Page 130 of His Eternal Claim

Before the tension can explode into violence, a nurse runs toward us. Her face is pale, her eyes wide as she stops right in front of my chair.

“Don Vitale,” she breathes. “It’s… it’s your wife. The sedative was supposed to keep her under for another six hours.”

My entire body goes rigid. I stand up, towering over her as a cold knot of dread tightens in my gut. “What about her?”

“She… she gained consciousness ten minutes ago,” the nurse chokes out, backing away from the intensity of my glare. “The guards outside her door were distracted by the code blue in the OR. When the medical staff went in to check her vitals… she was gone. She’s not in her room.”

Chapter 49

Bloodline

THE MAESTRO | Past

Find her!” I roar. “Block the exits! Lock down every exit, every elevator, every damn window! If she leaves this building, I will slaughter every single person on security detail tonight!”

“Zagreus, wait—” Massimo starts, but I don’t give him the chance to finish.

I pull my Beretta from its holster and chamber a round.

I don’t look back at my brother. I don’t look at the operating room where my Mother’s body lies cold. I run.

My lungs burn as I sprint through the emergency wing, my eyes scanning every door, every shadow, every empty hallway. Please, God. Please. I’ve never prayed a day in my life. I’ve only ever taken what I wanted by force. But now, my mind is a bleeding wreck of bargaining and terror.

Not her. Take everything else. Take the empire, take my life, take my blood—just not her.

I will follow her into whatever hell she escapes into. I will burn the world to ash just to find the ground she walks on. She doesn’t understand. She thinks she’s a monster; she thinks she’s broken, but she is mine. Mine. Mine. Even if she hates me, even if she never speaks my name again without spitting venom, she belongs next to my heart.

I burst through the glass sliding doors of the emergency entrance, hitting the freezing, torrential rain of the city night. The wind howls, tearing the breath straight out of my chest.

“Don Vitale! The gate camera caught her running toward the main road!”

I run straight out onto the asphalt of the four-lane highway wrapping around the hospital. The rain slashes against my face, washing away the dried blood on my jaw, but the cold doesn’t register. Nothing registers except the terrifying vacuum in my chest.

Through the heavy curtain of grey mist and downpour, I see her.

Selene is standing directly in the middle of the highway.

The hospital gown is soaked through, clinging to her fragile frame, stained with patches of fading crimson. Her wild curls are plastered to her back. She looks so small.

“Selene!” I scream, my voice cracking, completely stripped of the monster. Just a man begging for his life.

I sprint toward her.

At the sound of my voice, she slowly looks over her shoulder. The unhinged glaze has evaporated, leaving behind a devastating woman I no longer recognize.

She places a single, trembling hand over her stomach, protecting the secret life we built in the dark. Tears stream down her pale cheeks, glittering like diamonds in the rain as they mix with the storm.

She looks straight at me, her wide, sorrowful eyes locking onto mine from yards away.

“Goodbye, Zagreus,” she whispers. “I hope we never meet again.”

“No! Selene, stay still!”

A deafening shriek of tires splinters the night.

To my left, I see a pair of blinding headlights traveling too fast. A heavy sedan rounds the blind curve of the highway, and the vehicle swerves violently, skidding sideways across the slick asphalt.

“Selene!”