Page 129 of Adored

“When the dude shot at me, and I shot back, it occurred to me that they wouldn’t just grab you to take you back to Von. They’d possibly kill you out of desperation when you couldn’t make the key appear. It also proved that Von Donore knows we’re here. We’re not safe, and I’m not willing to risk us for fifty million. That’s chump change to you, and you’re invaluable to me.”

He could see the man was genuinely worried. His face said it all. Gamble was stressed.

“Oh, Jesus,” Poe muttered. “I’m so sorry about this,” he stated.

He reassured him.

“Baby, it’s okay. I just don’t feel secure with us being here more than tonight. Von Donore will likely come back with more people after dark, and I’d like to be out of here.”

That brought up a question.

“Should I cancel the wake?” he asked.

Gamble considered it, but he knew how adamant Poe was to give his mother her final wish.

“We should be okay. I know if I was coming here, I’d do it during the night hours. When everyone was least expecting it—not in a garden and ballroom full of people. We should be okay to do the wake and your cocktail party afterward. What worries me is someone got in here and there. That meant they are watching us.”

That hung there.

“So, it has to be someone I hired?” he asked.

He stared at him.

“Likely it was someone who was bought out, and they gave them the code. Since you used my birthday, that means your parents didn’t have anything to do with telling someone the code. It has to be someone here. Now.”

Poe was honest.

“I don’t like this. It creeps me out.”

Oh, well, about that. Poe was about to be a little more creeped out when Gamble was done talking to him about his dream.

“We’re lucky to be alive. We could have been asleep,” he began.

On that, Poe agreed.

“That’s for sure, Gamble. Thank God you woke up in time to get down here.”

Now, it was time for him to explain why that was the case. Here went everything.

“I had a dream.”

Poe sat there.

“You did?” he asked a little confused on how that had anything to do with it.

Gamble began explaining from the beginning.

“I heard a noise in my dream, and I came downstairs and saw a shadow lurking outside the window. It was Diablo. He needed me.”

Poe let him talk.

“So I chased the shadow and went out, and he wasn’t alone.”

That hung there.

Honestly, Poe was confused as to where Gamble was taking this.

“Well? Who was there?”