I turned, and there she was, the housekeeper, Olga, with the maid, Nikki, standing beside her.
“Tell him what you told me,” she said to the girl.
Nikki stepped forward, too afraid to look me in the eyes. “I believe Mia helped Mrs. Tarasov escape.”
“Mia is one of the maids,” Olga clarified.
My brows knitted together, accentuating the frown on my face.
Nikki continued, “I saw Mrs. Tarasov sneaking out of her room last night. And before that, Mia had been acting very suspicious. She’d been making secret phone calls and would disappear for hours without a trace.”
I felt my blood boiling within me. “Where is this Mia now?”
“I don’t know. No one has seen her all day.”
“Boss.” Sergei stepped forward and handed me an iPod. “You might wanna see this.”
I accepted it, and the first thing I saw on the screen was footage of two maids sneaking down the hallway. I couldn’t help noticing that one of them looked an awful lot like my wife.
My middle finger and thumb spread across the screen, zooming in on the photo. Indeed, it was Scarlett, disguised as a maid. My jaw tightened, and I balled one hand into a fist.
“Find Mia,” I ordered. “Now!”
“Yes, Boss.” Sergei walked away.
One by one, everyone else dematerialized, leaving me to my fury and my thoughts. I was a fool not to have noticedthe underground movements and her plans to escape. I was so confident that after her first failed attempt, she’d never try to run away again. That was reckless and stupid of me.
I paced back and forth in my study, trying to calm my nerves because the more time we wasted, the further away she got. Scarlett could be halfway across the country by now, and the only way to find her quickly was to find Mia first.
About two hours later, the door slammed open, and Sergei walked in with the culprit. She was pleading when he pushed her inside, and she fell in front of my desk.
“Tell him what you did,” he ordered her, his face twisted into a frown.
Curious, I rose to my feet and walked over to the front of my table.
“Please, I’m sorry—”
“Tell him!” Sergei barked at her.
She flinched at the sound of his voice, her face pale with fear.
I expected her to confess to helping Scarlett find a place to hide or to offer some cash to leave the city. But what I heard was more disturbing than that.
“He paid me to get close to Scarlett, get her to trust me, and then bring her to him,” she confessed, kneeling with her palms clasped together.
“He, who?” I growled, my jaw tightening as I glared at her.
Her throat bobbled, and she lowered her head, her voice dropping to a low whisper. “Lucian Sokolov.”
My blood boiled with rage, fingers curling into fists as I restrained myself from beating her to death with my bare hands. “Take her away.”
Two of my men dragged her out of the room as she screamed, begging for mercy.
The mere thought of Lucian’s filthy hands on my wife only fueled my rage. This was the opportunity he’d been waiting for to exert his revenge. For the first time, I felt it—raw, undiluted fear.
“Round up the men,” he said to Sergei. “We’re going to war.”
Chapter 27 – Scarlett
