"Because taking it off requires a special magnet, which I have. And I didn't say it was useless. As far as her mother knows that thing is a fucking warhead. Besides that, it has a very convenient tracker." I pulled up the app on my phone and showed it to the men. The little white dot blinked away on the map. She was still in her apartment.
"You put a fucking GPS tracker on her?" Gregor scoffed.
"Yes, I did. And maybe if you had done that with your wife, you wouldn't have wasted three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of my money hunting her down."
Artem coughed back a laugh.
Gregor shot him a death glare.
"You still need to take it off of her," Gregor said. "It's fucked up."
"No, I don't." I stood. "What I need is for my nephews to get their heads out of their asses and remember who the fuck they are. You and the others have been distracted. By wives, by emotions, by Senator Collins and her petty blackmail. You have forgotten who the fuck you are. I have not."
"You can't just?—"
"I can, and I have. Simple." I stood, buttoning my jacket. "I'm attending the gala at the Kennedy Center tonight. Senator Collins will be there."
I smiled. Cold. Sharp. "So will her daughter."
CHAPTER 14
ANNA
The phone screen blurred, then sharpened. Then blurred again.
I blinked, dragging my thumb across the glass for the hundredth time, pulling down to refresh.
Nothing.
No missed calls.
No voicemails.
The notification bar remained a taunting stretch of emptiness.
My leg bounced against the couch cushion, a frantic rhythm I couldn't control. The apartment was too quiet. Too still. The silence pressed against my eardrums until I could hear my own pulse, feel it throbbing in my temples, in my wrists, in the heavy weight of metal circling my throat.
I stood. Sat back down.
The quilt Edith had sewn, soft, worn flannel in shades of cream and rose, tangled around my ankles. I kicked it off, then immediately pulled it back, needing something to hold onto.
An hour. I'd been staring at this screen for an entire hour, waiting for something that wasn't coming.
My mother's name sat at the top of my recent calls, mocking me with its silence. She should have called. By now, she should have mobilized half the FBI, had Darius surrounded, sent someone—anyone—to check on me.
Unless she couldn't. Unless there was a reason, a plan already in motion. Spec ops teams didn't exactly call ahead.
The thought offered a brief flicker of hope before reality crushed it.
I pushed off the couch again, pacing to the window.
The street below looked normal.
Too normal.
No black SUVs.
No men in tactical gear.
