Page 171 of Vow to Claim You

And I keep holding her because I’ve spent the last hour believing I might not get to hold her again, and I’m not ready to test whether the belief was wrong.

Behind me, my men wait. Behind her, hers. And in the car beyond us both, Leandro watches through the glass with the kind of expression saying that he has never once in his life accepted that a thing hasn’t gone his way.

He gets out again the moment he understands what he’s seeing—his daughter’s hand in mine, her body turned toward me and away from the plane, away from Monsera, away from him.

“Ayanna.” He comes around the door, and his voice has changed. It’s harder. “Habibti. Think. Remember what I told you. Because if you don’t go home now, you will not get another chance⁠—”

“That’s enough.” I step in front of her, placing myself between Ayanna and her father. Negotiation is over. “You’re going to get back in your car. You’re going to leave my wife and her sister here with me, and you’re going to drive back the way you came, and you’re going to do all of it without another word.”

His fists clench on his sides. “You have no right to⁠—”

“Let her go.” I cut in. “Walk back to your car. Get on your plane. Go back to Monsera.” I hold his gaze for another second before I speak. “Or I tell her right here, in front of every man on this road, exactly what I’ve found.”

Leandro’s jaw tightens, the muscles beneath the skin working. His eyes flick from me to Ayanna to the armed men surrounding us, measuring the cost of every possible response.

He knows what I have. He doesn’t know how much of it, or how certain I am, but he knows I have something, because I don’t bluff. I don’t deal in empty threats. Every word I speak is backed by something I’m willing to act on, and Leandro Almaviri has known me long enough to understand that.

His chin lifts. The mask settles back into place; thinner now, but intact.

“You’ll regret this, Vold,” he hisses, low enough that only I can hear it, pressed through teeth that barely part.

I don’t flinch. I’ve been threatened by men who make Leandro Almaviri look like a parish priest, and I’m still standing.

He stares at me a moment longer, then turns toward his car.

But Naomi is still in the second vehicle.

I turn my head toward the car where my brother’s girl is pressed against the window with tears standing in her eyes.

“Naomi.” I raise my voice. Not a shout but enough to carry across the road, past the armed men and through the glass. “You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to.”

Leandro stops mid-stride, and his shoulders go rigid.

For a long moment, nothing moves. The road. The convoy. The armed men on both sides holding their positions like statues carved from the same rock that lines the fjord.

The car door opens, and Naomi comes out fast and runs toward her sister and past her father without even a glance in his direction. She throws herself in Ayanna’s arms, and over their heads, I can see Leandro standing by his car. He watches his daughters cling to each other on a road he no longer controls, and whatever calculation runs behind his eyes, he keeps it locked behind a face that gives nothing away. Then he gets in the car; the sound of the door closing echoes through the air. The convoy reverses, and three sets of taillights disappear around the bend in the coast road.

I turn to Tassilo. “Follow them. Eyes on the convoy until it reaches the airfield. Confirm departure. I want to know the second his wheels leave Norwegian soil.”

Tassilo nods and disappears. The man is a ghost with a gun. I’ve never had to tell him anything twice.

I put my hand on Ayanna’s back. She lifts her head from Naomi’s hair and looks at me.

“Let’s go home.”

Vidar is stable when we reach the house. Kirill’s man has him settled—oxygen and monitors. Eero is pale-faced beside the bed, refusing to leave it. I stand in the doorway for a moment and feel nothing.

Not relief. Not concern. Not the complicated tangle of resentment and obligation that usually accompanies any thought of my father. Just nothing. A blank space where a feeling should be, as though he’d spent my entire childhood burning through every emotion I was ever capable of feeling for him.

Eero lifts his head. His eyes are red. He looks at me the way he’s been looking at me since the ballroom, like I’m a version of his brother he hasn’t met before and isn’t sure how to approach.

“Is Ayanna back?”

“She’s back.”

Something loosens in his face. Then tightens again. “And Naomi?”

I nod.