Page 135 of Ivory Oath

“Where is he?” she rasps. “Mikhail!”

My mind is whirring. It’s chaos, but I’ve always thrived here. When everyone else panics, the fog clears for me. For the first time in days, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

I pull out my phone and call Raoul. He answers on the first ring.

“Dante,” he says. I have no idea which informant told him, but I’m glad. It saves us time.

“Find him, Raoul.”

“I’m already on it.”

He hangs up and I text the guards at the front gates. I want every available set of eyes, ears, and hands looking for my son. Nothing else matters.

“Anatoly.”

My brother is in front of me before I can even look up. “I’ll go look for him.”

I shake my head. “No. Stay here with Viviana.”

I know he hates doing nothing while the rest of us search for Dante, but there’s no one else I trust to watch her. There’s also no one she trusts more. I’m including myself in that category.

Viviana grabs the front of my shirt. Her fingers are cold. “I want to come with you. Wherever he is, I want to?—”

“I don’t know where he is,” I tell her.

I hate that it’s true.

I hate that I didn’t see this coming.

I hate the way she’s looking at me right now.

Tears well in her eyes. They spill over when she blinks, pouring down her cheeks. “Is it Christos? Is it—Is he—He has to be okay, Mikhail.”

She breaks, falling against my chest.

I hold her for a second. For one second, I let myself wrap an arm around her waist and hug her to my chest.

Then I pass her to Anatoly.

“I’m going to find him, Viviana. Dante is going to be okay.”

The voices in my head beg to disagree. He might not be okay. It might already be too late. You fucked up and now, Dante is paying the price.

I quiet the dark thoughts and focus on what I can control. “Whoever did this is going to pay with their life. I promise you that.”

Viviana wraps her arms around herself. She’s trembling and wide-eyed, split open in a way I’ve never seen before.

I tip my head to Anatoly. “Take care of her.”

“With my life,” he vows quietly.

I grab my keys and jog to the garage. As the door closes behind me, Viviana wails. I think she drops to the floor, but I know she’d rather me go look for Dante than return to comfort her.

So I keep moving and I don’t look back.

I make it to the doors of a nightclub—the third Greek-owned business I’ve hit in the last hour—and Raoul is already there.

We’ve been working off of the same list. He started at the bottom, I started at the top. Now, we’ve met in the middle and there’s still no sign of Christos.

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