With a grunt, I sat up, blinking in the frigid darkness as my vision swam so badly that there were two mansions blurring together before me.
Racking my brain, which was sluggish due to the extreme cold, I tried to recall why I was outside rather than inside.
It took a minute, but eventually, memories began rushing back.
Rory and me in the kitchen.
Her teasing with me a handjob before the power went out.
Sending her to bundle up the baby while I fetched firewood.
Coming outside, grabbing an armload of wood, and then a flash of pain in my head before everything went black.
I looked around, expecting to find a large tree branch nearby. It seemed only logical that one had grown too heavily laden with snow and broken off, and that’s what had knocked me out. That had been a contributing factor in the power outage, so it made sense.
But the only wood surrounding me were the split logs meant for our fire, a light dusting of white coating them from the wind whipping around.
My fingers were stiff in my attempt to gather the wood in my arms, and I wondered just how long I’d been unconscious. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, a half hour at best, because certainly Rory would have come looking for me when I didn’t arrive in our arranged meeting spot.
Grunting with the force required to shuffle forward in waist-deep snow, I finally made it to the back door, where Cosmo was waiting, shivering and eager to be let back inside. Stomping my boots, I divested them of the powdery precipitation before crossing the threshold and sealing out the cold.
When I reached the living room, it was dark—as was to be expected—but it was alarmingly silent as well.
“Rory?” I called out but received no reply.
Cosmo barked from beside me in an attempt to get a response from my wife.
Still nothing.
Dropping the heavy load beside the fireplace, I went in search of my wife and son.
Since her destination when we’d parted had been the nursery, that was the first place I looked. Using my phone’s flashlight to guide the way, I stepped inside to find it empty, no sign of Rory or Luca.
I frowned when I saw that the basket beside the changing table was still overflowing with baby blankets. It should have been a mess. Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it knocked onits side, as a result of my wife’s efforts to grab as many as she could one-handed.
Something wasn’t right.
“Rory!” This time, I shouted her name, hissing when a lightning bolt seared through my skull.
Silence.
Upon further examination, I saw two sets of wet footprints marking the carpet and leading out of the room. Someone besides Rory had been in here.
Trying to keep calm, I pulled up the tracking app I’d had installed on her phone. The dot marking her location wasn’t moving, but it sure as hell didn’t place her here.
No, she was at the fucking casino.
“Motherfucker!” The obscenity was accompanied by a surge of red-hot rage.
Stabbing at my phone screen, I brought it to my ear and paced the room as I waited for the call to connect.
“Listen, I heard about the outage, it’s gonna be—”
I cut Enzo off. “They came into my goddamn house and took them!”
There was a long pause. “Who took who, Gio?”
“Who the fuck do you think?” I huffed. “Rory and the baby are gone. Her tracker puts them at the casino.”
