Five days later,I hadn’t found her. It was like she had left the cemetery and disappeared into the drizzle. There were some sightings of her on some cameras heading towards downtown, but nothing else.
I had thought on day two that she had gone to the train station, but it hadn’t been her, and the cameras at the bus station hadn’t worked in weeks. Amy was gone, and I didn’t have one solid lead to where she would have gone or who was helping her.
Even Gabriella and Misha hadn’t seen her since the day of the funeral, and they were now in Europe. She wouldn’t have gone with them. She didn’t have a passport as far as I was aware.
There had been a moment where I thought they might have gotten her fake documents to smuggle her out of the country, but even I realized that was a bit far-fetched.
Still, she had to be somewhere, and I wasn’t about to give up. I would just have to look further afield.
“Mr. Petrovov?” The receptionist in the retirement home finally called my name. “He is back now, so you can go on through,” she flashed me a sad smile. “Please tell Amy if there’s anything I can do to help after poor Alessia’s death, then just call me.”
I blinked at her in shock. Had she been at the funeral? Did one of these women know where my wife was? No, if she had known, she wouldn’t have been asking me to pass on messages. “Thank you. I will.” I lied.
My grandfather was sitting in his armchair and not his bed, staring stonily out of the window. He didn’t turn when I walked into the room. “You decided to finally visit me, hey?”
“Sorry. It’s been crazy.” I sucked in a breath as he turned his head to look at me. “Look, this is going to be hard to hear, but I have to tell you the truth.”
I had to tell him. It would tear out his heart, but I had to. It had been almost a week, and there was no sign of her. If he didn’t hear it from me, then he would learn it from somewhere else.
“Amy has left me.”
“I know,” he said completely deadpan.
I did a double-take. “What do you mean you know?” I couldn’t help it. My voice shook with anger.
“She came to visit and say goodbye before she laid her sister to rest.”
Sometimes, I didn’t agree with everything my grandfather said, but I’d never been angry with him. Until now. “And you just let her leave?”
Slowly, he raised cold eyes to me. “It’s not my place to keep your wife happy, Alexei. And from what I have heard, she has every right to leave you.”
“It’s not—”
He cut me off. “Did you give your grandmother’s ring to Violet?” He didn’t let me answer him. “I can’t stop you from marrying Violet, Alexei, because you are an adult, and it’s time I let you make your own mistakes. But that ring will never be hers.”
“Do you know where Amy is?” I asked, completely ignoring his jibe about Violet being wrong for me. I’d caught it, though.
“No, Alexei, I don’t. I have started the paperwork for your divorce, though. It’s a little complicated, but—”
“I never said anything about a divorce,” I snapped, and this time the anger in my tone was undeniable.
Old eyes narrowed at me. “You can’t be with both women, Alexei. I suggest you don’t even try.”
“I don’t. I just want to make sure she is ok.”
He shook his head. “Let her go, Alexei,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “Let Amy go so she can spread her wings and be free. You owe her that much.”
“She is my wife.”
He speared me to the spot with his eyes. “Then you should have thought about that before you tossed aside the only good thing to happen to you. She is gone, and you will leave her alone. She wants nothing more to do with this family.” For the count of ten, he stared at me. “You may leave now, Alexei. I am suddenly tired of your company.”
Never in all my years had Nikolai dismissed me. Not once. Evenwhen I was a child, he always doted on my every word. Amy had changed all of that. Or maybe it was Violet’s reappearance that had changed it. I didn’t know which one.
“Of course.” Bending over him, I pressed my lips to his thin white hair. He stiffened under me. “I will come and visit again in a day or so. Get some rest.”
“I mean it, Alexei,” he called after me. “Leave that girl alone.”
“Of course,” I said too quickly. But I was lying. I had to find Amy because I had to make sure she was alright.
