Hers to Love

by Talia Ellison

  “Aaron,” I said. “Look at me.”

  His eyes met mine, and the explosion of our orgasm made us both cry out. I felt like I was floating in a place where time and place didn’t exist. It was just Aaron and me, his body melting into mine. Fire roared through my veins as I clenched around him once again, a shudder running through my body and spreading over to Aaron.

  “Octavia...” he rasped, and I had just enough strength left to bend down and capture his lips with mine. “That was... mind-blowing.”

  “I know.” I rolled over onto the bed next to him, trying to catch my breath. It was a surprise the headboard had withstood Aaron’s struggling. “I’d untie you, but I need a moment.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he murmured. “I don’t feel anything except... I don’t think I know how to explain it.”

  “Bliss.”

  “Yeah, bliss.”

  Chapter 6

  As soon as I entered my family’s house, I noticed something was off. The guards were more tense than usual, their hands constantly on their weapons, their eyes restless.

  When I’d finally decided to turn my phone back on, all I’d seen was a message from Dylan that told me to come talk to him as soon as possible. He didn’t say what he wanted to discuss, but I’d assumed it had to do something with Jason, or maybe everyone wanted to know what I’d found out about Aaron.

  I couldn’t have exactly told them everything over the phone, so I was sure they wanted to know if everything was okay. But as I strode into the living room, I found Michael digging through a box of papers. His brown hair was sticking out at all angles, and he threw a bunch of papers to the floor. There were a few more boxes lined up against the wall, some empty and overturned, and some still filled with files. Michael didn’t even seem to notice I was there.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, just as Dylan burst through the other door, frantically tapping something on his tablet. His wide hazel eyes briefly met mine, and he stopped in the middle of the room.

  “Oh, you’re here,” Dylan said, and Michael finally stopped what he was doing and looked at me.

  “Did something happen while I was...?”

  “It’s Tony,” Dylan’s brow was furrowed with worry. “He’s missing.”

  “What do you mean he’s missing?” My heart started to thud loudly in my chest as I looked from Dylan to Michael. “Is it like last time?”

  “No, we... We don’t know.” Dylan raked a hand through his black hair. “It might be, but he’s been gone for too long, and no one’s heard from him.”

  “We specifically told him not to go anywhere alone and without his guards, but somehow he snuck out again,” Michael said. “Do you know any way he could’ve gotten out of the house without anyone noticing? We monitored him closely in case he tried to go off on his own again, but somehow he got past the guards, cameras, and everything. You used to do that too, so maybe you know something... or if he told you who he was meeting with...”

  “Um...” I sat down in the armchair that wasn’t cluttered with papers because I wasn’t sure I could keep myself upright. “There are plenty of ways to get out of here. We know everything about the guards, and he basically has control over everything tech-related around here.” My eyes went wide. “Do you think someone took him because of what he knows? I’m sure the word got out that he’s our tech guy. If they want to use him against us...”

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Michael said. “He might have run away with a girlfriend or something.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense. He wouldn’t do that. Not without telling us.” Why would Tony run away with his girlfriend and let us worry about him for nothing? No had forbidden him from falling in love. In fact, I was sure my parents and everyone would be pleased to hear about something like that, so I didn’t understand what was wrong. If he was worried about his lover’s safety, then he could’ve told us all about it and we’d have come up with a plan to get them somewhere safe if he was sick and tired of this life.

  “Do you know who that girlfriend is? I think Dad mentioned something about that,” I said. If we could find her, then maybe we could figure out where Tony had gone. Or at least find out if she knew where he was. If he’d been taken by someone else... I didn‘t even want to imagine that. I’d rather he was safe with someone somewhere far away from here, but that just didn’t make much sense.

  “No. Actually, Dad says he only thought it was a girlfriend from what Tony told him, but he didn’t want to say anything,” Dylan said.

  “Do you think he fell in love with someone he wasn’t supposed to? Like someone from another crime family?” Although how he could’ve met that person when he was usually always here with us was weird. All the crime families usually stuck to their areas, and I doubted Tony had gone there on his own for no reason. “Or maybe he likes someone who’s working for us? Does anyone know anything?” It would only make sense for Tony to want to hide his relationship if it was somehow seen as bad, but still, it was hard to believe any of that, because he’d seen me deal with a forbidden relationship and knew that it could be done. Hell, there was nothing worse than falling for a Viteri, was there? How bad could it be?

  “Maybe, but it’s possible whoever he was meeting with tricked him,” Michael said. “I don’t understand why he wouldn’t tell us anything otherwise. If that girl begged him not to say anything under some pretext that she was afraid for her safety if he told anyone... then he might not have wanted to tell us. And if he wasn’t careful enough and someone managed to fool him... One of our enemies could’ve lured him into a trap. He could’ve thought he was meeting his lover and they attacked him instead.”

  “Where’s Jason? Does he know anything about this?” There was only one reason Tony would’ve run away without thinking about the consequences, and that was if Jason had somehow found out about his relationship, deemed it wrong to his standards, and decided to deal with it like he’d tried to do with my relationship with Aaron. I just hoped Jason hadn’t been that stupid, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

  “He’s upstairs. Dad still has him under house arrest. Jason’s pissed.” Dylan frowned at his tablet. “But he doesn’t know anything. We already checked. He even said that if he knew, he would’ve taken care of it... whatever that means.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like Jason.” There was a small chance Jason was lying about being involved, but even he wouldn’t put Tony’s life at risk like that. Jason might have misguided views about things, but I believed that somewhere deep inside he did care. He just had a really twisted way of showing it. “Okay, so what else can we do? Can I help with something?” I got to my feet. There was no time to sit around. We had to find Tony no matter what and make sure he was safe.

  “We’re going through some of his things to see if we can find anything that can give us a clue as to where he might’ve gone,” Michael said, screwing his nose up at one of the papers he held in his hand. “Maybe a coded message or a letter...”

  “I don’t think he’d have things like that lying around. If he communicated with someone, he would’ve done it through his computer, not some silly paper anyone could find.”

  “I know. Dylan’s on it already,” Michael said. “But we thought that if he wanted to cover his tracks, he’d do something we wouldn’t expect. Mom and Dad went to find a few of our backup tech guys to see if they can figure something out and track Tony’s phone. We really need to check everything.”

  “Right.” I came over to Dylan just as he growled at the tablet. “Any luck?”

  “No. I’m not nearly as good at this as Tony is, and he’s put an encryption over everything. It’s impossible to get in.”

  “There has to be another way in. Surely Tony planned so we could still get into the system if anything like this happened.” I glanced at the files Dylan was trying to access and could only see a red ‘denied’ stamp, but I wasn’t a tech person either. Sure, I could use a computer, a phone, and a few simple devices, but I defini
tely couldn’t hack into Tony’s files.

  “There’s nothing of interest in his room, either. We had Jason check that, since he’s upstairs already,” Michael said. “Our men are looking all over for Tony, but so far no one has seen him.”

  “I’ll call Aaron. Maybe he can help.” I reached for my phone, waiting for my brothers to start arguing that I shouldn’t trust the Viteris, but no one said anything. We were all just too worried.

  “So everything’s okay between him and you?” Michael asked just as I dialed Aaron’s number.

  “Yeah, I’ll tell you later all about it. It’s not what Jason thinks, but we don’t have time to talk about that right now.”

  “Sure. Call your boyfriend, then. But we won’t be accepting any tech help from them or anything that could put us at more risk,” Michael said. “Aaron might be in charge, but that doesn’t mean his men can be trusted.”

  “I know.” I waited as the phone rang and rang, and Aaron picked up what seemed like an eternity later. “Aaron? Hey, where are you?”

  “I’m at my father’s old residence in the middle of my family’s area. I have a problem. It looks like my father changed his will recently. No one knows about it yet, but it looks like he wrote me out.” His voice was strained.

  Of course. Roberto had known Aaron had betrayed him and must have changed his will immediately, which meant he’d probably left everything to Sebastian. Was that why he’d been in contact with his half-brother? I placed my hand against my temple. Great. That was just what we needed right now. More trouble. If Sebastian got his hands on everything so easily... I didn’t even want to think about it.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet. There’s a slim chance that my father didn’t have time to fill out all the necessary paperwork, but... it was probably to be expected. I’m not sure if Sebastian knows about it, but he probably does.”

  “Shit.” I didn’t know what else to say. “My brother’s missing. I don’t know if someone kidnapped him or what happened, but if you can help somehow... I know your plate is full right now, but...”

  “Are you okay? If you need me, I’ll drop everything and come to you. It seems like everything’s lost for me anyway, and maybe it’s a good thing... unless Sebastian turns out to be like my father.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. You don’t have to come here. I can handle this. But there’s something you can do for me. Track down Sebastian. That would benefit both of us.” The last thing we needed was for Sebastian to take control of the Viteris and come after us for killing his brother or something. Just because Sebastian and Roberto hadn’t gotten along years ago didn’t mean Sebastian was the same person he used to be. We had to be ready for the worst.

  “I’ll do that. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you later.” I ended the call. “Looks like Roberto changed his will and most likely left everything to Sebastian.”

  Dylan grimaced and Michael rolled his eyes.

  “Just what we needed right now,” Michael said. “Another enemy.”

  “Well, it hasn’t happened yet, so hopefully we have some time. We need to figure out where Tony is. Nothing else matters,” I said.

  “If only we could crack this fucking code.” Dylan looked like he was on the verge of throwing the tablet against the wall.

  “Give me that,” I said, taking the tablet from him. “Maybe we can guess the password for at least one of the programs.”

  “I already tried. It’s not our birthdays, any of our names, or his favorite bands and sport teams.” Dylan sighed, his shoulders drooping. “Mom and Dad haven’t called yet. They haven’t got anything either. Maybe this is pointless. We should go out there and look for him.”

  “We should, but we don’t know where to look. The city’s huge, and we have too many enemies. We can’t just go snooping around their territory. They’d say we’re breaching our agreements or using this as an excuse to spy on them,” Michael said.

  “I know! But I can’t just do nothing and hope...” Dylan’s voice broke.

  “Did you try one of your secret codes? I mean, you know how all of you love to communicate... If our names or birthdays are actually written in that code...”

  Dylan immediately snatched the tablet from me. “No, I didn’t. God, I’m such an idiot. Let me see.” He quickly typed something, his frown deepening as he tried again and again. “Got it!” His face brightened. “But it’s not for everything. Just some regular Internet stuff.”

  “Let me see that.” I leaned closer and tapped my finger on the screen. “Maybe he used a chatroom or something to contact his girlfriend.” I scrolled through a few folders and files, until I found what looked like a social network site in Tony’s browsing history. As soon as I clicked that, a chat window popped up, but the screen was locked with yet another password.

  “Fucking shit.” Dylan kicked out with his leg at the empty air. “Does everything on here come with a goddamn password?”

  “Probably, but if he wanted to use this all the time and be able to bring the window up and close it whenever he wanted so he could chat without any of us noticing, then the password has to be something easily entered and remembered.” At least I hoped I was right. But seriously, using a special system and typing a bunch of stuff whenever he wanted to chat would be too much trouble, unless he had some sort of a shortcut or a key that executed all the necessary actions for him in seconds. Ugh.

  I tried a few possible passwords, but nothing worked. Damn it, Tony. Why hadn’t he wanted us to know anything? Things would be so much easier for us right now. Why hadn’t he trusted and confided in us? Until we found Tony, we probably wouldn’t know the answer to that.

  “I can’t figure it out,” I muttered, squeezing the tablet in my hand, and I gave it to Dylan before my nerves got the better of me. We didn’t need to ruin the device, but we were so close to getting some information that it was hard for me to control myself.

  “We can try that program for cracking passwords. It’s a long shot, but...” Dylan said.

  “Do whatever you can. I’ll go check the computer room. Maybe there’s something that isn’t connected to Tony’s private computers.” Tony had actually moved the computers to another room where he thought they would be safer, so we had a new computer room and were still figuring out our way around it.

  “Okay. I’ll come and get you if there’s any news,” Dylan said.

  “There should be a backdoor we can exploit to get into the app. Maybe we could sync the conversations with one of Tony’s other computers,” Michael said.

  “Huh. I don’t know if that’s possible.” Dylan pressed his lips into a tight line. As they both focused on the tablet, I headed out into the hallway. But I knew that even if I kept myself occupied, it would be hard not to think about the worst. All I wanted was for my brother to be found safe and sound.

  Chapter 7

  I’d already checked both our new and old computer room and found nothing of interest when Dylan finally had success breaking through Tony’s password. Dylan, Michael, and I were poised over the tablet and waiting for the program to load while holding our breaths. The first thing that popped up on the screen was Tony’s profile.

  “Wow. It actually is a dating app, not a gaming chat or anything of that kind,” Michael said in surprise.

  “Click that.” I pointed at the left corner of the screen. “We need to get to the messages and see who he was talking to.”

  Dylan touched the screen and a bunch of conversation folders came up. “It looks like he was talking to a lot of people.”

  “Just find the one with the highest number of messages.” With all the work he had to do every day, I was surprised Tony had had time to speak to so many people, but he’d probably been bored as he waited for all the programs to load or something, so he’d decided to have some fun too.

  “This one,” Dylan said after scrolling through the long list. He tapped the screen
multiple times until the conversation window finally opened. “He was talking to this guy the most.”

  “They were supposed to meet tomorrow. At a park in the free zone.” My brow furrowed.

  “Why would Tony want to meet with this guy?” Dylan asked.

  “Check if he met with him before. That guy might be the person we’re looking for,” I said.

  “Um, this is going to sound weird,” Michael said, “but are we talking about a girl pretending to be some guy or an actual guy?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks like they’ve met before. The time kind of fits with the last time Tony was gone,” Dylan said.

  “But if they planned to grab him by tricking him into meeting with someone he thought he knew, then they would’ve gotten him the first time, wouldn’t they?” Michael clenched his fist. “And why would Tony agree to meet with some anonymous guy? That would be stupid and reckless. The guy doesn’t even have a profile photo.”

  “Neither does Tony,” I noted. “Tony’s profile doesn’t have much info either, just random stuff about his interests. I think they met somewhere else first and continued to talk through this app.”

  “Maybe someone was trying to gain his trust first so they could lure him into a trap and grab him easily.” Dylan rubbed his brow after he handed the tablet to me.

  “But how? They were supposed to meet tomorrow, not before. You say the last date was correct, so it’s unlikely they’d used coded messages or wrong dates to communicate.” I clicked on the guy’s profile, which didn’t contain any details about his personality or interests. There were just two letters: VS.

  “Now what?” Dylan let out a heavy sigh. “Should we try to track that guy down?”

  I went back through the messages the guy and Tony had exchanged. They’d talked about mundane things like weather, music, TV shows, and games. Maybe we’d gotten the whole thing wrong and this was just one of Tony’s gaming buddies that Tony had for some reason gotten close to and wanted to meet in person, no matter how unlikely that sounded, but still...