Page 65 of My Craving

“I found the woman behind it.”

That gets him out of the chair. “And what exactly are you planning to do with that information?”

I hold out my hand. “Borrow your car.”

“Jesus Christ, Nash.” He reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out his keys, but he doesn’t hand them over yet. “You have armed security sitting outside, somebody has been inside your apartment twice, and your response is to ditch the people protecting you and go after whoever is doing this by yourself?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds irresponsible.”

“It is irresponsible.” I give him my best smile and keep my hand out.

Max looks toward the ceiling for a second before bringing his attention back to me. “Let me come with you.”

The offer takes some of the humor out of me. Most people would be halfway through a lecture by now, but Max has always understood there are parts of my life he can’t talk me out of. When he realizes I’m going either way, he wants to come with me.

“I need you here. If this goes sideways and I don’t call, you’re the only person who’ll know where I went.”

His jaw tightens, but after another few seconds, he drops the keys into my palm. “Then tell me exactly where you’re going before you walk out that back door.”

I give him the hotel name and room number Zee found for Alina. Max repeats both back to me before I close my fingers around the keys.

“Be careful, Nash.”

There’s nothing joking in his voice now. I reach over and squeeze his shoulder before heading for the locker room. “I will.”

I change into jeans and a T-shirt in the locker room, then leave through the back of the building. Max’s Mini is parked in its usual spot, hidden from the street by the corner of the studio, and I’m out of the lot before Simon or the other guard realizes their very cooperative security assignment has disappeared.

Zee included the hotel where Alina is staying, so I point the Mini toward the north end of the city and work my way through late-afternoon traffic. This isn’t how I normally operate. I research, watch and wait until I understand exactly who I’m dealing with before I get close enough for them to know I exist. Driving straight to Alina’s hotel with little more than a name and whatever Zee managed to uncover goes against every habit I’ve built over the last five years.

Duncan is going to lose his fucking mind when he finds out I ditched his security. I’m not particularly excited about that conversation, especially when I can already imagine where I’ll end up once Daddy gets his hands on me, but the threat of a sore ass isn’t enough to make me turn around.

Someone broke into my apartment twice because of him. They watched us, photographed us and tried to convince me Duncan murdered Maria. Now I know the woman behind it has been using someone else’s identity to get close to him and is connected to the wife who tried to kill him and his son. I’m not waiting at the penthouse while everyone else figures out what she plans to do next.

Protecting people is the reason I started doing any of this.

For most of our lives, I treated being Joey’s older brother like it made me responsible for him. He was the kid who could walk into a room and make people happier just by being there. I can still picture him after his first date with Charles Harty, bursting through the front door and talking so fast I could barely understand him because he was so damn excited.

Then he started changing.

He stopped coming around as much. When I asked what was wrong, there was always an explanation ready—school, exhaustion, too much going on. I believed him because I had no reason not to, right up until the letter arrived and told me everything he hadn’t been able to say to my face.

Charles raped him. He photographed and recorded him, then let other men pay to hurt him too. Joey wrote that he fought them and they liked it. He begged me not to tell our parents because he couldn’t stand the thought of them knowing what had been done to him, and near the end of the letter, he apologized to me for not being the little brother I deserved.

That part still fucks me up.

Joey had been abused, raped, and sold to other men, and somehow Charles had twisted him around so badly that my baby brother was the one apologizing. By the time I got the letter, Joey was dead, and all I could do was take those pages to the police and expect them to do something with them.

They tried. There were no witnesses they could find, no videos left behind, and nothing they could use to prove what Charles had done. I made it worse when I confronted him outside the station and promised that if the law couldn’t touch him, I would. Confronting him felt good for about thirty seconds. After that, I understood what I’d done. If Charles turned up dead, I’d handed the police a suspect before I ever had the chance to go after him.

Five years later, he’s still alive.

I’ve gone after other men because I couldn’t go after the one I wanted most, and I’ve learned enough since then to understand all the mistakes I made when I started. Alina doesn’t get the inexperienced version of me that Charles did. She also doesn’t get to come after someone I care about and assume I’ll stay out of her way.

The hotel comes into view, and I turn into the parking lot before the memories can pull me any farther backward. I back into a space with a clear view of the main entrance and shut off the engine. The place is nicer than a budget motel but nowhere near the kind of luxury hotel I’d expect someone connected to the Whitmores to choose. The place is anonymous, though. People come and go without attracting attention, which makes it a damn good place for someone who wants to disappear into a crowd without actually leaving the city.

I recline the seat enough to get comfortable while keeping a clear view of the hotel entrance. Alina has to come through those doors eventually, and I don’t need to confront her. Getting inside her room while she’s gone will tell me more than walking up and asking questions she has no reason to answer honestly. A laptop, burner phone, notes—anything she believes is private could give me the piece we’re missing.

Going behind Duncan’s back to do this should probably bother me more. Instead, I’m sitting here planning a felony while wondering how pissed he’ll be when he finds out. A week ago, I was trying to convince myself the man was nothing more than a good scene.