Page 14 of Saviour
“Fuck!” I spit, looking around, hoping the answer will come to me. I don’t know if I’m annoyed because she left or at myself for wanting her to stay.
“Sir,” a quiet voice says from behind me and I turn, looking into the eyes of an elderly man with thinning white hair. “She left this morning.”
I look him up and down quickly before asking him to continue.
“It was about midday, sir. She called downstairs frantically about a gas leak, but when I opened the door, she rushed out saying she needed air and there wasn’t a gas leak. I’m not sure if she’d locked herself inside and panicked, but I escorted her down here, sir, and then she ran. Fast as lightning that one,” he says, clearing his throat at the end.
I nod and thank him, a million thoughts swirling through my head.
She left.
She panicked that I’d locked her in and came up with an excuse to leave.
Just like a bird in danger, she flew away.
* * *
I spendthe day trying to find her. I’ll be damned if she gets away from me this easily. I won’t let her leave me too.
I check the cameras from the pub and around the area, but nothing picks her up and I’ve come to the conclusion that her sudden disappearance is more suspicious than I initially thought. The cameras cover the whole lower floor, the lift, the street outside. She would have been seen, but yet she wasn’t. And if what the old man says is true, and I doubt he has any reason to lie to me, it means someone has looped the camera feed to hide her from me.
I’m on my third beer at Sophie’s, my last resort to finding Rori, but Sophie hasn’t seen her either. I can tell she’s not too happy with her missing her first shift, after the second chance, but I think she can sense something is wrong. I’m hoping she’ll let her off the hook once I get her back.
“Soph, I’m out. Keep an eye open, yeah?”
She nods and kisses me on the cheek as I leave the club. I have no choice but to go back to the mansion and come up with a better plan. I still need to ring Emerson back too. When did this become my life?
I swing the car through the huge iron gates up the gravel driveway, rolling my eyes at the ridiculous fountain in front of the house. I pull the car in front of it and just stare up at the mansion, wishing I could just avoid it forever, especially without King here.
I unfold myself from the car and head up the marble stairs leading to the front doors, the doormen waiting with the door open for me already. I give them a tight smile because I’m not a complete dick and head towards my room, hoping to avoid everyone.
Keeping my head down, I walk past Carlo’s study, but I’m not lucky enough when his deep voice calls out.
“Son.”
I freeze just past the doorway, shaking off the name and tensing my shoulders. Since my parents died, and because of how close I am with King, he has taken it upon himself to call me son, to my hatred and request that he doesn’t. But as soon as you tell Carlo not to do one thing, he goes and does the opposite.
I walk backwards a couple steps and halt in front of the open doorway, looking at him with a blank face.
“Come, take a seat.” He gestures to the armchairs sitting opposite his ridiculously sized mahogany desk.
I walk in slowly, narrowing my eyes at his sudden hospitality. Carlo has been avoiding me ever since King disappeared and now he’s showing a keen interest?
I take a seat in the leather armchair, lifting my right ankle to rest against my opposite knee, and fold my hands together in my lap.
“I didn’t know you were staying at The Urban, Dax. Is there something wrong with your room here that means you need to stay in my hotel?”
There are two things I know for sure from this statement.
One, he never said home, so even after all these years of me living under his roof, partially raising me and calling me son, he called it my ‘room’ and not my home.
And two, he knows about Rori.
“I was in the area and I’d been drinking. Figured it was safer to crash there.”
The lie falls from my lips easily and even though I know he knows, neither of us is going to give it up. That’s just how it is with Carlo Rhivers.
He nods, taking in my lie and deciding what to do with it, but as he opens his mouth, I interrupt him before he has a chance.
