Page 161 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

44

Artem

My blood turns to ice at once.

The first thought in my head is that Budimir got to her first. I want to fucking break something.

Why am I crouched in a fucking janitor’s closet instead of protecting my wife? Protecting mychild?

“What the fuck do you mean she’s gone?” I snap into the phone.

“I, uh… There were some men who came,” she stammers. “They were trying to get into her room. They had guns, sir, and I didn’t know what to—”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“They pushed past me and got into her room but…”

“But what?” I growl. “Butwhat?”

She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. “When they walked in… she was gone, sir. She had run.”

“How?”

“She pushed open the window, sir, the one that leads to the maintenance balcony.”

“Where were my guards?” I demand. “The ones I left in her room?”

“They left,” she replies.

“They… left?”

“And then they came back with more men, sir.”

She’s a blubbering mess now. It’s one thing to run a private clinic that sometimes caters to the city’s nastier elements. It’s another thing to have murderous troops storming down your hallways and hunting your patients.

But I don’t have time to cater to her emotional breakdown.

“I… don’t they all… work for you, sir?”

Fucking hell.

Not anymore, it seems.

“Does anyone know you’ve called me?” I ask.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way,” I reply. “Forget my name. And go home. You’re not safe here.”

I hang up before she can answer.

“Artem?” Cillian asks, his eyes pierced with worry.

“Budimir’s men are here,” I tell him. “But Esme was gone by the time they’d got to her room.”

“Gone?” he asks, his expression falling flat.

“I don’t have the answers,” I snap, furious that I have to admit that at all. “I just need to fucking find her.”

---