Ciara intercepts me halfway down the hall, her hand raised instinctively like she’s stepping in front of a charging animal.
“Cormac, stop.”
“Where is she? Where thefuckis Fiona?”
“She stepped away for a minute to go to the bathroom, I think. Why?”
A minute is all it takes for everything to fall apart.
I brush past her without another word, stalking toward the stairs.
“If you’re wrong, you don’t get to take it back!” Kieran’s voice follows behind me, but I don’t stop to turn around.
My hand tightens on the banister. “If I’m right, I don’t get that luxury anyway.”
I take the stairs two at a time, every step fueled by fury and fear, because if Fiona has chosen this moment to run, then Scout isn’t the only thing that’s been taken from me tonight.
And I don’t know which loss will destroy me first.
I’m about to throw open the door to the bedroom when it creaks open, and Fiona appears, her face tear-stained and blotchy.
“You stay where I can see you, do you understand?” I growl, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. “I said,do you understand?”
Fiona flinches, but I don’t have it in me to apologize, not when my son is missing.
“Cormac…please?—”
“Cormac!” Ronan yells from downstairs.
“Upstairs!” I call back without tearing my gaze away from Fiona.
I know what it’s like to have loved a woman and then lost her, but this hurts on a whole other level because Fiona is still living and breathing, and yet, as I look at her now, she’s nothing but a stranger.
I drop my hands from her shoulders and take a step back. “Don’t make me regret keeping you here.”
“In my office, now,” Kieran orders as he appears at the top of the stairs.
Fiona looks at him, panicked, before she goes scurrying down the stairs, looking seconds away from hurling up her guts on the carpet.
“Don’t,” I warn when I catch his eye.
“Say I told you so?” he finishes, his expression grim.
My body is shaking so hard from the amount of adrenaline pumping through me that I nearly knock the office door off its hinges when I throw it open.
I catch the sound of Ronan’s voice echoing from down below as he talks to our men before he joins us, with Brennan right behind him.
Knowing that my brothers are here with me should steady me. We’ve faced a hell of a lot worse together, but this feels different.
The stakes have never been this high, and any wrong move could mean I never get to see my son again.
Ronan stalks into the office. “Talk to us, Kieran.”
Brennan follows behind him and closes the door as Ronan takes a seat behind the desk.
In moments like this, I don’t envy the fact that he’s the head of the family.
Kieran turns to Ronan. “Adrian’s people were seen moving through Queens less than an hour ago.”
