Atonement (The Protectors 6)

Dante nodded.

“After Ronan killed Santero and his brother, he was searching Santero’s place for anything he could find about the trafficking ring Santero had assumed control of. He was there when I arrived.” Dante chuckled. “I was lucky he didn’t shoot my ass, especially after I went off on him for taking out the only lead I had. He ended up offering me a job and told me he’d do everything he could to help me find Aleks. The resources he had…” Dante shook his head. “We didn’t find any information in Santero’s records about Aleks. Ronan had the girl who handles IT for his group leak the info to the cops so that ring was taken down and they got a lot of kids out of there. But it’s like they say. Cut off a snake’s head-”

“And another one grows in its place,” I finished for him.

“I went back to Chicago this summer before I started watching Matty, but I couldn’t find Remy and none of the leads panned out.”

I nodded and then pulled his hand up to my lips for a brief kiss. “This one’s going to pan out,” I said determinedly.

It had to.

Aleks needed to come home.

Aleks needed it.

Dante needed it.

And I needed to make it happen.

I sat back in my seat and threw the car into gear before casting a glance at Dante.

“Let’s go get him.”

* * *

In the three days it took to hear from Remy again, Dante was a mess. His anxiety was through the roof and he was afraid to be away from his phone even long enough to do things like shower. I’d offered on more than one occasion to keep the phone with me, but even then he’d struggled. I hadn’t taken it personally, though, because I knew that this might well be Dante’s only chance to save his brother and that fact trumped anything and everything.

Even me.

Once we’d landed in Chicago, we’d immediately started searching for Remy, though Dante didn’t know enough about the young man to even get an idea of where to start. We’d gone to some of the spots in the city that seemed to cater to prostitutes and their clients, but it had been like looking for a needle in a haystack. For my own part, I’d been horrified at the sight of all the young men and women wandering the streets in frigid temperatures looking for their next paycheck. By two in the morning, we’d gotten a hotel room, but neither of us had been able to sleep. We hadn’t talked either. We’d just held on to each other. I’d worried about Dante and Dante had undoubtedly worried about Aleks.

We’d spent day two searching the streets, but with the bitter cold weather, not many people had been out and about so we’d called it a day and gone back to the hotel. Dante and I had made love, but it had been different than all the other times…there’d been an underlying desperation between us as Dante had tried to outrun his demons and I’d done my best to help. Afterwards, we’d both fallen asleep, but Dante had jerked awake at every sound and then he’d frantically checked his phone, even though the volume was set as high as it could go. With another night passing and still no word from Remy, Dante had been pacing the room like a caged animal. He’d shot down any suggestion I’d offered to either distract him or to aid in trying to find Remy, but I’d been okay with that. If he needed to take his frustrations out on me, I was fine with it.

After a third day of searching, I’d finally convinced Dante earlier in the afternoon to lie down with me to get some much needed sleep when his phone had finally rung. But Remy hadn’t been in the mood to talk because all he’d done was give us an address and a time to meet him the next day. We’d scouted the address only to find that it was a coffee shop on the south side of Chicago and had decided to grab a hotel room that was closer to the meeting location.

Which left us with one more night to get through.

“Bye, Pop-pop!” Matty said, tearing me from my thoughts. He’d been showing me all the gifts his fathers had brought him back from Greece and while I’d managed to tune in enough to make the appropriate comments here and there, I hadn’t really been paying as close attention as I should have since my thoughts were on Dante. I’d hoped Remy’s call would relax him a little bit, but he’d still been restless and abnormally quiet. We’d checked into our new hotel room almost half an hour ago and he’d been in the shower ever since.