I nod. “See to it. The girls will stay here with guards.”
“We have to go change,” Julian says. “The girls are safe here. I don’t want to move them until this is done.”
“Agreed,” Rome says, and he pulls his phone out to call his wife.
“Be back here in thirty,” Carson says, and the three of them hurry off.
I head up to the penthouse and find the girls in the living room, talking quietly.
Lulu’s on the phone.
“Well?” Violet demands as she stands. She changed out of her dress and is in sweats and a T-shirt.
MyT-shirt.
“We’re going to get her. You girls will stay here, with all of your guards, until we get back with Rose. Staying put is the safest.”
“Rome just said the same,” Lulu says as she hangs up and rubs her baby bump. “I’m comfy here.”
“I’m going with you.”
I shake my head at my wife. “No. Absolutelynot.”
I stride up the stairs to the bedroom, but my girl is on my heels.
“Yes, Mateo. Do you think that Rose will willingly go with you? All of you big, scary, strange men? After all she’s been through, there’s no way she’d let you take her. Ihaveto be there for her, to make sure she’s safe and understands what’s going on.”
“You haveno ideahow fucking dangerous this is going to be, Savage. I will not survive if something happens to you. I?—”
“I’ll stay at the car with Bobby and Lucky,” she insists as she frames my face and pulls me down to her. “Ipromise, I don’t want to get in your way. This is too important. But she’ll be scared and confused, and I have to go. There isn’t another choice for me, Mateo.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you about this. I just don’t. We have to go.”
“Great.” She whips her shirt over her head and strides into the closet, choosing the same outfit she wore to the warehouse that night. “I don’t want to argue either. You won’t even know that I’m there.”
“You’re mywife, Violet, and you think I’m going to let you walk into a war zone?”
“Yes.” She pulls on her pants and zips them up. “Because you know I’m right. And you know that I can handle myself. I throat punched a dude during a gunfight tonight. Never thought I’d add that to my résumé, but here we are.”
“Baby, I love your sense of humor, but now is not the time.”
“I’m fuckingterrified,” she admits and shakes her head. “I don’twantto go there, but I’ve been searching for her for so long, Mateo. I have to see this through. I have to be there when she comes out of that building so I can wrap my arms around her and assure her that everything’s going to be okay. I failed her once, and I won’t do it again. So you take me with you to get my baby sister, and then you get to be in charge of all of the scary Mafia shit in this family moving forward.”
Her eyes are glassy with tears, and it almost destroys me, so I pull her against my chest and kiss the top of her head.
“You stay with Bobby and Lucky.”
“I promise.”
“Don’t make me regret this, Savage.”
“Ipromise.”
Forty-One
VIOLET
“Okay, little fighter, why the fuck are you here?” Carson demands when I walk out of the elevator with Mateo.