Page 96 of Stolen By The Bratva King

“She never mentioned an emergency,” Felix replies, sounding baffled. “Just said she was getting a shower. I collected her food from the front door and left it inside your apartment, but I haven’t seen her since, so I guess she went to bed.”

Viktor is steering expertly, gliding the boat to a smooth stop. The crew tie her off and begin unloading the passengers into a truck.

We arranged for our vehicles to be here, and my sedan is waiting for me, alongside Roman’s and Viktor’s cars.

I could go home to Emery and let her goodness scrub away the evil that sticks to me like a crude oil slick. Instead, I freeze, phone to my ear, seized by a rising panic.

“Boss?” Felix says for the tenth time. “Are you there?”

Roman and Viktor disembark, but I don’t move.

“Felix. Go inside and check on my wife. Please.”

“Jeez, Leon. She won’t be happy if I?—”

“Do it!” I yell. Roman and Viktor wheel around to stare at me, but I don’t care. “I want to hear you say she’s safe at home.”

Muffled sounds of Felix opening the door. A pause. The kind of silence that feels too thick, too deliberate.

Seconds add up: ten, twenty, thirty. Then I hear his voice, but he’s not speaking to me.

“Mrs. Vasilieva!” he shouts. “Emery!” He’s back in my ear, breathing heavily. “She’s gone. I don’t knowhow, but she’s not here.”

I hang up and run down the ramp, hurling myself into my car. I try again to reach the phone tracking app, and this time, it finally connects, but it takes far too long to show me that Emery is indeed at the hospital.

I hate myself for hoping the emergency call-in was genuine, but somehow, I doubt it.

Maybe I’m as paranoid as Dante. Is this what love is doing to me? Making me crazy, threats looming like mirages in every corner of my imagination?

I tried to cage Emery, and I went too far.

She just started to stand up for herself, and I encouraged her to do it. I can hardly be surprised when she turns that newfound skill on me.

If I find her safe and pissed off, I’ll welcome her ire like absolution.

But if my wife is in danger, I’ll never forgive myself.

50

Leon

Isit on the bench beside Jess. Her shoulders quake as she sobs, her head in her hands.

“I was so scared,” she whispers. “Oh God. I didn’t know this would happen.”

When I arrived in the ER, Emery was nowhere to be seen, and the tracker was showing an error message, so I scanned around for a familiar face.

Jess was there, tending to a patient. When she spotted me, she went sheet white and bolted, so I had to follow her to the staff changing room, lock the door, and demand answers.

My instincts were right on the money. There was no emergency. No crisis to which my wife would feel duty-bound to respond.

Someone forced Jess to make the call. And Emery—being Emery—ran straight into the trap.

“Explain to me exactly what happened,” I say, handing Jess a tissue. She blows her nose and tries to steady herself.

“I was on shift, wondering where Emery was, when a janitor asked me to let him into a treatment room so he could clean it—apparently, it was locked. I followed him. It was one of the rooms tucked away off the corridor. I reached for the door, but it wasn’t locked at all.”

She swallows hard. “That’s when he shoved me inside.”

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