“What the fuck do you mean, she isn’t there?”
“Exactly that, she’s—” I cut the call and immediately turn to the tracking app. “Is my father hiring the most incompetent assholes or what?” Maeve’s tracker in her phone pings up nearby and I frown up at Chip. “What the hell is she doing in town already?”
“Is it close?” Chip leans over my shoulder and snags the address, then he holds open the car door for me. “It’ll take me five minutes, tops.”
“She’s supposed to be meeting my mother, but that’s not for another hour and it’s across the city.”
“Something for Scott, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
As Chip drives, I map the surrounding area, but there’s nothing of note around there for Maeve. Nothing but a coffee house, a couple of restaurants, and the Las Vegas Police Department.
“There she is.” Chip pulls the car to a slow stop and leans over his steering wheel, pointing forward. I follow his finger and spot Maeve across the street with a coffee cup in hand and a deep frown on her face. She’s speaking to someone who has their back to us. Maeve reaches forward and shakes their hand, then she quickly flags down a taxi and disappears inside.
Then the stranger turns and I catch the flash of the LVPD badge on their waist.
My heart plummets down into my gut.
Why the fuck is Maeve talking to the cops?
21
MAEVE
Can this day possibly get any worse?
My face-to-face with Detective Andrew Hogg pales in comparison to where this taxi is taking me. A one-on-one session with Marcella for a dress fitting. No one told me that the mother of the groom gets the final say on the wedding dress. In any other situation, I’d be relieved to have something off my plate, but this feels like a test.
Or a trap.
I don’t trust Marcella Gallo, not even for a second. She plays the pristine woman, acting like she’s nothing but elegance and refinery, but she’s the reason I fled New York for Las Vegas. Well, one of the reasons but definitely the last.
The last time I tried to speak to her, other than her disregard for me in Levi’s penthouse, was a few months after Scott was born. I fell dreadfully ill, battling one infection after another, and one terrible night, I feared I wouldn’t live to see Scott reach six months. So I reached out to Levi’s family, specifically his mother. I knew his family wanted me dead, but I hoped something about my situation would reach Marcella’s cold heart.
I was so terrified of dying and leaving Scott with no one that I saw no other choice. Mother to mother, I prayed Marcella’s desire to see her grandchild would overrule any other thoughts of hatred she felt toward me. But she never replied. Instead, a man turned up on my doorstep and threatened to kill me if I didn’t leave the city, telling me it was all for my own good and my own survival.
So I took Scott and I ran, vowing never to reach out to anyone ever again.
Now I’m to attend a dress fitting with the same woman who sought to kill me. It’s weird how things turn out.
By the time the taxi pulls up to the boutique, my nerves are shot. It’s one thing after another today and I don’t know how much more I can take. With any luck, the dress isn’t hideous and I can just nod my way through the entire thing and return home to my son. Leaving him behind was hard enough, but I couldn’t bring him to the police station.
I pay the driver and stumble out of the taxi, smoothing my sweaty hands down my jeans and heading inside. I’m greeted by a man at the door who raises one brow at me in silent question.
“I have an appointment, I think? With Mrs. Gallo?”
“Right through the back there, last curtain on the left,” he replies curtly. I don’t miss the way his questionable gaze flicks down me, but I don’t have the mental capacity to hold space for his judgment. I’m trying to remember how to act like a regular person but my mind buzzes like a hive, and my stomach twists like a writhing pit of snakes.
And then I see him.
Chip. He’s standing outside the curtain in question. Our eyes meet briefly with a silent question held in mine, but he merely drags the curtain to the side and closes it after me when I walk into the room.
The oval room is rather small with a single circular stage in the middle under some soft spotlights. Multiple black sofas ring the perimeter of the room and another curtain directly across from me is pulled aside. I glimpse some sparkling fabrics through the gap, but they barely hold my attention because for some reason, it’s not Marcella I’m facing.
It’s Levi and his cold expression is sucking up all the air in the room.
“Levi, what are you doing here?”
