Page 76 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

But Arya… Lukas…

“Enough!” I hiss through clenched teeth. I growl in frustration and hurl Lukas’s blanket onto the porch in a heap. Then I turn and stomp down the path towards the sidewalk.

Halfway there, I stop.

And turn around.

Slowly…

Slowly…

I almost didn’t see it at first. A sign, wedged behind a shrub at the side of the house. It’s white. Blends in with the bricks. The foliage had hidden it from view, but a breeze must’ve knocked it loose. It’s visible now, peeking out from between the leaves.

Most of it is obscured. But I see two words stand out in red block letters.

FOR SALE.

I sprint over, a nauseating feeling rising up in my stomach, and rip the sign from behind the bush. It’s a For Sale sign with a blonde realtor’s face smiling beneath it. Attached to the side is a stack of brochures with a picture of house number thirteen on them.

“This show home is ready for you. Easy clean, low-maintenance, luxury vinyl floors spread across the main floor with plush carpets in the three bedrooms upstairs. New appliances, washer and dryer included—”

I crumple up the brochure in my fist and race up to the steps to bang with both fists on the front door. I don’t care if Lukas is sleeping. I don’t care if I wake up every sleeping baby within a ten-mile radius.

Something isn’t right. I’m going to figure out what that is.

I knock a few more times and then try the handle. It’s unlocked.

“Arya!” I’m shouting her name before I’m even inside. “Arya, where are you?”

The inside of the house looks as bland and perfect as the outside. A small table in the entryway has another fake plant on it, along with a coffee table book of Vogue covers. What kind of bachelor has a book like that lying around?

It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.

Fuck. Fuck.“Fuck!” I roar as I run up the stairs.

The beds are mussed, the blankets pushed back like people just recently went to sleep. But they’re empty now.

“Arya?”

I run to each of the rooms. When I see the empty bassinet next to the bed, that fishhook sensation in my chest multiplies a hundred times over.

My brain is in a fog. My thoughts are flying around, totally disconnected from each other.

It’s a far cry from what I’m accustomed to. I’ve been in the thick of battle, bullets flying, and still managed to keep a clear head.

But now, all I can think of is Lukas and Arya. What happened to them. Where they might’ve gone. There’s no plan—just a blind, raging panic as I tear through the house looking for anything at all that can tell me what happened.

Maybe Zotov or the Albanians caught up to them.

Maybe those motherfuckers followed me when I dropped them off and decided to go for revenge rather than outright killing me.

But if they did, they would have called me by now. They would have notified me of what they did—to taunt me, if nothing else. And yet, it’s been quiet since I got to Chicago. Radio fucking silence. Quiet enough that I have to believe I wasn’t followed.

They can’t possibly know where I am.

So then who the hell took my son?

Arya’s sweatshirt is in a heap by the door to her bedroom. I pick it up, as if the answers I’m looking for can be transferred to me by touch. As if I could look into the past and see what happened here.

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