Protecting You ("The Shadows" Series: Book I)

XXIX.

Ryan's POV

I was sitting in my office doing paperwork and Evan was helping me with it. It had been a week since we received the letter from Anthony. Lily was not talking to anyone. She had shut down since then. Me and Evan had tried to talk to her but the letter had maybe confused her decision on whether she should forgive her father or not. So we had decided to give her space and time. Evan had sent his best trackers to find the location of her father but they all had nothing new to tell us except that he had suddenly gone MIA. I had contacted Jim and had asked him to come meet us but he told us that he was out of town with his family and said he would be back after a few weeks. His sister was pregnant and had asked to visit her. I had not been familiar with him so I found his sudden departure rather suspicious but I had other things to worry about.

Suddenly Evan's phone started ringing. He picked it up. He talked for sometime and stood up from his seat. He cut the call and looked at me. I gestured him to speak.

"Someone found the location of Anthony. He is staying at Queens hotel. It's in the center of the city and I'm thinking to go and bring him here myself. Can't take any risk this time." he said while closing all the files that were open in front of him. I stood up and closed my files too before depositing them in the drawers on my desk. He looked at me curiously.

"What? I'm not letting you go alone. I had my fair share on being alone in front of the enemies and I don't want to see anyone else go through what I suffered." I said to which he shook his head with a smirk plastered on his face. We both made our way outside the office and went to Lily's room to make sure she is okay. We had made this our routine to check up on her every two hours and till now she had not done anything that made us suspicious that she was either gone insane or succumbed to depression. She wasn't communicating with us but we knew she wouldn't do such things. We stood in front of her room and informed her that we were going out and then left. As usual, we got no reply. A sigh escaped my lips as we sat in Evan's car along with a few armed men in another car and drove off to our destination. Evan gave me a sympathetic look before looking in front and continued driving.

I was getting impatient by Lily's silence but hadn't said anything to her. She was going through a lot and if staying away from me helped her recover to the same charming and sassy girl that she was then I would stay away as long as she want.

I was pulled out of my thoughts when Evan nudged my arm and pointed towards the hotel. We all got out while our men stopped their car behind us but I eyed them to park at the back of the hotel and wait for us until we order. We were armed and fortunately Evan had contacted the manager of this hotel about us being armed and he had given us permission to go inside. He knew who we were and we had helped him a couple of times from Adam. So he was in debt and allowed us to enter and exit the place whenever we wanted as far as we didn't do anything illegal. Bringing a gun was obviously illegal but he wasn't complaining. The circumstances were not in our favor and we had told him to just stay away from our matter. He knew not to complain about it. We had asked the room number where Anthony was staying to our tracker so we went straight towards the elevator and pressed the floor number. After a few seconds, we were standing in front of the room and knocked in a civil manner. We stood there for about a couple of minutes before the door opened and suddenly some kind of gas was sprayed on our faces and before we could comprehend anything, we fell unconscious.

Lily's POV

I was sitting in my room and was feeling a little off. It had been an hour since Ryan and Evan left and I was feeling as if something was not right. I had thought to call them half an hour after they had left but dropped the idea thinking that maybe they were busy. But now I was anxious for their arrival. I had yet to leave my room and was debating whether to go in search of them myself or not when Zach started banging the door yelling to open it asap. I opened it to see him stressed and rambling about how he couldn't track Ryan or Evan. I tried to calm both of us down and called Alex.