Page 31 of Scorned Beauty (Scorned Fate #5)

Chapter

Nineteen

Dom

She’s brought in reinforcements. Fuck.

I lowered my binoculars when I spotted Sandro’s Escalade pull in beside Sloane’s van.

There was something satisfying about using this old-school stalking instrument.

I’d also installed cameras around Sloane’s property, including inside her house.

Not because I was a pervert. I just wanted to make sure she was still breathing.

I timed my installation when she went to town to pick up groceries and go to twice-weekly therapist sessions. She’d stay in town for three hours tops and it took me two days to set them up. Admittedly, it had taken me longer because I rolled around her bedsheets and sniffed them.

Fuck, maybe I was a pervert.

Missing her was a constant ache in my chest. Since her disappearance, I couldn’t eat.

I rarely slept. For three weeks straight, I drank whiskey from the bottle and smoking seemed like its pathetic companion.

Sera actually had the audacity to pull a cigarette out of my mouth when I’d instantly lit up after I finished a stick.

“You stink like a chimney,” she had said. “Fix your shit, cuz.”

But how could I when the person who could fix it for me was missing?

Many times I’d put unrelenting pressure on Trevor, having him comb through forums and databases, so maniacally extreme that Matteo had to get involved to rein me in.

He’d throw us both out of The Underground and order us to get some sleep.

Finally, I’d convinced Trevor to hack into Harriet’s email, forum threads—she belonged to many, including the true crime ones—and search history.

She loved true crime. And when the FBI categorized the missing witness, Elyse Bailey, as another victim of the Mistress Strangler, it was in the news headlines again.

The autopsy revealed strangle marks around her neck, with WHORE carved into her stomach.

But the rest of us knew better. Some victims were made to look like the Mistress Strangler did it.

Like the husband who got his sidepiece pregnant.

But I wondered if a few of these were the work of Grigori's crew. Dress the kills to fit open cases. The feds were tightlipped about Elyse’s autopsy.

Their lab was processing the DNA, and I was told not to leave New York for almost five weeks.

I was cleared around the time Trevor narrowed down Sloane’s location from Harriet’s conversation with someone in the forums.

Harriet googled Corolla beaches, and she was communicating with Carrotcakeforever from Corolla.

Either Sloane loved carrot cake or she was referring to her hair color or Ginger’s.

I tracked down where she was staying and made an offer to the owner of the beach house beside it.

He was a retired schoolteacher in his seventies.

I sent him on vacation that would last two months.

He said he needed this property back in the winter in time for Thanksgiving with his family.

I sure hoped I could convince Sloane to give me a second chance by then.

I had this overwhelming need to take care of her.

Watching her barely eating, it was a struggle not to storm in there and force-feed her.

She slept a lot, but it was anything but peaceful.

I ached to snuggle up behind her and soothe her restlessness.

I wanted to fight her demons, even if one of her demons was me.

And when she was awake? The blank look on her face gutted me.

But instinct was screaming at me to give her space to work through her grief.

I might not be directly responsible for Billy’s death, but I could have offered her help when she needed it.

Instead, I rejected her. Did I reject her as she was miscarrying our child?

If I hadn’t rejected her, she wouldn’t have been in that basement at all.

Those torturous thoughts wouldn’t leave me and I couldn’t work through them on my own without knowing that Sloane was okay.

My phone buzzed. It was Sera.

Sera

I know you’re watching us right now, stalker. Best not to show up tonight until I get the lay of the land.

Me

Put in a good word for me.

In your dreams. You’re lucky Bianca isn’t heading over there right now to castrate you. I can’t stop Sandro, though, so expect him.

I’m shaking in my boots

I paced and paced. I needed another cigarette and since I respected the owner’s wishes of keeping the interior smoke-free, I walked out to the wraparound patio, sat with another bottle of whiskey and started smoking.

The beach house I was renting was three times the size of Sloane’s. I wondered how they were all going to fit in there. There were only two bedrooms in that one. I had five in mine.

I slipped out my phone and started flipping through the live surveillance videos.

I watched my cousins hug Sloane and they cried.

I could hardly hear their words because they were talking at the same time.

I felt like a voyeur, an outsider into their intimate gathering.

Raw emotions flowed, and I suppressed the ragged sob in my throat.

This thing with Sloane was turning me emo. I missed my calling in a rock band.

I stiffened when Sandro peered into one of the cameras. I swore he smirked before the feed went dead.

Motherfucker.

Sera immediately texted.

Sera

You’re so predictable.

Me

Tell Sandro he’s dead to me.

Tell him yourself, because he’s heading your way, and I quote: I’m not wasting my time looking for those cameras and Dom can just tell me where they are.

Sandro is not welcome here.

Oh, piss off, cuz. Cooperate, or we’ll tell Aunt Lottie where you are.

Me

I’m your cousin. You’re supposed to be on my side.

Sera

Well, you’re an ass, so we’re on Sloane’s side.

Do you guys even know the whole story?

You had your chance to tell us and you refused.

Because I wanted Sloane to tell her side, too. Now, she gets to tell hers and you all won’t hear mine?

Bubbles…and then nothing.

Disloyal. The lot of you.

Bianca

Stop being a drama queen.

Oh, she had to call me out. In frustration, I hurled my phone toward the beach and instantly regretted it. The sun had set an hour ago, and hopefully, it wasn’t buried in sand. I heard it chiming in the dark and decided to be petty by ignoring their messages, and continued to down the whiskey.

They thought I was a drama queen, I’d show them drama queen.

My resistance took all of five minutes. I was the fucking don of the De Lucci crime family for Chrissakes.

Although, in my defense, Luca was equally a drama queen when it suited him.

It threw people off guard. We Morettis had a way of smiling as if we were your best friends while at the same time plotting devious ways to bury you.

Somewhere in the house, my proximity sensors went apeshit, but in my stubborn, self-pitying mood, I didn’t give a fuck.

I chucked the empty whiskey bottle in the same direction as my phone.

“That’s littering,” Sandro spoke in the dark.

“Piss off.” I stood, teetering on my feet before stumbling off the porch in the direction of the beach.

Sandro cocked his head at my shrieking house alarm. “I must say, if an assassin was after you, you’d be dead.”

“You think I care?” I drunkenly trudged in the sand to search for my phone.

I saw the screen flashing a few feet away, probably warning me of an intruder. I scooped it up and my finger kept missing the mark to turn it off. I was more hammered than I thought.

Sandro snatched it out of my hand and turned the annoying thing off, then picked up the whiskey bottle and nudged me back to the house.

“You’re pathetic,” he muttered.

“Says the man who stalked Bianca for years,” I shot back.

He chuckled. “Touché. But you’ve witnessed all our moronic actions, and this takes the cake.”

I laughed mockingly. “Oh really? How about the times you smashed your fists through the drywall and redecorated your office because you were too chickenshit to make a move on Bianca?”

“She was too young, dammit.”

I paused. Yeah, I actually admired Sandro for holding back. “You have a point.”

“And you’re one to talk since your mother has you practically betrothed to a twenty-one-year-old.”

I groaned. “Shit. I already told her it ain’t happening.”

“Have you convinced her, though?”

Admittedly, I had not. I said no, and I expected her to accept it. Knowing my mother, she’d hold on to the idea and try to find a way to guilt me into going along with it. Though I hadn’t been ignoring her in the past two weeks, I kept my answers vague about where I was. My phone was untraceable.

We were back at the house and I was about to sit on the porch chair again to stare at Sloane’s house, but Sandro gripped my arm. “Oh no, you don’t. I think you’ve drunk enough.”

“Listen, you’re not my keeper.” My tongue slurred over the words as he dragged me into the house.

“Someone needs to look after you.”

“Yeah, and she’s in the house across from me, but I need to take care of her first.”

Sandro lowered the whiskey bottle and my phone on the kitchen table and crossed his arms. “Now, how are you going to accomplish that?”

“Dunno.”

I honestly didn’t. I was at a loss. Stuck in my compulsion to take over and knowing I needed to give her space.

“Sit.” Sandro said it in a way that irritated me, but knowing I was swaying on my feet, it would save me the indignity of falling on my face.

I sat on the dining chair.

I broodily watched him head to my kitchen. He peeked at my box of whiskeys and checked one out.

“I thought you said I had enough.”

“This is for me,” he muttered. “I think I’ll be earning it after I talk some sense into you.”

“You’re not my shrink,” I said. “I don’t need a shrink. My shrinks have given up on me.”

He raised a brow and set a bottled water in front of me. “Really? You’ve been to one?”