Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 68389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Michail is closest to the controls and cues up the footage we’ve all watched at least a dozen times by now. In the images, she’s the same as ever. As I look at her on the screen, my chest collapses in on itself. My fingers ache with the need to touch her, claim her, bring her back into my arms and never release her again.
As if anticipating my next order, Michail loads all the footage we have of her leaving on a loop. It’s the same no matter how many times I watch it. She walks out, bag in hand, so confident that when I first saw it, I expected she might return. I’d punish her, but then we’d move on. But now, it’s been too long to expect her to come back—not of her own volition. And if she knew the punishments I’ve been thinking about, she’d never return.
Of course, that is if she left on her own. The footage seems to lead to that conclusion, but I can’t rectify the woman who laid in my arms just last night with the woman who walked away from me, from us, so easily. Either someone got to her, which is impossible since access to my penthouse is strictly contained, or she really left.
The thought circles my brain over and over like the looped footage. She left me. She left me. She left me.
“No!” I shout.
Every eye shifts toward me, away from the screen. No one has the balls to call me on how far down the rabbit hole I’m going with her gone. The memory of her is the only thing holding me to my sanity right now, and the thought of punishing whoever took her is my only reason for living.
I’m tired of the way they’re all looking at me, so I head out of the command room toward our bedroom, hoping to find a clue. She took some of her belongings with her…some clothes and some jewelry, I think. I’ve bought her so much over the past few months I can’t be sure.
If she took the jewelry, she needs money. But why? We have money, and she knows I will stop at nothing to make her happy. So why would she pack a bag, take her clothing and jewelry, and walk out?
What could have caused her to go if not someone saying something or doing something to make her think it’s her only choice?
I stalk through the bedroom on a loop, keeping my eyes off the bed for fear of destroying it in my rage.
There is no reason for her to leave me. Not unless she found out about…
No. She couldn’t have because the only person who knows about the night I rescued her is Kai. And Kai would never betray me.
But doubt creeps in easily along the tendrils of rage, of anger, of her possible betrayal. The only thing I asked of her was to never leave me. Never walk away from me like my mother did all those years ago.
If she loved me, then she wouldn’t have done this. No.
I swing back around to someone having taken her. She was obviously lured out of the building under a threat of some kind.
I return to the command room; everyone has left except Kai, who is once again studying all the footage we have of her. In the shots, she calmly walks down the staircase, then out through the lobby. She speaks to the guards and then leaves the building. The street cameras show her going east, but then we lose her around a corner. Since that moment, I don’t have any sight of her and no reports of anyone having seen her.
Kai stops the recordings and sits back in the chair, hands folded over his stomach. “You know what I’m thinking, what we are all thinking, Boss. You have to be thinking it too.”
He’s right, but I won’t put it into words, not until I find her and hear the truth from her own mouth. “You all may be thinking it, but you’ll keep your fucking lips shut, or I’ll make them stay that way permanently.”
After my threat, he goes quiet, no doubt worried I’ve lost my shit. Maybe I have. Maybe my angel is the only thing that has been keeping me tethered to my sanity all this time.
“What do you want to do next?” Kai asks.
I stop pacing and glare at him. “Are the guards from the lobby being questioned?”
His jaw goes tight, but he nods once, clipped. “Yes, Ivan has them. Although, I do think they are innocent.”
If Ivan has them, they won’t walk out of the room alive again. Innocent or guilty, they let Valentina walk out of the building, and for that, they deserve Ivan’s special attention.
“The men turning against us won’t help in the search,” he says after a lingering silence.