Page 45 of The Prizes We Win
Fuck.
29
Josephine
I’m pacing the apartment, the same way I have been for hours when Harper walks up to me. “Here,” she says as she hands me a warm mug. “It’s tea. Why don’t you sit down for a minute.”
Tears well in my eyes as the mug warms my hands. I think this is the first thing I’ve really felt since I walked into that basement. “I can’t.”
She doesn’t give me a choice. Putting her hands on my arms, she gently pushes me backward a couple of feet until my calves hit the edge of the couch. Harper gives me her sternest look, and I know there’s no use arguing. I drop onto the couch, and she reaches behind me for a throw blanket. The moment she wraps it around me, I smell him. It’s his blanket. The one he always cocoons himself in in the corner of the sectional. And as the warm smell of him seeps into the very fabric of my being, I let the first tear fall. Then another.
“Oh, sweetie,” Harper says softly as she sits down next to me. She drapes her arm over my shoulder, and I let my head fall to hers. “They will find him.”
“What—what if they don’t?” The thought of my sweet Lorenzo never returning to me is almost unbearable.
Harper holds my head in her hands, forcing me to look her in the eye. “If they don’t find him tonight, none of us will stop until we do. That’s what we do. We’re a family.” Using the pad of her thumbs she does her best to wipe away my streaming tears. “We don’t give up on family.”
My head nods weekly in her hold. I know what she says is true.
She looks across the room to Finn and Sebastian, who are feverishly working on computers at the table. “Love, would you bring me that box of tissues?”
Doing as she asks, Finn grabs the box of tissues from the side table by the window and brings them to her. “Here you go, Angel.”
“Thank you,” she says as she smiles softly up at him before he plants a gentle kiss on her forehead. Finn looks down at me and runs his hand along the side of my face. I let myself lean into it for a moment.
His touch isn’t romantic in any way, he would never cross that line, but it is comforting.
Comforting to know that despite having a family of his own, I’m part of his now too.
He lingers for a moment before returning to the table.
Once we all realized Enzo had been taken, Ronan, Mac, and Finn were our first call. And when they arrived they decided it would be safest for me to return to the apartment with Harper, Finn, and Sebastian.
I didn’t argue.
I knew, despite how desperately I wanted to stay and help, that I would have been nothing but a distraction at that point. Theytook Enzo right out from under our noses, and I didn’t want them to feel like they had to watch me every second when they should be devoting one hundred percent of their attention on him.
The four of them said they were going to follow the tunnel and search the rest of the house before returning here to regroup.
I know they won’t find him in that tunnel, wherever it leads. There’s no way in hell the Novikovs would be stupid enough to keep him anywhere close to that house.
I don’t know how they got the jump on him, but I do know that they weren’t prepared for our arrival. It was clear by the state of that house that we startled them. Their escape wasn’t planned, nor was them taking Enzo. But they saw an opportunity and they took it.
They took something of ours because we took something of theirs. Twice.
But when we find him, when we find our Lorenzo, I know that all of them, Ronan, Mac, and Finn included, will reign down a hell the Novikovs have never experienced.
Andrei and Maxim will wish they had died all those months ago with Aleksandr.
Because if I know anything to be true, I know this… my men,The Horsemen, will not bat an eye as they rid the world of trash like them.
“There she is,” Harper says, looking into my eyes. “I thought that fire went out for a minute there.”
Sitting up straight, I wipe at my cheeks with the back of my hand and shake my head. “Never.”
Harper winks. “Atta girl.”
I’m just about to take a sip of tea when I hear the familiar ding of the elevator door. I set my cup down on the coffee table and sprint to the door. As the elevator opens a wave of sadnesswashes over me when I don’t see Enzo, regardless of how sure I was they wouldn’t find him in that tunnel.
