Page 38 of Joey

“What?”

He takes a deep breath. “I’m trying to ask if you want to go somewhere else. With me?”

I blink at him.

“Like a date?” he adds.

“Oh.”

“Only if you’re free. I’m sure you’re busy.” His cheeks turn pink. It’s kind of adorable.

I am free. Free and single. Toby Fiore is a good guy. He treats me like a grown-up—like an equal. I think he’s even a little intimidated by me, which is a nice change from the usual possessive, overbearing alpha-holes I’m surrounded by.

“Yeah, I’m free.”

His face breaks into the cutest, biggest smile ever. “Cool. You wanna go for a drink? Or some food? You choose.”

“How about a movie?” I suggest. I rarely get to go to the movie theater, but I love it.

“Perfect.”

“Let me take Mo home and make sure she’s okay, and then we can go, yeah?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

“I just have to call my brothers and let them know.”

I don’t miss the fleeting look of pure terror that flickers over Toby’s face, but he recovers quickly and is soon smiling again.

“They’ll be cool,” I assure him. “And Ash and Henry will have to tag along too. Sorry.”

“I know.” He understands this life and the rules that come with it. Brushing a stray curl from my forehead, he leans closer. “But I hope that one day your brothers might trust me to look after you myself.”

Aw, bless. He really is adorable. Like that would ever happen.

ChapterSeventeen

MAX

“You sure you can’t remember anything else about when Monty used to visit? Your father never went anywhere before or after? Never mentioned a video recording or anything like that?”

“No, Max,” Kristin groans and rolls her eyes. “If I knew, I would tell you.”

I guess she’s right. I’ve been interrogating the kid, repeating the same questions over and over since I spoke to Monty a few days ago. “The longer your father’s missing, the more likely it is he’ll turn up dead somewhere.”

Her face falls and her eyes fill with tears. I feel like an asshole, but this is her reality. I’ve spent the past week and a half barely sleeping, trying to find out what happened to her father, but I continue to hit dead ends. Vito hid his tracks well.

“I’ll do everything I can to find him,” I assure her. “Sometimes we forget things though, and it can only take a word or a phrase or something insignificant to trigger a memory.”

“I know. I wish I could remember something.”

“And you’re sure it doesn’t have anything to do with the father of your baby?”

“Jakob? No way. I guess he might be looking for me since Dad made me leave before I got a chance to say goodbye, but he wouldn’t take my father. Why would he?” She shakes her head. “Jakob has nothing to do with this.”

“Maybe he blames your dad for taking you away from him?”

“Even if that were true, he loves me, Max. If he found us, he would have come for me, not my dad.”