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Dante
Hours passed. Days passed. Then a couple of weeks.
Every minute, I expected a confirmation-of-sighting call.
Every minute, I was disappointed.
Everywhere Matteo and Leonardo went, Stefan’s trail was cold. No one had seen him in months, which meant he was purposely lying low. Planning? Gathering resources? Who could say?
I should have been keeping tabs on him. I cursed myself for the hundredth time. How could I have misjudged the situation so critically?
I knew why, but it didn’t make the fact go down any easier. I’d been so busy making sure Grimaldi Tech was a squeaky clean enterprise that I’d lost sight of the other side of my business – of the reason it needed to be clean.
We were this close to leaving that life behind. Why the hell Stefan insisted on staying mired in it was beyond me?
My phone rang.
“Yes,” I said curtly, balling and unballing the fist of my left hand.
“Nobody’s seen him?”
“Keep looking,” I directed.
I considered hiring a private investigator to help Matteo and Leonardo find my brother. Not only was it not like him to disappear; he lived his life so out loud it should have been relatively easy to find him. The longer it took, the bigger the knots my guts tied themselves into. Whatever he was up to, it was not good – and I had to be prepared to defend against it.
I just hoped it wouldn’t rip us apart forever.