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“Contessa’s gone. If she wasn’t locked in her room, then she’s gone.”
He says it like it’s the simplest math problem in the world: I let a prisoner wander free, and the prisoner escaped. It sounds so goddamn simple, like anyone could have predicted it.
But Contessa wasn’t just a prisoner, was she?
The truth circles me as if looking for a moment to strike, to take me out at the knees and buckle all of my strength. All her gentle looks and reassuring smiles. Her engagement ring on her finger. Her body pressed against mine, full of delicate trust. Did Tessa play me, just long enough? Has she been planning it all along? Did she sit on my lap, soaking up all my secrets like a sponge, just to slip off into the night? Or did she only decide last night, handing back her ring, that I was not what she wanted?
Shame tightens in the back of my throat.
I played right into her hand. Ate up those first scraps of affection like a starving man, just because I’d never tasted it before.
Betrayal happens in this business. You learn to anticipate it, to guard against it. I’ve never taken it personally. But this—this is more personal than anything I’ve ever felt in my life. A blade across the jugular, no way to stop the bleeding.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“How did she convince you to let her out of her room?” Marcel asks, still bewildered.
When I don’t answer, he finally sees to the heart it. His expression breaks. “Well, fuck,” he breathes, running his hand through his hair, “You cared about her.”
“No,” I say immediately, denying it like a reflex. “I just—I didn’t think she could get out.”
Neither one of us buys into that lie, but he doesn’t press me on it.
“What do we do now?” he asks instead.
As if that’s even a question.
I almost laugh. The man thinks so highly of me, as if I am not the simplest, most selfish creature in the world.
It doesn’t matter how Tessa escaped. Not really. The solution is the same, no matter the equation.
“I take her back.”
The dread quietly washes over his face, darkening his expression. I am already on thin ice with the family. Losing Contessa Lovera and going on the full offensive to get her back—it’s the kind of move that makes you end up with two to the back of the head, your death ruled a suicide.
If it goes poorly, I will have a slab down there in the freezer, right next to Vinny, as they wait to figure out how to bury me without too many questions being asked.
I don’t care.
Contessa will never be the woman I deluded myself into wanting—but goddammit, she’ll still be mine. If it takes this house. If it takes every dollar I have to my name. If I takes blood or tears, I’ll spill them all; I don’t give a damn whose they are.
Contessa will never be free of me. She belongs to me and me alone.
And this time, she will never forget it.
***
Two days crawl by. My temper is a short fuse, and I am suspicious of everyone and everything. I feel Tessa’s absence in every long afternoon, in every restless night. I interrogate members of my own family. No one is exempt.
I tear people from their posts, switch up security, and revoke weapon clearances and salaries. The ranks shift fast, promotions and demotions knocking along like dominos, a ripple effect felt through every rank. They were supposed to be watching that night—they should have never let this happen.
Near midnight, there is an update on one of Tessa’s pages.
In the picture, she smiles in the arms of a man I’ve never seen before. I try to read the caption, but my eyes keep wandering to his face—his smug fucking smirk, and the genuine joy in her expression as she beams at the camera.
She never looked at me like that. I would have remembered it. Would have carried that look inside me for the rest of my life.
The caption draws my gaze and my ire: ‘From friend to fiancé. Happy to be home from our last #adventure before we settle down for good!’
