Inside was blood on the floor, glass everywhere, and no fucking Eva.
My chest seized, my gun useless. What good was a weapon when I was too late?
Blyat!
Quickly, I cleared the house, my initial suspicions correct—the house was long empty.
When I called Eva, she didn’t pick up.
Wheels squealed outside, and I pressed my back against the wall before peeking through the front door.Poser, a voice inside me mocked, but muscle memory was strong.
“Eva?” Cole asked, jogging up the steps. I stepped outside, and his eyes went wide. “What the fuck happened?”
“Your father is what the fuck happened,” I snarled at him. “They’re gone. They’re both fucking gone.”
Cole took in the broken furniture, the blood on the floor. “That doesn’t make any sense. He was just—” He pulled out his phone and dialed. “Slade, what the fuck is going on?”
Cole swiped on the speaker.
“Can’t talk right now,” the disembodied voice said.
“Did my father take her?”
The voice was silent. “Hang up and go home, Cole. Live to fight another day.”
Cole stilled. “If you touch a hair on her fucking head?—”
“I have to go.”
“Where are you?”
The voice was silent for a long moment. “Taking the elevator to the twenty-sixth floor.”
And then, it cut off.
Cole’s expression had gone cold, calculating. “She’s at Carter Industries. That was my father’s enforcer. Fuck!”
“We’ll get her back, her and her father,” I promised, but Cole was already pacing the living room, his dress shoes crunching through glass, heedless of the mess.
He turned to face me, determined. “He wouldn’t have taken her. She was at the game. He must have grabbed her father, and then Eva came home and—” He swallowed. “She’s gone to save him. Stupid, selfless sparrow.”
Always handling her problems on her own because she didn’t trust us to help her now, to show up when it mattered. Because we hadn’t before.
I was going to murder her for this, right after I made sure she was safe, right after I made sure she knew how much I loved her, right after I fucking made this right.
Cole’s expression had shut down again. “Call Dmitri. I’ll buy us time while you arrange for the calvary.”
He stepped toward me and grasped my hand before pulling me to him, our chests together with our hands clasped between us. “Alek, no matter what happens tonight, promise me you’ll take care of her, that you’ll take care of them.”
His eyes were steady, but I could see the fear beneath, the determination.
“I swear it,” I rasped.
And then, he was gone.
I waited three full seconds, watching the door he’d left through, a hole in my chest from the knowledge he was going to face his father alone while I made phone calls and arranged backup.
Goddammit.
