Page 223 of Merciless Daddy

“You think you took me away from them.”

The SUV turned onto a darker road.

I leaned back against the seat, wrists numb, mouth bitter with drugs.

“You only made them come for you.”

Chapter 17

Salvatore

The fire door gave beneath the twentieth blow.

Steel screamed. The lock tore free. I drove through it hard enough to hit the corridor wall with my shoulder.

Smoke burned my throat.

The hallway beyond was wrecked. Sprinklers hissed overhead. Water ran black across the carpet. One of my guards lay on his side near the service lift, blood spreading beneath his shoulder. Angela was crumpled against the wall ten feet away, one hand pressed to her temple.

Yelena was nowhere.

For one second, my mind refused to accept it.

She had to be there. Behind the overturned chair. Inside the lift. In the stairwell with one of my men shielding her.

“Lena!” I shouted.

Nothing answered except the alarm. I dropped beside Angela.

Her eyes opened halfway. Grey-green. Unfocused.

“Sal,” she whispered.

“Where is she?”

Her mouth moved. No sound.

I saw the blood on her hair. The bruise already rising along her cheek. My guard made a wet sound behind me, trying to breathe.

“They took her,” Angela managed. “They put her on a medical gurney. Fake firefighters. A fake doctor—”

My stomach fell through the floor.

“Which way?”

She lifted one trembling hand toward the service lift.

A medical gurney. The service lift. They had taken her down towards the loading bay.

Something glinted in the water near the doors. I reached for it.

A silver crescent earring lay crushed beneath someone’s boot heel.

Yelena had worn them on our date. She had chosen them herself after telling me abundance could become another kind of refusal. I had fastened one for her that morning while she stood in front of the mirror, pretending she did not like how gently I touched her.

The broken silver cut into my palm.

“I’ll find her,” I said.