Page 61 of The Marriage Debt

Twenty minutes pass like fog. I pace the upstairs hall with the same five steps, again and again, palms burning from how tightly I’m clenching them. Every time I stop myself from calling her, I end up staring at the front door, waiting to hear it open. The weight in my chest doesn’t ease. It thickens.

Then my phone rings.

It’s Rafe.

Rafe's voice hits like a slap, abrupt and stripped of any attempt at gentleness. There's no code phrase, no soft entry—just blunt force over the line, the way he only speaks when it's already gone to hell. I can hear engines and raised voices in the background, the disjointed chaos of a scene spiraling out of control, and still, his tone never changes.

“She was hit. A few miles from the estate.”

Everything inside me stills, not in that calm, surgical way I’m used to, the kind of stillness that lets me map out an attack, weigh my odds, set a trap. This is something different. It’s the kind of quiet that comes before collapse, before your legs forget how to hold you up and your lungs stop trusting the air. The space around me narrows, like the whole hallway is closing in. My hand tightens around the phone. “Is she alive?” My voice comes out thinner than I want it to, stripped bare of command.

“Yeah. Bruised, shaken, bleeding, but Mateo…” I already know. I already know what he’s about to say. “Lev’s gone.”

There’s a roaring in my ears. For a second I think it’s traffic, or the line crackling—but it’s me. My pulse is beating so hard it’s blurring the edges of sound. I don’t remember ending the call. I don’t remember how I get downstairs or out the door. The next thing I’m aware of, I’m behind the wheel, gripping it so hard the leather creaks.

My foot slams the gas, hard enough that the tires squeal as I launch down the driveway. I barrel onto the street without looking, without thinking, weaving between traffic like the world doesn’t have rules anymore. Every red light blurs past like a dare I don’t bother answering, the city flying by in a streak of metal and shadow. I don’t stop for lights, or sirens, or anything that dares get between me and that intersection a few miles from home.

The scene is cordoned off with two Rossi men trying to hold back pedestrians. Sirens wail in the distance, echoing off the buildings with a pulse that feels too slow for what’s just happened. The sedan Lila took is crushed on the driver’s side, riddled with holes. Smoke curls up from the engine like it’s exhaling. There’s blood on the hood. Glass all over the street. One of ours lies face down in the median, already covered by Rafe’s jacket.

And in the middle of it, I see her.

She’s on her knees, hair wet from something—rain, blood, I can’t tell—and her arms are out like she doesn’t know what to do with them. She’s not screaming. She’s not moving. She’s just shaking.

I don’t feel my feet hit the ground.

I cross the street, eyes locked on the second vehicle—the one that hit her from behind. It’s riddled with rounds. The door’s ajar. I can see a man inside, still alive, trying to crawl out, clutching his side like it hurts, like he’s still trying to cling to life with hands that already lost their grip.

I draw my pistol and shoot him in the head.

One clean shot. No hesitation. He drops halfway out the door, body twitching once before it goes still.

Lila flinches at the sound.

I grab her by the face before I can stop myself. My hands are shaking and rough, and I hate the way her skin feels under my fingers—cold and sticky with blood. Inside, I’m coming apart. Not with panic—but with something hotter, meaner. A kind of terror so sharp it feels like rage, like my bones are rattling from the pressure of holding it in.

“Where did they take him?” I ask, but my voice is a growl. “Where the fuck did they take him?”

She gasps, eyes wide, pupils blown. “I don’t know—I didn’t see—they came so fast, Mateo, they were already pulling him—” Her voice cracks. “I tried to hold on. I tried.”

She’s crying harder now, blood mixed with tears. I let go of her like I’ve been burned.

The street tilts under me. I put a hand to my face, not even sure what I’m wiping away—sweat, rain, her blood. My breathing’s wrong. I can’t get a full breath. My vision tunnels and tunnels and then snaps into focus all at once.

I call Alessio. When he picks up, I don’t give him time to speak. “Open bounty. Anyone who lays a finger on the boy dies screaming. Anyone. You hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” he says, already moving.

I hang up and turn away from the carnage. Rafe approaches, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to stop me. He sees what I look like right now—what I’ve become in the last five minutes—and he knows better than to get in front of it.

This isn't business. It's not protocol. It's not strategy anymore.

This is blood for blood.

I disappear into the rain, the sky still spitting cold drops as the clouds hang low and mean above the street. There’s no plan, no map, no direction. Just instinct and fury. Just the certainty of one thing.

Lev is mine.

And whoever took him has no idea how far I’m willing to go to get him back.

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