“You’re sitting in the living room. Over there’s the kitchen. It sits right against my noisy neighbors who enjoy their fetish for walls. If you follow me down the hallway, you’ll get a glimpse of the smallest bathroom ever to exist as well as my room that holds my full-sized bed I got off the street and absolutely nothing else.”

The bitterness in her voice was angering. Her apartment was small. And not in the best part of town. My shoulders were two inches away, at best, from scraping against the walls of her hallway. And I had to turn sideways to get into any of the rooms. The walls were had been damaged by leaking water from the ceiling and the walls were paper thin.

It was disgusting, her staying in a place like this.

“It isn’t much, and it isn’t home, but you can help yourself to whatever you need. Though you’re bigger than I remember. You know, in the… everywhere. So we might have to hose you off out back if you get dirty.”

I grinned down at her as she shuffled past me in the hallway. Her body squeezed against mine, and I was thrown back into the past. Into a time when her soft curves cradled against my body instead of trying to smooth past him. A time when her hands slid up my chest instead of pushing it away.

A time when she would’ve given anything to feel my naked skin against hers.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. I’m going to bed,” Alicia said.

I watched her as she picked up her cell phone and her eyes glanced over at me.

“I wasn’t joking when I said help yourself. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Sleep wherever you want.”

I could sleep with you.

I shook the thought away and walked back over to my chair. I sat down in it, praying it couldn’t collapse from underneath me. Honestly, it felt like the entire damn apartment was about to cave. Just come crashing down on our fucking heads from all the water damage her ceiling had seen. I looked around, taking in the weakest parts of the material and making sure I kept her away from it.

The last thing we needed was the damn ceiling caving in and killing her.

I watched her walk down the hallway and took in the way her hips still swayed. Deeply and reverently with each stride she took. She was wearing these baggy fucking clothes that did nothing for her figure, and for all I knew that was what Langley wanted her in. Clothes so another man wouldn't even look her fucking way.

My want to kill the man grew with every second that passed.

I could hear Alicia talking on her phone to her friend Becca and I resisted the urge to listen in. To walk down the hallway and press my ear to the door. I resisted telling her that I did technically have the ability to listen in on her calls. Plant a device in her phone that would enable me to listen in case someone was working with Langley and trying to get to her. But I was still trying to convince her I needed to around during the nighttime hours.

She sure as hell wouldn’t go for me listening in on her phone calls.

I brought out my phone and decided to pass the time with a bit of research. The more I could find on Langley, the easier that son of a bitch would be to track. I’d need my laptop for a more in-depth analysis of his life and his finances and shit like that, but my phone would do in a pinch. I pulled up my email and saw the files Abram had sent me. Traffic footage and photos that showed Langley fucking walking down the damn road towards her apartment.

But he had slipped into a cab that had been waiting for him.

Where the hell had he flagged that cab down?

I sent Abram an email and told him to go back further. And to widen his search. Langley walked to her apartment, but suddenly had a cab pull up he didn’t have to flag down in order to ride away. It was clear as day in the damn video. The cab pulls up, stops without him raising his hand, and he gets in and drives away.

I sent that particular video to Yoake. To see if he could find a way to identify the driver of that cab.

I used a few of my connections and dug a little more into Langley’s personal history. And I found a laundry-list of police reports with his name embedded in them somewhere. But the ones I was really interested in were the domestic calls made to an address that matched the one given in Alicia’s file.

The address they shared when they were married.

There were five distinct calls, and all of them initiated by Alicia. The police reports had varying degrees of difference. Sometimes Alicia was crying, sometimes she was yelling. But every single time, the police officer noted the distinct lack of emotion coming from Langley. Even when answering the officers questions, they felt the need to note that Langley was never as worked up as her.

If ever.

Which was curious, because police officers didn’t usually notate shit like that.

But Alicia was right. If she had been physically injured by Langley, there was no proof of it. The police reported that she wasn’t wounded and there were no hospital visits to any of the nearby medical facilities that had files on her. So I dug into Langley’s basic life.

His work. His family. His reputation.

He ran his own business in town. A general merchandising facility. And apparently, it was pretty popular. The Yelp reviews on it were outstanding and people were constantly boasting of how nice and helpful Langley was. He had three of them strewn across New York. Some idiotic mash-up between a high-end thrift store and a fucking Big Lots.

But people seemed to enjoy it.

And him.

A simple internet search brought up multiple articles. The ribbon-cutting ceremony for his first store, where Alicia looked dead-eyed with her fake smile and her put-together outfit. I’d never seen her dressed that way. She was in a conservative dress with a high neckline, no sleeves, and her hair pulled back from her face. She was hiding behind those thin-rimmed glasses I saw her wearing in the picture of her file, and it started me wondering.

I kept scrolling through the articles, finding more pictures of them to confirm my theory.

Picture after picture, and it was all the same. Langley was in a tailored suit and Alicia was in some sort of conservative dress. Enough to show her off and boast to the community the kind of woman he could have, but covered up enough for men to find her boring. Tasteless. Bland. Always in heels, always with those damn pearls in her ears, and always with her fucking hair up.

She didn’t dress in the baggy clothes because of him.

She dressed in them because it was the exact opposite of what she had been wearing.

What she was probably forced to wear.

I gripped my phone so tightly I thought it was going to break. That motherfucker was going to pay. No woman should ever have to endure the manipulation and the emotional abuse Alicia had endured.

I was on a rampage. I found their wedding announcement and noted how happy they looked. Back when Alicia didn’t understand the type of man she was about to marry. Her smile was genuine and her eyes were crinkled. I could see the light in her eyes as she held onto Langley, looking straight into the camera and rejoicing in her soon-to-be union.

And then, there was him.

That asshole.

Staring down at her with the fakest fucking smile and the blackest of eyes.

I found his social media accounts and scrolled through everything. His updates. His pictures. His events. His announcements. And with each flick of my finger there was Alicia. With a light in her eyes dimmer than the last. It was like a horror movie playing out in front of my eyes. I was watching her slowly die in those photos. Slowly slip away into someone she wasn’t. Caught between fleeing and enduring, yet not having the energy to do either.

This man wasn't going to touch Alicia.

Never again.

I sat there and looked down the hallway. The light underneath Alicia’s door was off. I checked the clock and realized I’d been sitting there for three fucking hours scrolling through shit.

The fucking hours that bastard had sucked from my life.

The hairs on my arm began to stand on end. My eyes drifted towards the window and I felt a tug to get up and look. Something was wrong. I could sense it. My neck was bristling and my muscles were aching to jump into action. Planting my hands on the arms of the chair, I stood. Slowly. Steadily. So as to not make a sound and wake Alicia. I could charge like a rhino and creep like a cat. And for some reason, I felt the need to be quiet.

Silent.

Attentive.

I walked over to the window and peered down to the street. And there he was, with those beady blue eyes and that stringy blonde hair. Staring up at her fucking apartment. I resisted the urge to run after him again. I resisted the urge to jump out the fucking window and chase after him. Instead, our eyes locked and I rolled my shoulders back.

Alicia was protected, and he was going to know that.

His eyes fell from mine before he wrestled with something in his pocket. I took my gun off my hip and held it at my side, ready to raise it up and put a bullet in that bastard’s head. A car in front of him blinked and he got in, his eyes glancing up at me one last time.

I was tempted to level my fucking gun at him anyway.

He got into the car and cranked it up. I traded my gun for my phone and pulled up the camera so I could take some pictures. I caught several angles of the car, including two decent shots of the license plate.

I sent them off to Yoake, asking him to run the plates for me.

I stood there and watched him drive off into the night. I wasn’t going to chase him and leave Alicia vulnerable. That wasn’t my role. It was my role to keep her safe. My men would track this asshole down for Brendan. I stepped back from the window and holstered my gun, then tossed my head down the hallway.

Should I wake Alicia up? Tell her what had happened?

No. There was no other reason to panic her for the day. I had it covered, and we were two steps closer than we were just a few hours ago.

No reason to wake her and make her panic.

I sat back down in the chair and leaned into the cushions. I closed my eyes, allowing them a brief moment’s rest before I opened them again. Two sightings in one day didn’t allow me the privilege of sleeping on the job. I needed to stay alert in case he grew ballsy in the middle of the night.

Because if he came knocking on that door, he’d be met with my fist against his nose.

My phone rang on my hip and I snapped my eyes open. I shoved my hand into my pocket, muting the ringer before I picked it up. I looked down the hallway to see if I had woken Alicia, and when I couldn’t hear her shuffling around I leaned back into the chair.

“Whatcha got, Yoake?”

“Already got some hits on that license plate,” he said.

“Some hits?” I asked.

“Yep. The car’s a rental. But the company’s shady as fuck. The one he was driving has been used in petty thefts and drive-by’s. Even a damn kidnapping, Smith.”

“How the hell is the thing still on the road?”

“That’s why the company’s shady. The license plate got all these hits, but the car doesn’t match the description in the police reports.”

“What?” I asked.

“Yeah. One police report has that license plate on a black and blue van, and the other report has it on a white beat-up SUV.”

“Okay. I’m gonna need you guys for groundwork tomorrow. I want to know why the hell this company’s still in operation and how they’re planting license plates on cars they don’t belong to and getting away with it,” I said.

“I can already answer that. The rental car company is local. One shop in the heart of the city. It’s run by Diego Martella.”

“That’s not possible. Martella’s been in prison for half a fucking decade.”

“Exactly, so I looked into it. Apparently, Martella passed it down to his son, Roberto. He’s been running the place since his father went to prison. And guess who he’s pals with?”

“Langley.”

“Yep. Got them at lunch together. Coffee together. Walking down the street together. A regular fucking couple, these two.”

“Send it to me, then gather it all in a file,” I said. “I want you to track Roberto’s movements throughout the city. If they’re so damn chummy, maybe his ass will lead us to wherever Langley’s holed up.”

“On it boss. Files incoming.”

I hung up the phone with Yoake and my phone began to light up. Email after email with gigabytes of attachments. Each time it shook in my hand, my grip tightened. Diego Martella was busted five years ago by my fucking team for trafficking hundreds of pounds of heroin into the city through its ports. It was the biggest fucking score my company ever made. Put us on the damn map for our services.

Which was why Langley wasn’t approaching the apartment with me in it.

He knew who I was.