Page 60 of The Bratva's Forced Bride

“I’m Pietro Bruno, the very man you’ve been looking for. Honestly, I want to thank you for being that colossal idiot who fell for my trick. You made it way too easy.”

“Why?” I managed to say through grit teeth. “What the hell is the point of this?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Pietro said as if it was no big deal to him. “But I received your little gift, and I wanted to call you personally to inform you I couldn’t care less about that scab or any other one you might feel like killing. That’s the name of the game, right?”

Hearing the smugness in his tone was enough to set me off. That pure rage moved through my blood, begging to be let out.

“I’m not interested in your games, Bruno,” I shot back, voice shrouded with anger. “All of this needs to come to an end. If you don’t stop targeting our dealings, our men will take you out before you even have the chance to wave a white flag. Am I clear?”

But Pietro only snickered. “It can’t end just yet, not before the grand finale.”

“What are you talking about?” I growled as my last shred of patience was long gone.

He chuckled again, letting that sound come from somewhere within his chest. “Your precious wife is gone, Yaro. Thanks to the false alarm you chased after, you let your guard slip.”

Everything hit me at once as if the world suddenly stopped spinning. My stomach dropped, and that flush of anger cooled into a sheet of ice.

He had her. The one thing I dreaded the most—the very thing I tried to prevent since the beginning. Pietro had Grace.

My hand holding the phone up trembled faintly despite my training to hide all emotion at the drop of a hat.

I was ready to kill him. Then and there.

“Whatever you do next will dictate the last few hours of your life,” I warned him, steeling myself against the unprecedented rage that toiled within me. “Harm her in any way, and we will both be burning in hell a whole lot sooner.”

Pietro tsked through the phone. “I don’t know, Yaro. I’d be talking a whole lot nicer to the man currently holding your wife hostage. She’s a pretty one too.”

When that fury became out of control as that veil covered my eyes to make me see only red, I ended the call and dropped my phone in the center console. Without saying a word to the men outside the warehouse, I turned the car back on and peeled out of the lot as fast as I could.

There were no words to describe how blindingly furious I was. As I gripped the steering wheel like a vice and held the gas pedal down, I tried to hold on to hope that maybe it was just another trick. That it was a false alarm to throw me off again.

While that would mean he had some ulterior motive, and I was likely also falling into another trap, I didn’t care. I just needed to know that Grace was safe.

Pulling up to the condo, I raced inside, not taking the time to address anyone in the lobby. I mashed the buttons in the elevator as my ears rang, ready to go completely off the handle at any given moment.

In all my years of working for my cousins, I had never felt that close to completely losing my mind.

The second I hit the right floor, I shoved my way in, only to find the living room and kitchen empty. I hauled ass upstairs, but each bedroom was the same. When I reached the master bedroom frantically, I found the bed empty, with the sheets rumpled.

The window was open and blowing in cold air. That was how they got in. They took her from the bed just as I had lifted her from her dorm at NYU.

It was no false alarm.

Grace was gone and in the hands of my enemy.

Cursing myself for being bested by some unknown head out for what we had, I turned back and hurried out of the condo.

Before me, Grace was an innocent woman following an honest life. I was the one who brought her into my dangerous world, well aware of what could happen to her.

I had the choice to ignore Dominic and let his daughter go, to let her continue as she had before I turned it all to shit. Before I landed her in that exact position.

As far as I was concerned, I was no better than her father.

***

Racing through the streets of New York, blanketed by night and the city lights that accompanied it, I couldn’t get Grace out of my head. Along with all the ways I’d torture Pietro once I got my hands on him.

I was beyond angry with the Brunos. After everything they had done to mess with and terrorize my family, they somehow managed to sink impossibly lower. Bringing my wife into it was grounds for retaliating in the most inhumane ways possible, and I’d do whatever it took to get her back.

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