Julian stood, walked to the window, and back to me.
"A bounty this high is serious. Usually reserved for the worst criminals. Looks like Kirill hates your guts. Right now, you'd better comewith me to San Francisco. Kirill's reach doesn't go there. I can give you a new look, new identity. Make you disappear completely."
He still wouldn't let me go.
Even after I'd lost everything. Even after Aiden was dead. Even after I'd left his world—he was still coming after me.
I took a deep breath.
"Okay," I said, each word forced through clenched teeth. "I just want to disappear. Completely. Forever. Where he'll never find me."
"Then come with me." Julian held out his hand. "I promise you—starting today, you're Luna. Harper Evans is getting buried in this town and staying buried."
I looked at his outstretched hand. Hesitated.
A stranger. A man I'd known less than twenty-four hours. Why should I trust him? How did I know he didn't have his own agenda?
But what choice did I have? I had an innocent child in my belly.
I had to protect it.
Had to let it be born safe. Grow up healthy. Give it what I never had.
A whole childhood. Full of love.
Even if its father was that man.
Three hours later, I sat on a train to San Francisco, watching the landscape fly past the window.
The girl named Harper Evans, along with all her love and pain, stayed behind in that broken-down town.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kirill
"What do you mean you can't find her?"
The whiskey glass slammed down on the desk. Amber liquid splashed across the dark wood.
Boris stood in front of me—two meters of muscle, head bowed like a scolded child.
"Boss, we've searched everywhere. The nursing home where she worked, her brother's hospital, every person she might know—"
"Then keep looking!" I shot to my feet, hands braced against the desk, knuckles white. "She didn't vanish into thin air! Triple the reward. No—quadruple it! How far can a broke woman get?"
Three days.
Harper had been gone three days.
I'd mobilized nearly every resource the Orlov family had. Private investigators, street informants, cops on our payroll, even our FBI plant—all searching the country for one woman named Harper Evans.
Nothing.
She'd disappeared like a drop of water in the ocean.
My eyes drifted to the desk drawer.
How fucking ironic.
