Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

processes, he came to an even more shocking realization.
    As important as all that shit was, as Christopher Columbus as he was getting, none of it came close to the most critical issue.
    Not in the fucking slightest.
    The real problem that he discovered made all that crap look like a walk in the park.

SEVENTY-NINE
    A ssail did not condone swearing. In his mind, it was common and unnecessary. That being said, he’d had a shitty fucking week.
    Down in the cellar of his house, in the vault, he and the twins had just finished organizing the haul for the last few days: Bills were stacked in bundles that had been through the counter, banded, and then sorted according to denomination—and the total was impressive, even by his standards.
    All told, they had about two hundred thousand dollars.
    The
Fore-lesser
and his merry band of slayers had been doing excellent work.
    You’d think he’d be happy.
    Not so.
    In fact, he’d been a miserable fucking son of a bitch—and the reason for the bad humor just made him crankier.
    “Go to Benloise,” he told the twins. “Get the next batch of cocaine and come back here to separate it.”
    The twins were masters at cutting the stuff with additives andparceling it out into Baggies, and that was a good thing. The slayers were moving three times what had been sold before.
    “Then make the delivery.” Assail checked his watch. “It’s set for three a.m., so you should have enough time.”
    Getting up from the table, he stretched his arms over his head and arched his back. His body had been stiff lately, and he knew why: Being in a constant state of low-level arousal had tightened up the muscles in his thighs and his shoulders, among other physical aspects…which had been utterly resistant to self-regulation.
    After years of not particularly caring for tending to his own erections, he’d fallen into a rut of pleasuring himself.
    And all it seemed to do was underscore what he was not getting.
    For the last week, he’d waited for Marisol to get in touch with him, expecting the phone to ring, and not because some unknown had shown up at her door again. The woman had wanted him as much as he had her, and surely that would lead to a reunion. It had not, however. And the fact that she had exhibited the kind of restraint he was struggling with, made him question not only his self-control, but his very sanity.
    Indeed, he feared he was going to crack before she did.
    Taking his leave, he went up the stairs and into the kitchen. The first thing he did was go over to his phone, in case she had called or in the event that Audi of hers had finally moved after seven nights of going nowhere fast: The damn thing had been parked in front of that house since he’d paid his visit, as if she mayhap knew he’d put a tracer on it.
    Checking the screen, he saw that someone had called him, but it was a number that was not in his contact list.
    And there was a voice mail.
    He was not interested in fielding some human’s mis-dials, but as there was a chance it was a
lesser
breaking protocol, he knew he had to listen to the message.
    As he accessed it, he walked in the direction of his humidor. He’d been smoking a lot lately, and probably doing too much coke. Which was painfully counter-intuitive—if one was already twitchy and frustrated, adding stimulants to that internal chemistry was gasoline to a fire—
    “
Hola
. This is Sola’s grandmother. I am trying to reach…an Assail…please?” Assail stopped dead in the middle of his living room. “Please call me back now? Thank you—”
    With a feeling of dread, he cut the message off and hit
Call Back.
    One ring. Two rings—
    “¿Hola?”
    Indeed, he didn’t know her name. “This is Assail, madam. Are you all right?”
    “No, no—I am not. I found your number on her bedside table so I call. There is something wrong.”
    He gripped his iPhone hard. “Tell me.”
    “She is gone. She came home, but then she leave out the door right after she arrived—I hear her go? Except all of her things, her backpack, her car, it is all here. I was sleeping and I hear downstairs, someone is moving. I call out her name and no one answered—then I hear this hard noise—loud sound—and so I come down. The front door is open, and I fear she has been taken—I do no know what to do. She always told me, we do not call the police. I do not know—”
    “Shh, it is all right. You did the correct thing. I’m coming directly.”
    Assail ran to the