Normally I would have joked. Brushed it off with a cutting remark and that knowing smirk I wore like armor. Told him to fuck off and mind his own business.
This time I didn’t.
Because it was true.
I loved her.
The realization felt horrifying.
Love created weakness. Love gave enemies leverage.
And now Aurora was my biggest weakness, the one thing Edoardo could use to destroy me completely. To rip out my heart and leave me bleeding on the same cold concrete where Angelo had died.
I stood up abruptly, the chair scraping loudly against the marble floor. “I’m going to find her.”
Marco didn’t stop me. He just watched with that quiet understanding in his eyes.
Her room was empty. The bed still rumpled from where we’d slept. Her favorite book lay open on the nightstand, a silk bookmark halfway through.
The bathroom was empty. Steam still lingered faintly from a recent shower, her scent, vanilla apples, clinging to the air.
The closet was empty of her presence, though her clothes hung neatly. Too neatly.
The balcony was empty, the doors slightly ajar, a cool breeze carrying the distant sound of waves.
Her phone was gone from the charger. One of the smaller bikes from the garage was missing, tracked only moments later by frantic calls to the men on duty.
My stomach dropped like a stone into an abyss. No denial. No frantic, useless searching of the house. Just pure, ice-cold instinct kicking in.
Because I had lived this nightmare before. The sudden absence. The silence where there should have been life.
The entire estate exploded into chaos within minutes. Men running through halls, boots pounding marble. Orders shouted in rapid Italian and English. Cars roaring to life in the courtyard. Guns being checked with metallic clicks that echoed like war drums, magazines slamming home, safeties flipping off.
A young maid was dragged forward by two of my soldiers, trembling so hard her knees nearly gave out, tears streaming down her pale face. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen.
“She asked me for a pregnancy test,” the girl whispered, voice shaking violently. “Discreetly, last night. I got it for her from the pharmacy in town. She took it upstairs right after. I didn’t think… I swear I didn’t know anything was wrong.”
One of the men held up the test, still in its plastic wrapper but clearly used. Two pink lines stared back at me.
Positive.
The world went very still. Time fractured. My pulse roared in my ears like thunder.
Aurora was out there. Pregnant with my child. Carrying the future I never thought I’d have.
And someone had taken her from me.
Rage and fear fused into something lethal, colder than any kill I’d ever made. I would burn the city to the ground. Tear Edoardo apart piece by piece. Hunt down every last soldier, every informant, every shadow that had ever whispered his name.
Hours blurred into a storm of violence and dead ends.
My men tore through the city like a plague of locusts, shaking down every contact, every lowlife who owed me favors, every rat who had ever whispered secrets in the shadows of back alleys and smoky bars.
Warehouses were raided. Safehouses burned. Fingers were broken, knees were shattered, and screams echoed through the night as I demanded answers that no one seemed able to give.
Edoardo’s soldiers were moving like ghosts in the machine, slipping through cracks we couldn’t seal fast enough, but no one knew where he was keeping her.
The pregnancy changed everything. If he found out she was carrying my heir, he’d use it as the ultimate leverage. Or worse, he’d destroy it to break me completely, to rip the last piece of light from my black soul and leave nothing but ash.
