Page 33 of Keeping Kasey (Love and Blood #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Logan

Two months earlier

My empty whiskey glass is taken from my hand and immediately replaced with a full one.

“You look like you could use this,” James says, setting the empty glass on a passing waiter’s tray and sipping from his.

“And here I thought I was really selling it,” I deadpan.

“You’re the one who wanted to come.”

“I said we needed to come. Not that I wanted to.”

“In any case, Romano is pleased to have us.”

I’d roll my eyes if I didn’t have an audience of two hundred constantly flicking gazes toward me.

The Winter Ball is an annual fundraiser hosted by the Romanos for some charity no one here actually cares about. I’m sure it’s a noble cause, but it doesn’t matter.

I’m only here to keep up appearances.

“Where is my blushing bride-to-be, anyway?” I don’t bother concealing the distaste in my tone.

“Dealing with a crisis in the kitchen,” he tells me. “Something about a champagne shortage.”

At least it’s not a whiskey shortage.

“I can’t exactly show Romano I’m holding up my end of the bargain if his daughter isn’t around to hang on my arm.”

James murmurs something as he brings the glass to his lips and takes a long sip.

“What was that?”

He shakes his head, nodding across the ballroom to where Damon entertains a group of capos from various families in the area. “He seems to be doing well.”

Damon is the only one in the group without a glass in his hand, but he doesn’t appear to be uncomfortable with that fact. He uses the freedom to gesture with both hands, enhancing whatever story he’s telling, which captivates the group.

I look away and sip at my own drink.

“It’s only his third event since rehab,” I remind him. “It’s too early to know if he’s doing well.”

I can feel James’s disapproving stare boring into the side of my head.

“He’s been to hundreds of events where he was explicitly ordered to stay sober, and he rarely succeeded, let alone entertained . You have to admit he’s doing great.”

“No, I don’t.”

James opens his mouth, but my phone rings, giving me the perfect excuse to ignore him and step into the hall. As soon as I’m away from prying eyes, I bring the phone to my ear and answer Ford’s call.

“Anything?”

“No, sir. There haven’t been any sightings or indications that she’s planning anything.”

“Keep an ear to the ground,” I tell him. “If there’s even the slightest whisper of a sighting, I’d better be your first call.”

“Of course, sir.”

I hang up and finish the rest of my drink in one swig.

“You’re still having Ford look for her,” James says, and I curse under my breath.

“If I wanted you to hear my conversation, I wouldn’t have come out here.”

“So you can go behind my back again?”

“I didn’t go behind your back. I follow up on leads all the time without informing you first.”

“That wasn’t ‘following up on a lead,’” he says with a pointed look. “It was attempted murder.”

Attempted being the operative word.

It wasn’t the first move made since the little liar fled two months ago, but it was the closest I’ve come to making good on the promise I made her when she did.

When Kasey first left, I followed the trail closely for a week.

She took a bus to Ohio and a plane to Tennessee before the trail went cold.

The only reason I’d been able to track her that far is because the very security system she installed was able to pick her up via facial recognition by various security and traffic cameras.

She must have figured that out by the time she got to Tennessee because the software didn’t pick her up after that.

Thanks to the investigation Moreno had Kade conduct, we had the location of Kasey’s apartment. I kept watch over it for two weeks before deciding she wasn’t going to come back.

I took advantage of the opportunity.

I had Ford—still bedridden in the hospital—take any pending investigations from federal agencies and frame Kasey for them.

Matteo planted the evidence in her apartment, and with one call, I had five cases thrown off of me and agents swarming Kasey’s apartment.

Of course, she’d hacked her own hard drive to wipe it clean before Matteo got there, but the evidence he planted was enough to get the feds off my back.

Conveniently, each of those cases was dismissed due to missing evidence .

Exactly seven days after the raid on Kasey’s apartment, I received messages from fourteen families within my territory thanking me for the generous gift.

A gift I had no memory of sending.

Kasey took it upon herself to inform them that, as a gesture to express my gratitude for their loyalty , I would be sending them a car from my beloved personal collection. She knew damn well that going back on a gift like that would look bad to the other families.

I was forced to give away fourteen cars .

I returned the favor two weeks later when I received a call from an associate saying he saw a girl who fit her description in Little Rock. I was there later that day, at the very motel she was staying at under a fake name.

I burned the place to the ground.

Unfortunately for me, she wasn’t inside.

I’m not sure how she knew not to come back to that motel. Not a single camera in the area picked up a trace of her, and my contacts confirmed that she never returned for any of her belongings.

Just as well, since I burned them to a crisp.

It’s been a month since, and I thought she would’ve struck back by now, but considering her lack of personal items, I suppose she has some rebuilding to do.

“There’s no harm in having Ford keep an eye out,” I tell James in a tone that’s carefully detached.

He shakes his head. “If she were going to get revenge, she would’ve by now.”

“I’m not relying on that assumption.”

“I know. You’re ignoring it completely.”

“You better be very careful about what you say next,” I warn.

James knows damn well that this isn’t a topic I care to discuss.

“There’s still a lot we don’t know.”

“There’s even more we do know.”

We’ve been down this road before.

“I’m just saying, we never figured out why Brandon would’ve attacked Kasey if they were on the same side.”

Her name.

It’s like I’m set on fire from the inside out every single time I hear it.

“She doesn’t need a reason to make enemies,” I remind him. “It comes very naturally to her.”

While I wholeheartedly believe that, the unanswered questions still haunt me.

Why would they have been fighting if they were working together? How could a conversation between two people on the same side go so horribly that one would kill the other?

As unsatisfying as the questions are, the things we do know are far more important.

Kasey admitted to creating the program, and she deleted any evidence of its existence.

As far as I’m concerned, whatever fight she and Brandon had is semantics.

She’s guilty, and she ran.

“Go ahead and have Ford keep the search going, but Logan?”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Promise me we’ll move forward, whether we find her or not?”

By we , he means me .

And he knows giving him my word is something I don’t take lightly.

“We’ll move forward no matter what,” I tell him. “Though I do prefer putting Kasey six feet under.”

My brother nods. “Whatever it takes to protect the family.”

Whatever it takes.

Present

Seeing Kasey again is surreal.

It’s a moment I’ve pictured a million times—imagining all of the ways I could end her life.

She looks exactly the same.

So much so that I wonder how we didn’t find her sooner; she wasn’t trying to disguise herself.

She wears jeans, a fitted T-shirt, and a light jacket—the same lazy style she always had. Her blonde hair still falls in wild curls around her delicate face. I take great pleasure in her full lips parting in surprise, but it’s nothing compared to the look in her eyes.

Those cool blue eyes that haunt my nightmares are wide with the fear she’s trying—and failing—to hide.

She’s afraid of me.

Good.

She doesn’t inch closer to the door to escape. It would be futile anyway. She’s smart enough to know that if I’m in here, I have soldiers surrounding the premises.

She’s not going anywhere.

“Huh,” I say. “I remember you being a lot mouthier.”

“How did you find me?” she asks in a voice that’s far calmer than her wild eyes.

Kasey’s always had an excellent handle on her emotions. I thought it was a sign of her strength, but it was just another manipulation.

“You should be more concerned with what happens to you now.”

She moves fast, reaching for a spot on the shelf just barely hidden from where I sit now, and her face goes ghostly white.

“Looking for this?” I ask, pulling her gun from the holster under my jacket.

I aim it at her heart.

It’s an adorable weapon—exactly the kind of gun I would’ve expected Kasey to go for. The .22 caliber barely fits in my hand.

For a moment, I wonder what she would’ve done if I hadn’t taken it first. Would she have only threatened me? Or would she have immediately pulled the trigger?

If she’s learned anything, it would be the latter.

“How poetic,” I say with a breath of laughter, “that you should die by the same weapon that you bought to protect yourself from me.”

I wait for the terror to bleed into her eyes, but a mask of indifference does instead. She drops her hand from the shelf, straightens her back, and lifts her chin.

“Go ahead. Do it.”

I try to decipher whether she truly means it.

Everything from her countenance to her expression indicates she’s ready to die, but Kasey’s proven herself to be quite the deceiver.

Just two days ago, I would’ve ended her life on the spot.

But it seems a lot can change in forty-eight hours.

“As much as I would love to bury your own bullet in your skull,” I start with a lazy draw, “you have something I need.”

Her brow furrows, and it’s a convincing display of confusion—I’ll give her that.

“What are you talking about?”

I stand, slowly putting her gun back in my holster. I maintain eye contact, making the message loud and clear.

I will bring it right back out if I need to.