Phantom: Her Ruthless Villain (Ruthless Triad 5)

“I got in town earlier than I thought I would, so I figured, why not come down here and meet you—you know, maybe get in that tour you and Livvy promised me at your Faux New Year’s Eve party.”

“Aw,” Eric said, reaching out to wrap his arms around Byron’s waist. “Livvy’s going to be so sad she missed you. But that’s what she gets for cutting out of here early and leaving me with all her patients.”

She’d left early? Before he’d gotten here even? Every protective muscle in Phantom’s body tightened, demanding to know why and get eyes on her to make sure she was alright.

“Is everything alright with her?” Byron asked, echoing Phantom’s own #1 question as he followed Eric back into the clinic.

But the door closed on any answer Eric might have given him.

Phantom cussed out loud, startling a busboy just as he came out to the alley to dump the trash.

It didn’t matter. The guy was one of the evening shift workers who Phantom had already paid off handsomely in unreported “tips” to pretend like they didn’t see the big Chinese dude out here nearly every night right around six.

But Phantom must have looked as pissed as he felt. The busboy called out to him, “Everything alright?”

Phantom didn’t bother to answer—just switched to cussing inwardly as he made the walk to the subway station, where he usually followed her at a discreet distance. His car was still back at his apartment building, and this was the faster option at rush hour anyway.

However, standing packed in like a sardine with a bunch of other travelers inside a vehicle he had no control over didn’t help improve his mood. And by the time he emerged from the 86th Street subway station, gruesome what-if scenarios were looping around his head.

He tried to calm himself down. Maybe she’d had a good reason for cutting out early. There could have been an unexpected delivery—an emergency of some kind.

But no…the way Eric had made it sound, it had been a deliberate choice to leave.

She could have just been tired, though, Phantom told himself to keep from freaking out. She’d been in beast mode since the beginning of the year—even going into the clinic on weekends. Maybe she’d reached her limit and decided to go home early for once.

He’d probably find her at the brownstone sleeping, he told himself as he bypassed what he privately referred to as his lurking alley. That was the place where he always hung back and watched from afar until she was safely inside.

Then he’d leave for another night of trying to convince himself to stop doing this. To leave her alone and let her live her life without him, just as he’d determined to do after that second call.

But those nights he followed her home always ended the same. Him with his dicked crammed in his fist, humping himself into a pillow that could never stand in for her, no matter how hard he tried.

And so far, he hadn’t missed a single shift of “walking her home.” Not until now.

So that night, he allowed himself to go all the way up to her stoop….

His stomach dropped when he found her brownstone sitting dark and empty. And it wasn’t because she was napping; he was sure of it. The little over door light she always flipped on when she got inside sat dark.

No more reasoning with himself after that. Phantom really started to flip out. Where was she? Where the hell was she?

Not caring about pride or stalker laws, he called his contact at Manhattan Mercy just to make sure she wasn’t there.

“Nope. She has an induction scheduled for two days from now, but other than that, nothing,” the sister of one of their Triad members answered.

Son of a bitch.

All sorts of self-recriminations popped off in his head.

He should have totally gone the stalker route and enabled the Find My app on her phone when he first thought about it. He should have kept men posted at her clinic and house, even if it drew more attention to her than he wanted after what happened with Han’s and Victor’s women.

But all those “should’ves” didn’t come close to drowning out his biggest question. Where was she? Where was—

His phone vibrated with another text, and he pulled it back out of his pocket, desperate with hope.

But it was only Han.

HAN: Just got here. No Phantom. Are you seriously not coming? It’s been weeks since Hawaii.

The phone erupted with a call as Phantom read, and he almost sent it straight to voicemail. But then he saw it wasn’t Han, calling to back up his text.

It was his grandmother.

“Maamaa?” he answered the phone—and got a stream of Cantonese in reply.

Thanks to living the mafia life for almost two decades, his Cantonese was pretty good for an ABC—an American Born Chinese. But he knitted his brow at his grandmother’s words, wondering if he’d misunderstood what she’d meant by tall black wife.