Dragon: A Bad Boy Romance by Danielle Slater, Lena Blackstone

I close my eyes, my mind racing. You gangster piece of shit. Get what's mine. Gangster piece of shit. Tony's birthday. Gangster piece of shit. The engagement party. Get what's mine, get what's mine, get what's mine...
    I open my eyes.
    “Tony, when did you first meet Carl?”
    “The- the golf tournament. At the end of April,” he says faintly. “You can't think...”
    “It makes sense,” I say. “The letters started after you met him, and ended when they got engaged. He called you a gangster piece of shit the other day, and the note uses the same phrase. He talks about 'getting what's his' – Honey and him never, you know, did anything like that. Now the wedding's off, and he wants money. And he's a sick bastard with a track record of violence towards women.”
    I wasn't completely sure, but spelling out to Tony has convinced me. It's him, the douchebag. I know it.
    “The son of a bitch!” Tony roars. “I'll kill him! I'll bury him! That mother fucker!”
    I give him a few seconds to work through the worst of it, but he's wasting time ranting. Time we don't have. Time Honey doesn't have.
    “We need to find him,” I say. “Sit down and think. What do you know about him – where does he live, where is his office, who are his friends? We still have some time, he's not sent the drop point through yet. If we ask around, then maybe we can get a beat on where he's keeping her.”
    “There's no need for all that,” he says, stabbing his phone with his fat finger. Despite his anger, his fear, his grief, he manages a tiny smirk. “I, uh, fitted a tracker to his car. When they first started dating.” He looks up and sees my expression of disbelief. “I wanted to make sure they weren't getting up to anything!”
    “Tony... you're fucking crazy,” I say, half in shock, half in admiration.
    “You're a fine one to talk,” he mutters.
    He shows me the screen – it's a satellite map of the woods, out beyond the interstate. There's a small green marker in the center.
    “How far?” I say, grabbing my keys.
    “Maybe an hour,” he says. “Don't get your hopes up, though. It might not be him.”
    I don't answer him. I don't need to.
    It's him. I know it.
     

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Ten - Honey
     
    The emotions flicker through me uncontrollably as I stand there, trembling. It's all mixed up in my head, and I don't know how to feel, how to react. I start laughing, but it's not a genuine laugh. It's hysteria. From somewhere far away, I can hear myself, and I realize I sound like a crazy person.
    It's him. It's Carl. I have a strange sense of relief, that I'm being held prisoner by someone that I know – which is insane. At the same, different strands of fear are running through it all. The old fear is there, like a familiar pain. The fear I felt every time his eyes would tighten during conversation. The fear I felt every time he came home from work and it hadn't gone well. The fear I felt when he didn't like my clothing, my attitude, my hair, the weather. Reflexively, I cringe. I've taken the bag off my head, turned the light on, seen him with my own eyes. He's not going to like any of that, and I know I'll pay the price for pissing him off. I realize that I'm hunching over, instinctively trying to protect myself from the volley of kicks and punches that will begin at any moment, but I can't help it.
    There's a new fear, too. This one is a slow burner, not as finely tuned as the old fear. This is the fear that remembers all the words that were in the letters, all the things he said he was going to do to me. Things that are far, far worse than kicks and punches. The new fear remembers the way he would get hard whenever he turned violent. That stuff in the letters wasn't just some finely crafted bullshit, to scare my father. He's completely genuine in his intentions. And there's nobody here to stop him, nobody at all...
    “I knew you were fucking him,” Carl spits, his face a twisted mask of hate.
    “Wh-what?” For