world deserved the good, not the bad, especially my family.
“Lucas, I found out some information, and I’m going to find out more. I’m going to show you we can be more than just this. You get that we can, right? We don’t have to fall back into the same patterns. We’re stronger.”
Maybe I was telling myself, maybe I was close to relapsing, maybe all this stress and emotion wasn’t good for me.
Or maybe I was right.
Without great risk, there’s no great reward, right?
I left the hospital quietly, rounding a corner and leaving Cade’s security behind. I didn’t want a tail or anyone to witness that I was going to dig and dig deep into the Albanians. I had a new mission.
One I was going to take care of on my own.
25
Cade
Iwas well aware that Lucas wouldn’t be coming into the office, but Izzy flat out didn’t show. I’d called my security for the last time Sunday night, and they’d confirmed her whereabouts. I’d received no update other than that she was safe. So I’d tried not to check my security on her.
Truth be told, I had fucking facial recognition notifications set up everywhere for her, I could hack her computer or her phone, and I contemplated doing all of it.
But she’d asked for time. She wanted privacy for her and her friend. I tried to understand it. I tried to give her that.
She deserved that after I saw the way she held her friend, after I saw the look of terror on her face. Babying her wouldn’t help. She didn’t want it anyway. She needed and wanted to feel like I trusted her to handle it.
I did. I had to. Or at least I was going to try to.
Except now she hadn’t shown up to work, and it was half past her normal start time.
I grumbled to my brother on the phone about it.
“Wait. You went to the hospital to drop off candy canes?” my brother asked again.
“You want me to hang up on you or finish the story?” I shoved away from my desk and wondered what the hell I was doing in a corporate office anyway. I could be at home where I had five screens set up instead of four and be getting much more done.
Especially considering all I was doing was walking out my damn office door to check to see if she’d shown up.
“Well, did you call her?”
“No.” I wasn’t going to either. I was becoming a goddamn stalker. I’d checked the fucking hospital records just to make sure I could ease the pain in her eyes instead of having her wait for the nurses to give her the update. Let’s be honest, those nurses weren’t giving updates fast enough in my opinion, anyway.
She needed time to digest her feelings for me, and I probably needed the same.
Bastian snickered over the phone, and then I heard him repeat everything to his wife.
“Why are you telling Morina about the candy canes?” I asked, my voice laced with anger. He was purposely trying to piss me off.
“Because you got it bad. Haven’t you been following Izzy around for years?” Then he muffled the phone again to tell Morina that indeed it was Izzy. I hated that everyone knew her from her undercover work, and now she was working directly under me, making my life a living hell.
“I haven’t followed anything she’s been doing.” That was a bald-faced lie. I was literally going cold turkey on checking her shit. “I don’t know why I told you any of this.”
“Because I’m your big brother and you’ve got no one else to tell.”
“I could have called Dante.” I threw out our cousin’s name because he would have listened to me be a pussy too.
“Yeah, but he would have told you the same thing I’m about to tell you, and it’s that you’d better stop fucking around if you like her. Which you do if you brought her candy canes, dumbass.”