Page 50 of Colin (The Doherty Mafia)
“Just call me if you hear or see anything, okay? Maybe she’ll go over to your place.”
“Or maybe she’s left the city already. Maybe she’s gone back home.”
“If she’s gone back to Las Vegas, I can find her. It’ll take me a few days, but I’ll find her.”
“You don’t have her address?”
“I don’t even have her fuckin’ phone number,” I growled.
Isabelle sighed again.
“And what did you guys fight about?”
I really didn’t want to answer the question, but it didn’t seem like Isabelle was going to drop it until I told her everything.
“She wanted an annulment. She wanted to know why I hadn’t spoken to the lawyers about it yet.”
Isabelle went quiet for a bit at that.
“She wants out?”
I didn’t reply.
“Then what are you doing looking for her, Colin? Why do you have all these guys combing the town for her?”
“Because I need to see her!” I growled.
“But she gets to decide if she wants to see you. And maybe she just wants to be left alone. Maybe she’s got a sense of who you…who we are, and she doesn’t want to be a part of this world. She has a right to choose.”
I clenched my jaws in anger and frustration—mostly because I knew she was right.
Maybe this was exactly what needed to happen.
Marley had to go away so I could move on with my life, and so that she could live her life in peace. Safe and away from the world I lived in.
I didn’t want her to meet the same fate Tina and my mother did.
“You’re right,” I replied to Isabelle and ended the call.
Then I sat down on my couch and finished the rest of the beer.
Maybe it was time to call off the search on Marley.
Half an hour had passed since my phone call with Isabelle and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I couldn’t make the calls I needed to make to stop my guys from looking for her. Even though I knew my sister was right. Marley had the right to choose to get away from me if she wanted to. Maybe that was why she had woken up this morning asking me all those questions about the annulment. She had finally decided she couldn’t be involved with me anymore.
She knew she didn’t want to live on this side of the tracks.
Then my phone rang.
I answered quickly, assuming it was someone calling about Marley. But it wasn’t. It was Aldo Baron.
A phone call I wasn’t expecting, because he had no business calling me.
“I hear you’re pretty distressed today,” he said. I could hear the glee in his voice and it made me want to punch the wall.
The man knew something I didn’t.
He obviously kept track of all of us and had a close ear to the ground. So he knew about Marley and the fact that I was looking for.
In all this—I’d forgotten about him and the danger he posed to her. While the rest of the family was operating on amped up security, it was my fault that I hadn’t put Marley under the same protective shield as the rest of the women in the family.
I should have known he would target her as the weak link.
“What the fuck do you want from me, Aldo?” I growled.
For some reason, that made him laugh.
“I just want what is owed to me, Doherty, and unfortunately, you can’t give it to me.”
“Why don’t you stop hiding from us, show us your face and we can discuss this in person?”
“I would love to, in the meantime, I’m going to wait for your wife to turn up.”
“You’ll leave her alone if you don’t want your balls cut off.” I smashed my fist on the coffee table, which he heard and it made him laugh harder.
“Tell me this, does it hurt less when she twists the knife in your back because she isn’t your real wife?”
“What the fuck are you talking about you sick motherfucker?” I shouted.
“I’m talking about how hilarious it is that neither of you know the first thing about each other. Thanks for the laughs.” He ended the call before I could ask him any more questions.
But it wasn’t like he was actually going to tell me anything. The whole purpose of his phone call was to talk to me in fuckin’ riddles.
But the one thing I knew was that I absolutely needed to find Marley. Before Aldo Baron did.
Two hours—I had been driving around for two hours looking for Marley. Nobody had seen her anywhere around town that day. She hadn’t taken a train, a bus or even a fuckin’ cab.
Nobody had even seen her walking around.
It was like she had magically disappeared into thin air.
The more time went by, the more I was convinced that something had happened to her. That she had been hurt somehow and Aldo Baron was responsible for it.
