Page 234 of Mile High Ruin

No matter what she knows. No matter where Mila is. No matter what Petrov has made her. No matter whose child it is.

I hear Sloane’s voice again, small and broken in the hospital corridor. How easy would it be to kill me?

I gave her cruelty because it was easier than giving her the truth. Now Petrov has her, and the truth is the only thing left standing.

“Yes,” I say. “No matter what.”

Anton holds my gaze for a moment. Then he nods once.

Not agreement. Acceptance.

I turn away from all of them because I’m finished listening to men explain Sloane Mercer to me as though she’s a weakness I have failed to identify.

I know what she is. That has never been the problem.

“Do we have a lead on where he took her?” I ask.

Anton already has his phone in his hand. “Yes,” he says. My attention snaps to him. “We have eyes on her.”

The words enter me like oxygen after drowning. “How?”

“Tracker in the car.”

For the first time since the garage exit swallowed her, the rage has somewhere to go. “Why are we wasting time?”

“Cars are ready.”

“Then move.”

The first car is already waiting when I reach it. Anton gets into the front without another word, and I slide into the back seat while Marek takes the other side, his jaw still tight from our earlier conversation. I know he disapproves; he probably didn’t understand the depth of my feelings for Sloane—no one did, least of all me—but now it’s all out in the open. For one moment, I feel almost relieved. But even then, I know he would never go against me.

Outside, men move quickly around the other cars, voices low, engines starting one after another until the hospital garage fills with that restrained, predatory rhythm I know better than any prayer.

Anton turns slightly from the passenger seat. “Tracker is still moving east.”

“How far?”

“Three minutes ahead if traffic holds.”

The driver pulls out hard enough that the tires complain against the concrete, and as we climb toward the street, I look down at my hands and realize they are steady.

I gave the feeling other names because they were easier to survive. Suspicion. Possession. Obsession. Anger. I stood outside her apartment and called it surveillance, watched her enter hospitals and cafés and pharmacies and told myself I was studying a target rather than starving for one glimpse of a woman who had carved herself so deeply into me that even betrayal could not remove her.

It’s almost amusing now, how much effort I wasted lying to myself.

I love Sloane Mercer.

I love her when she looks at me as if I’m the worst thing that ever happened to her. I love her when she cries and still refuses to bend. I love her with all I have in me.

The world tries to seep in, poison me slowly as it has done since the moment I took over from my father. I crush it.

Whoever she claims belongs to that child, Sloane leaves with me.

That’s the only truth I can afford.

Marek looks at me from the corner of his eye, but wisely decides not to speak.

Anton checks his phone again. “They’re turning off the main road.”