Severed Ties: A Dark Stalker Romance (Tainted Love Book 1)
Severed Ties: Chapter 62

Seeing Ace and Everett in the same room is bizarre. But seeing them work side by side, three laptops, each sitting on the desk in front of them as they shoot instructions at one another without looking up is downright crazy.

They’ve been at it for the last twelve hours straight. This means we’re coming up to forty-eight hours since Clara was taken from our bed in the middle of the night.

The girls have gone to bed, but only because they were forced to by Storm and Rayne. They fought until the last minute, but in the end, they each did as they were told because they were dead on their feet.

But I don’t miss the way each man in this room watches his woman leave with worry in his eyes. Clara disappearing is too close to home, and each of them has been in a position where they could have lost their woman, and this is just a reminder of how hopeless they all felt when they were in my shoes.

Storm collapses onto the seat beside me, a glass of whiskey in his hand. This is the first time I’ve seen him stop since we got here. He ate the sandwich Emerson made him while yelling at someone on the phone, he typed furiously on his phone while he held a very sleepy Ayvah in his lap, and I’m pretty sure the only break he’s taken is to go to the bathroom.

I glance over at him. His normally stern expression has fallen and now he looks defeated, not exactly the way you want your only hope of getting your girl back to look.

“Thank you for all you’re doing to bring Clara home.”

His fingers tighten around his glass and he rubs his other hand over his face as if it will do anything to wipe away the tiredness seeping into his bones.

“I wish there was more we could do, but we’re hitting dead end after dead end.” He sighs. “We’ve never had to get information about an organization like theirs, and even Crew couldn’t give us much more than we already knew.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “You called Crew?”

He nods. “I thought he might be able to give us something, even just another rock to look under, but his ties pretty much begin and end in New York.”

Crew is the leader of The Legion, the gatekeepers of the New York underworld, and the only reason the Five Families of the city don’t descend into chaos. We’ve worked with them a few times in the last year, which I guess means we have an alliance of sorts, but they’re not the kind of people who do anything that doesn’t benefit them in some way.

I sigh and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I’m trying my best not to think about the horrors my little fawn could be facing right now. The things we’ve learned about the Lombardi family and their…proclivities have done nothing to calm the panic that has been lodged in my chest since I found my apartment door wide open and my woman missing.

I close my eyes and imagine Clara. Her scent, the feel of her soft skin beneath my calloused hands, her moans of pleasure, the way she fights me at every turn but submits so beautifully. The color of her hair and how it feels when I fist it between my fingers. How her eyes light up when she eats something she likes. It’s an endless loop of heaven and hell, and I allow myself to get lost in it for just a moment. I need it. I need to feel like everything we’re doing isn’t for nothing, that the woman I put to bed two nights ago is the one I’m going to bring home, even if I’m just luring myself into a false sense of security.

I could stay in my daydream forever, thinking about holding my little fawn against me and how her skin doesn’t elicit the same panic every other person has. How her perky ass presses against my cock so beautifully and how easy it would be to slip into her waiting cunt. But it’s cut short when a commotion breaks out at the desk.

Everett and Ace shoot nonsense words back and forth, and I only catch a few here and there. Miami. Compound. Security system. And before I can register the meaning of them, Storm’s on the phone beside me.

“Get the jet ready,” he barks down the line. “Miami.”

My stomach sinks. We may know where she is, but getting to her is going to be next to impossible, and the idea of sitting idle for three hours in a flying tin can only make my skin itch restlessly.

A hand comes down on my shoulder and I lean into the feeling of bugs crawling under my skin because at least I’m feeling something. “We’re going to bring her home, Tommy,” Storm promises, but what if we can’t?

What if, by trying to save Clara, we’re putting our entire organization in danger?