Page 145 of Ivory Oath

My knuckles are white around the gun. My finger itches to tighten on the trigger, but I hold back. “Why?”

“Because you didn’t marry Helen.”

“No,” I bark. “I mean, why? Why keep Dante here? Why put two guards who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing in charge of watching over my son?”

It was all too easy. There was no one manning the exits. No defense between the doors and this room. Christos kidnaps the son of a pakhan and then holds him in a back room with two guards on him. It’s almost like it was?—

“It was a trap,” the man gasps. His eyes are wide. I can tell he’s coming to the same conclusion I am. “Christos told us you wouldn’t come for the kid. He said we didn’t need many guards because you wouldn’t even know the kid was missing until it was too late. By the time you figured it out, the kid was supposed to be on a plane headed to—Fuck! There was no plane, was there?”

Christos played us both.

He knew I’d drop everything to track down Dante. The question is: while I’m standing here, what is Christos doing?

He’s still lost in his own revelation, so I press the gun against his temple. His wide eyes focus on me. “What is Christos doing right now? What was his plan?”

He shakes his head. “I have no idea. I don’t know anything else. Please don’t kill?—”

His brains splatter on the wall before he can finish his thought.

I sprint out of the store, my phone already pressed to my ear. Anatoly answers on the first ring. “You found him, brother! Raoul just called. Thank God. How are?—”

“Dante was a distraction,” I interrupt. “Christos is up to something. Until I know what it is, don’t let Viviana out of your sight.”

I want to be there with her. I want to be the one to walk through the door with Dante in my arms. I want to see the relief on her face and hold both of them in my arms.

But there isn’t time.

59

VIVIANA

My heels ache from pounding into the tile over and over again, but I can’t sit down. When I stop moving, my brain turns on. And when my brain turns on, things get dark. Fast.

Anatoly waves at me from the dining room, what he has deemed to be a “safe distance” away from my manic pacing and prowling. “You do remember that Mikhail found Dante, right? He saved your son’s life? You heard that part.”

“I heard it,” I grit out.

Raoul is the one who called to deliver the news. I’m not sure I’ll ever get the sound of Dante weeping in the background out of my head. It will haunt my nightmares until I’m dead.

But he is alive.

He’s coming home.

And Mikhail wasn’t with him.

My husband didn’t even bother to call me to tell me the news. No, he sent our son home with Raoul and then called Anatoly to tell him not to let me out of his sight.

I want to be in Mikhail’s sight! The only thing I want in the world right now is to be with my family, but Mikhail is still working.

“This is how it’s always going to be,” I whisper hoarsely to myself.

“Things are tense right now. They’ll get better.” Anatoly does his best to sound certain, but when I look over at him, all he can manage is a sympathetic grimace.

Once upon a lifetime ago, I would have believed him. I thought love could fix everything. My father wanted me to marry a filthy rich, influential man—but once he saw how much I loved our maid’s son, he’d change his mind, right? He wasn’t heartless; he just didn’t understand how I felt about Matteo. Once he saw that, he’d let us be together. After all, he wanted me to be happy, didn’t he?

I got the answer to that question when my father slaughtered Matteo in front of me. Along with a lifetime supply of trauma, that moment taught me a valuable lesson.

Love can change you, but it can’t change the world.

---