Caspian stepped out of the living room, his hand reaching for his gun. “What the hell is the meaning of this?” he asked. Behind him, his brothers piled out.
“You’ve been having a good family meeting, huh?” My face twisted with rage as I viewed them. “Enjoying yourselves after your victory?”
“Calm down, Pavlov,” Giovanni growled.
I ignored him. My own men piled in behind me, and if the Lebedevs tried to cause trouble, we were armed enough. I rushed past the Lebedevs to reach the stairs.
“Beatrice?” I bellowed. Nothing.
I turned to face them. “Tell me what you want.”
To my surprise, each of her brothers was now pale and shocked.
“Why the hell are you screaming for Beatrice?” Dante asked while Achille and Luca exchanged worried glances.
“Because you took her!” I screamed, refusing to play into their little tricks.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Caspian turned red in the face. “Tell us where our sister is before this turns ugly.”
“It’s already ugly,” I snarled. “You threatened my family, and now Beatrice and Anton are missing. Where are they?”
“You’re not fucking around, are you?” Dante pushed through his brothers, his face draining of color. “Since when has she been missing?”
Something in his voice made me hesitate. The fear on his face looked far too genuine to fake, and in that moment, my panic turned feral.
All this time, I believed that if they had her, she wouldn’t really be unsafe. But now, I truly had no idea where she was.
“Fuck.” I felt my knees weaken as I sat down on the stairs and dropped my head between my thighs. My breathing was now in panicked bursts. I forced myself to face her brothers, to tell them I had failed to protect her. “I came home from work, and she wasn’t home. Called and told me Anton is missing, too. He was taken outside his office. I thought…I thought you were behind it.”
Caspian shook his head just as Dante began to rally their guards, who were now eyeing mine off with blood in their eyes. “Find out what you can!” he said.
Giovanni turned to me. “Now’s not the time to stop thinking straight,” he said, kneeling down. “Gather your men and find out what you can. We have to find both of them.”
I noticed how he considered Anton. “Agreed,” I nodded, feeling some confidence return to my body. “Truce? For now?”
Giovanni gave me a nod and a half-smile, then turned to the others as I got to my feet. “This isn’t a coincidence,” Giovanni said. “They couldn’t have been taken, unless by the same people.”
“I have to call my brothers,” I said, making a move to the door. “God knows who has them, and every hour they aren’t with us, things can turn uglier.”
“Do what you must,” Caspian nodded at me. “We touch base in thirty minutes. If you learn anything in the meantime, let us know.”
As I barreled out of the door, the last thing I heard was voices shouting orders to rally every force in the Lebedev army.
***
The minute I got in the car, I called Andrey.
“The Lebedevs don’t have them,” I explained what transpired.
“Fuck,” Andrey said. “We have footage now of the van that took Anton. Let us get to the bottom of it. Maybe it’ll lead us to them.”
“Do that,” I said. I then called my head of security, Yuri, back at the compound and asked what they had learned.
“Boss,” he said. “We have no proof that Mrs. Pavlov was taken, but the cameras capture her sneaking away. She climbed over the east gate of the compound herself.”
This piece of news turned my blood to run cold. I pulled over at the curb. “Send me over the footage.”
I watched with bated breath to confirm what he had said. Shit, I thought to myself. We have no proof she was taken. She did, in fact, leave of her own will.
