Page 76 of Trapping His Darling

Exhaustion covered her face. “He’s it for me.”

I nodded. “I can tell. And I’m glad.”

My father interrupted our heart to heart with mindless chatter about business. I tuned out, bouncing the baby and thinking of my own. I was just about to leave the maternity roomto look for Alexie and my wife. There was a sinking feeling in my gut that something wasn’t adding up.

Alexie stormed in, red faced, and out of breath.

“What’s wrong?” I grabbed my side piece, my body immediately on alert.

“T-Tiffany. I can’t fucking find Tiffany.”

Calmly, ever so calmly, I handed Sloane back her baby. “What do you mean you can’t find Tiffany?” I growled.

“When I couldn’t find her, I went to the security room. We searched through the camera feeds. She is gone. No one has seen her.”

“Where’s Roger?” I wasn’t capable of listening to more. He would find my wife. He would help me.

“We don’t know. He escorted the Italians out, but he is also missing.”

I rushed toward Alexie, but he placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. He pulled me close and said, “then we find them and kill the rest. Simple as that.”

With his words coursing through my veins, I headed out of the suite, but before my feet could get too close to the door, I heard a wheezing gasp.

Our father was turning blue and clutching at his chest. It must have been that the stress of having a granddaughter, and his daughter in law missing, was too much for his heart to take. We watched in shock as he tumbled face first onto the floor. No one moved. The mightyPakhanhad fallen, and we hesitated to make a move.

“Someone call the doctor,” Sloane cried out.

We blinked before I pulled myself out of it. Barking orders, I got his body moved to another room. There was no pulse. The doctor couldn’t do anything for him. We needed a priest. I called the Father of our parish so he could say last rites, and got ready to find my woman. I wasn’t giving up, not yet.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Tiffany, Italy

I was bound,helpless, and surrounded by the chilling darkness of the abandoned warehouse. Roger, the man I had once considered a nice grandpa, stood before me, his eyes filled with a mix of regret and determination. He took a step closer, his voice laced with a sinister undertone.

I struggled against my bonds, trying to release myself. I wouldn’t let him hurt my baby; the future of the Bratva. If I fucked it up, it would end up with my head on a platter.

Only if the poison didn’t succeed, one of my voices whispered into my mind. I shook it off, but it wasn’t wrong. I’d never failed before, except that one time with Tommy, her ex. I could take Roger out, and be back home before anyone noticed I was missing.

“Tiffany,” he began, his tone low and calculated, “you see, I’ve reached a point where I can no longer deny my true family. Blood, they say, is thicker than any alliance, any friendship.”

I struggled harder against my restraints, but they held firm, my gaze locked onto Roger’s. His confession had shaken me tothe core, and I needed answers. My stomach lurched into my throat, and I tried to clear it before opening it up and speaking to him. I needed to find out his plans, along with the answers I sought.

“The Don, he’s more than just the head of the Italian mafia,” Roger continued, a twisted smile playing at the corners of his lips. “He’s my brother, my flesh and blood. And when he offered me a choice - to deliver you back to the Italians as penance, or face the consequences of betrayal - I chose to honor my family.”

I stilled. “Fuck you!” I spat at his feet. “What do you know of family when you’re risking the only one you’ve ever known.”

He looked at me in surprise.

“The Italians are my family.”

I shook my head. “No, the Bratva is, and you are going to die for your sins.” I went back to trying to get out of my bonds. No way did I need Viktor and his men storming in here, and shooting me, because I was in the way.

Fear and anger coursed through my veins as Roger’s words sank in. The man who had once fought alongside Viktor and me was now our adversary, bound by a loyalty I could never understand.

“You and Viktor,” Roger said, circling me like a predator, “you’re both pawns in a much larger game. The darkness you’ve embraced, the manipulation, the violence - it’s all part of a grander scheme.”

I met Roger’s gaze with defiance, my heart pounding with a desperate need to escape. His monologue revealed a twisted sense of duty to a family I had no part in, and I knew I couldn’t let him live any longer. He was a threat to my reign. He was a threat to my child’s rule. He had to go. Family ties or not. Cutting off a snake’s head was the best way to kill it, in my opinion.

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