“Oh, Antonio,” he purrs, the laughter still dancing at the edges of his words. “How does it feel?”
The question is so absurd, so utterly disconnected from my own, that it takes me a second to process it. Rage, hot and blinding floods my vision, turning the streaking world outside a hazy red.
“What?” I bark, the word a pistol crack.
“How does it feel,” he repeats, slowly, savouring each syllable like a fine wine, “to know your precious wife is in danger now? Helpless? At the mercy of men who don’t share your particular obsession? Is the bitch pregnant, too? Is that the little crisis that has you finally calling me?”
The world stops. The car, the road, the sky, everything ceases to exist. There is only his voice in my ear, and the image in my hand.
He knew. He set this up.
The last vestige of hope, the desperate lie that this was a trick evaporates.
It’s real. Grace is pregnant. My child is growing inside her while she is captive, terrified, alone.
A sound rips from me, something between a snarl and a sob. It’s the sound of an animal caught in a trap, gnawing its own leg off. “You son of a bitch…”
“Now, now, Antonio,” Conrad chides, but his voice is dripping with malicious joy. “This is what you would call poetic justice, no? Payback for your appalling lack of decorum where my wife was concerned. This…” He pauses, and I can picture his smug, satisfied smile. “This evens the score. A wife for a wife, no?”
My mind is fracturing. I can feel the pieces of my control, my last vestiges of sanity, splintering off. The image of Grace, not just my wife but the mother of my child, alone and scared is a loop of torment behind my eyes.
I am losing my shit. The carefully constructed walls of my composure are crumbling into dust.
“I will flay you alive,” I whisper, the promise so low and venomous it seems to drop the temperature in the car. “I will tear your world apart brick by fucking brick.”
“I don’t doubt you’ll try,” he says, utterly unimpressed. The arrogance is staggering. “But that won’t find her, will it? Time, I imagine, is a factor you can ill afford to waste, and I might be willing to help.”
The offer hangs in the air, putrid and tempting. He’s offering me a rope, knowing it’s coated in poison.
“What?” The word is ground out between teeth clenched so tight my jaw aches.
“I have resources. I can make calls, but this situation wipes the slate clean between us. We are even. No more grudges, no more posturing. You get your pregnant wife back, and I get my peace. A fair trade.”
The phone feels like a live wire in my hand, buzzing with his vile proposition. I see it all so clearly now. This is what he wanted all along. Not just revenge, but capitulation. He wants me to come to him, to owe him, to acknowledge his twisted sense of justice.
He wants me to say yes. He wants to own this fucking victory.
The red haze of my rage doesn’t clear. It crystallizes. It hardens into something cold, sharp, and infinitely more deadly. This man does not get to help me.
I bring the phone closer to my mouth, my lips peeling back from my teeth.
“Go fuck yourself, Conrad.”
I don’t wait for his reply, I disconnect the call and hurl the phone across the cabin. It smacks against the far window with a dull thud and falls silent onto the leather seat.
“The Esau have Grace,” I say. There is no point in preamble. The words are stripped of everything but the horrific fact as they hang in the perfumed air between us.
Konstantine’s smile vanishes. His gaze sharpens, becomes analytical. “A pity. She was a beautiful creature. A somewhat reckless one, but beautiful nonetheless.”
The casual dismissal of her value, her life is a spark thrown onto the bed of gasoline that is my temper right now. I force it down. “They are using her as a bargaining chip.”
“And what is their price?” he asks, though I see in his eyes he already knows. He is making me say it. He wants to hear the treason in my voice.
“They want me to kill you.”
For a long moment, the only sound is the cheerful, mindless burble of the fountain in the distance. Konstantine watches me and I see no fear, only a cold, calculating interest. Then, he laughs. It’s a dry, rattling sound, but it’s full of genuine amusement.
“Of course they do,” he says, shaking his head as if at a child’s foolish prank. “Having tried and failed so many times, now they seek to turn my most devoted man against me. They always did lack imagination.” He leans forward slightly, the new heart in his chest allowing the movement to be swift, not a pained shuffle. “And you came to tell me this? To warn me? How loyal.”
