Page 24 of The Mafia Husband's Loveless Marriage

Dark, concrete, a chair, zip ties on her wrists. Her mouth hurt where someone had hit her. Her wrist was bruised from the grab. One side of her face throbbed.

She was shaking so hard her teeth chattered, and yet...it was in the midst of terror and darkness that Maika learned to hope again.

This time, she didn't stop herself from thinking of Mykos.

This time, she didn't just allow herself to think of her husband.

This time, she embraced her memories of him.

Not the Mykos who found her boring and walked out on her...

But the Mykos she married, the Mykos who made love to her and wrote notes to her...

The Mykos who had spent an entire week building Maika's Corner before she even knew his name.

The Mykos whose fingers traced words on her shoulder while she fell asleep.

The Mykos who had pulled her into his lap in his study at midnight and held on like she was the only thing keeping him afloat.

And it made her laugh and cry at the same time even though she knew that made her a lunatic.

She just couldn't help it.

She laughed and cried because she knew this was God answering her prayer.

God allowing her to be abducted because somehow...this was exactly what had to happen, for her to wake up and remember that the heart was deceitful above all else, and it wasn't just her heart that could be fooled...but Mykos's, too.

And that was why...

People sometimes ended up believing what wasn't true—

(Her heart was breaking, and it bored him!)

And people also ended up saying things that they didn't really mean—

(We both know you're the kind of idiot who'll keep loving me anyway even if I don't love you back.)

MYKOS RECEIVED ORION'Scall while he was at his desk. In his office. Doing his best not to think of his wife instead of working.

That would matter to him for the rest of his life. He would remember that while he had been doing his best to forget his wife, she was being abducted.

"They took her away."

Mykos found himself rising to his feet upon hearing this.

"The Eliopoulos."

He stared at his surroundings, but all he could see was her. Her face the night she'd told him she loved him. Her face at the foot of the stairs, waiting for him in the dark, askingwhat did I do?

And he had walked past her.

"I'm sorry."

Orion's voice broke on the apology, and Mykos had never heard Orion's voice break, not in fifteen years, not through violence, crisis, loss. Orion did not break.

But Orion had just lost the one person Mykos had tasked him to protect above all others, and the weight of that failure was in every syllable.

And somehow, even when everything inside of him seemed to turn into ice, Mykos heard himself say, "We have protocols for this. Get moving."