Page 227 of Merciless Daddy

Gianni had taken Yelena without leaving a trail I could use.

The townhouse was too quiet. Not peaceful, but empty.

Guards moved through the front hall in pairs. Phones rang behind closed doors. The operations room had become a place of low voices and screens full of maps.

But the kitchen was still. I stopped in the doorway, and looked at the blue bowl sat beside the stove.

White waves around the rim. The small flaw in the glaze.

My future kitchen, she had said.

Maybe our future kitchen.

I put one hand on the counter because suddenly I could not trust my legs.

Serafina needed me upstairs. Pietro had sent three messages. Tonio wanted orders. The entire city was moving because Yelena was gone.

Still, I stood in that kitchen and spent precious moments looking at a fucking bowl.

Then I went upstairs.

Her side of the bed remained disturbed from the morning. A pillow dented where her head had rested. One of her hair ties lay on the floor near the nightstand.

The firebird notebook sat beside the bed. I knew I should not open it.

It was hers. Her private place for wants. I had promised not to turn every small thing she gave me into something I owned.

But she was gone.

My hands opened it anyway.

The first line was the one she had shown me.

I want another date.

The second came several pages later.

I want a home with you.

After that, nothing. Blank pages. Dozens of them. A book of opportunity, of the future. Snatched away from us.

I sat on the floor beside the bed with the notebook in both hands.

Blank pages waiting for her life.

A kitchen. A room for coloring. A city near water. Another date. A home.

I had promised her that fear would never make her face surrender alone. I had written it into our agreement. I had looked into her eyes and told her she only needed to tell me when she began believing self-destruction was strategy.

She had trusted me.

Then I had put her in a legal suite because it was the right move. I had allowed her to enter that room because I respected her choice. I had accepted twenty feet and one closed door because the law required the appearance of independence. Gianni had turned that respect into the opening he needed.

I called her phone and it went straight to voicemail. I wasn’t ready to hear her voice, but I couldn’t hang up.

She was soft and clipped.

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