As they bickered and consulted with each other, I growled and resisted this urge to roar my frustration. It was all my fault this was happening.
No. It’s not.
She chose to walk away. Just like that fucking AMA form that they always offered at the hospital, she’d checked out on me. She decided to leave and surrender the protection I’d been giving her. Had she stayed at my building and considered being with me, committing tome, she wouldn’t have been taken at all. Ever.
“It probably is a decoy. A trick,” I muttered, pacing again and wishing I could have a cigarette. I quit the day Andre was born and I’d never felt the urge for that calming hit of nicotine like I did now. Not for thirty years had I needed something to help me get through this kind of stress.
“Another dead end,” Andre agreed.
Sergei got a call and he walked off to handle it. As much as I was determined to find Claire and was putting all the manpower I could afford into searching for her, we still had other problemsto handle. Businesses were still being bothered and I had to make sure no one dared to start a fight and engage with any Orlovs in an unsanctioned turf war while I was committed to finding the woman I wanted to call mine.
This was all part of the trick. All part of the mind game. When they took Anya, they were trying to throw me off. Now, with Claire, they were fucking with me again.
She has to be alive.
She can’t be gone.
She can’t be dead.
We only just fucking met.
I told my nephew yesterday that I never considered myself a quitter, and that wouldn’t happen here. No matter what it took, no matter how many soldiers and spies I questioned and killed in my path, I wouldn’t give up the search for her.
She mattered too much. Dr. Donovon mattered enough that I’d let her go, dammit.
“Then let’s start from the beginning again. Near the hospital,” Andre suggested.
I shook my head, heading out of the warehouse with him. “You two go through the border to Roberto’s place.”
Sergei and Roman nodded, teaming up to see if they could get any closer to finding a hit on Claire. Too many properties were out there to be searched, though. Like us, both the Popovs and Giovannis hid ownership of countless buildings where they could hide someone. We did it too. Also like us, they had numerous properties and pieces of land outside the city. Itwouldn’t have taken much to transport Claire out of New York. After all, the last we saw of her on any surveillance footage that my security expert hacked into was when she was carried into a cargo van.
“We will find her,” Andre said once we got in the car.
“Dead or alive?” I asked, hating the possibility of being too late.
“Alive.” He nodded, slitting his eyes as he concentrated and the driver headed out. We moved with minimal backup, ready to search high and low for the woman who shouldn’t have left at all.
“I think this has to do with my mother,” he added. “Something about your actually having a woman youwantin your life is too much of a temptation for them to resist.”
I screwed up my face. “What kind of bullshit are you thinking of now? Your mother? Olga? What the fuck would she have to do with this?”
“She was the last woman in your life,” he replied.
I snorted and shook my head again, annoyed with whatever tangent he wanted to spout off with. “She was neverinmy life.”
He didn’t speak up again, but I knew him too well. He still had ideas about Claire’s capture, and I had to set him straight.
“Your mother was contracted to marry me and hated it. Hated me. She consummated the marriage and ran off to live at home, to have it a marriage in name only. That’s how you were born.”
“I know. I know the story.”
“Then let me finish it anyway and you can see why it’s stupid to even think that Claire has anything to do with the old news. Your mother never saw me, never saw you, and didn’t give a damnabout having a son or a husband. When her father made her visit with me, she got shitfaced and mistook me for a guard and I mistook her for a dancer from the club. That’s how Anya came to me. Then the bitch killed herself and wasn’t a mother to her, either.” I grimaced, hating the aftertaste of even thinking about Olga. “So what the fuck does any of that have to do with Claire?”
“Because she’s your new woman.”
“If she were mine, do you think she would’ve walked away?” I grunted. “She’s notmine.”
“You acted as if she could be. You spared no expenses or trouble to treat her like you wanted her to be your partner.”
