The shift happens instantly. The performance drops. The fake tenderness, the old familiarity, the wounded lover act. What remains is a man angry enough to stop pretending he will not hurt me.
My blood goes cold.
Dmitri’s mouth curves again, but this time there’s nothing charming in it. “Run, baby,” he says softly. “Run.”
30
YAROMIR
I knowsomething is wrong before I reach the house.
It starts as a feeling I don’t trust because feelings are unreliable things. The car turns through the outer road toward the estate, and my attention keeps going to my phone. No message from Anya. No complaint about the guards. No cute little demand asking when I’m coming back.
The gates come into view, and I see Viktor before the car stops.
He’s waiting outside the main entrance, not inside. Coat unbuttoned, phone in hand, face controlled in a way I recognize too well.
Something has happened.
My driver barely brakes before I open the door.
Viktor comes toward me fast.
“Where is she?” I ask.
He stops. That’s answer enough.
The world goes quiet around the edges.
“Where is my wife?”
“She’s gone.”
For a second, the words don’t make sense.
Gone. What the fuck?
I step closer to him. “Explain.”
Viktor’s jaw tightens. “Her phone is upstairs. Guards thought she was in the room. No one saw her leave through the main entrance. We’re checking the service gates now.”
Rage fills my head, floods my vision. Where the fuck is my wife?
I turn toward the house, and every guard near the steps goes still. “She walked out of a locked estate?” I ask.
Viktor says nothing.
I look back at him. “Or someone helped her?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Then find out.”
“We are.”
“Faster.”
He nods once, already reaching for his phone.
