Page 48 of Dangerous

Slowly, letting me feel the tip of the blade against my skin as he cut, Michael slid the knife up along the middle of my camisole, letting my stomach and breasts spill out.

“Devlen, take the pictures,” my father said.

My brother moved across the room and pulled out his phone.

“Make sure you get her face and stomach.”

“And the knife,” Michael added, letting the blade slide down along the scars on my stomach. “Just so he gets the idea.”

“I told you you’d regret the day you betrayed your family,” my father growled into my ear while Devlen’s phone flashed, snapping picture after picture of my exposed and pinned-down body. “And if your beloved husband doesn’t come through, you’re going to regret ever leaving the Steels’ protection. I’ll cut that baby from your belly with a steak knife if he doesn’t hand over control of London’s underworld. So what do you think, Aignéis? Does he love you and your baby more than he does the Family?”

Twenty-Two

Blaine

“We’re pretty sure she’s in Spain now, but where exactly we don’t know yet. Sorry, boss.”

I gritted my teeth and pressed “end” on the call, clenching my fist so tight around the phone the casing protested.

Four months. It had been four months since I came home to an empty house and a note that damn near tore my guts out, and I was no closer to finding Mira than I had been then.

Let me be free,she’d written. Perhaps if she had left me before I bared my soul to her, before I realized that she was the one person in this damn world that could ever make me feel whole, I could have let her go. I would have at least tried to. But not now—not when I’d finally tasted what true happiness was like. I couldn’t give that up again—I couldn’t giveherup without destroying myself.

I had hunted for her myself those first two weeks, until Louis and Liam found me in Berlin.

That’s when I learned how my father viewed the “embarrassing situation”—as he called it.

The twins told me that he’d ordered me to return home immediately and not waste any more resources on chasing down my “floozy of a wife.”That he was furious with me for letting her escape and humiliate the family, and wanted me to cut all ties to her.

The only thing that kept me from disowning him then and there was Liam’s and Louis’ hasty promise that they would continue the search, and their reminder that I’d be no good to anyone, let alone her, if I disobeyed our father’s orders and ended up in America as a result. Or in prison.

Since then, each of my brothers had spent a week here and a few days there traveling around Europe under the guise of business arrangements. Even Marcus came to my aid, without ever being asked.

Currently, I had one of my men searching Southern France, the last known place she’d been. He would have to come home soon, though, to avoid rousing my father’s suspicion.

I cursed into the darkness of my room. Every time I had to pull a man home and replace him with another, it pushed back the search by several days, which was plenty of time for vital trails to go cold. Because of my own father, my wife was out there somewhere, alone and probably scared.

My heart spasmed. I knew why she’d run.

I saw the long, red hair snagged on the door to the shed while I searched the property for clues as to where she’d gone. She’d seen me interrogate the guy I’d snuck out of bed after our night together to find.

If she was scared, she was scared ofme.

But when I found her, I would explain. I would make her understand, and she would see why I had to do what I did. Shehadto.

A beep from my phone pulled my swirling thoughts from the void they’d been circling. I looked down and saw the little email icon in the top right corner.

Probably Lester sending me written details of Mira’s possible whereabouts.

I swiped my thumb over the display to open the mail—and nearly dropped it on the floor.

What flashed up on my email were not simple instructions. It was a photo. Of Mira.

My heart skipped a beat. Two beats. Three. Then, with a burst of pain and sickening fear, it began beating again, pounding in overdrive behind my ribs as if it was trying to burst free.

Someone held down her arms above her head, but the photo cut off just above her terrified eyes. I did recognize the guy holding a knife to her scarred stomach, though. It was her brother—the one who’d come to my office.

I stared at her swollen belly until my retinas burned from the pain of my phone’s sharp backlight.

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