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“I remember,” he says.
“You needed a lead. I gave it to you. And also gave you my men. I didn’t blink. I made it happen.”
“I know.”
“Well, I’m calling those in,” Thiago says, voice trembling in a way that makes my stomach twist. “The favor. I need someone who can find a ghost in a hurricane. I know you and your men will.”
“We’ll handle it.”
“Thank you.” He says, and the line goes dead.
Viktor stands there for a moment, still holding the phone, staring at the floor like he’s trying to will it into giving him some information.
Then he turns to us.
Lev is already moving, fingers flying over his phone, murmuring commands into the receiver. “I want every scrap of airport surveillance from JFK. Start with the international arrivals from yesterday evening. Consult anyone with eyes on the ground, tap in. Now.”
I don’t move.
I just… stand there. Frozen. Breathing through clenched teeth. The room feels colder now, like someone cracked a window I can’t see.
After what feels like ages, I speak for the first time, my voice low and cold. “She has a son?”
My throat burns just saying it.
Viktor’s mouth tightens. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “And I’m as shocked as you two.”
They may be shocked, but I am beyond shock. My mind has already spiraled off the edge as I suppress the fury and disgust rising in my chest.
She left me in a mess, and while I sat here fighting to survive without her, she was out there starting a family. Loving someone else. Giving someone else what I would’ve died for.
She told me she wanted her freedom, but in reality, she already had another man waiting, waiting for them to start what I would have crawled and begged her to give to me.
I stare past Viktor, my pulse a slow drumbeat of disbelief and something worse.
Jealousy.
Why couldn’t you love me, Mara? Why couldn’t I be enough?
I am the man who would have loved her even if it cost me my soul. The man who almost paid with his sanity as he watched her walk away, letting her go because she asked. I’m the man who still dreams of her voice as if it’s laced into the walls of his goddamn house.
I grit my teeth and force myself to keep breathing. She didn’t even give me a chance. Never gave us space to fight, or fall apart, or even fail.
Part of me wants to move, wants to do something, break something, find someone to hit until the blood convinces me it’s real. But I don’t. I can’t afford to lose control. At least not yet, because I am going to find her and make her tell me why I was never enough.
I look at Viktor. He’s still speaking, I think—something about timelines and securing footage, but I barely register it.
I’m not concerned about the favor Thiago has called in. I’m not worried about the political repercussions of having a mafia princess go missing. Hell, I’m even indifferent to the debt that Thiago thinks the bratva owes him.
However, what I care about is that she’s gone, because I am going to find her and ask her if those nights she moaned my name were all lies.
I need to look her in the eye and ask why I was never enough. Why she disappeared without a word. Why she trusted someone else with her future, her body, her child—everything I would’ve protected with my life.
After all these years, the questions I attempted to drown resurface.
Why not me, Mara? Why not us?
I walk to the window; the glass is cold under my palm, yet I barely feel it because something is burning inside my chest, and I can’t put it out. My fists clench at my sides, knuckles tight with heat. I breathe through my teeth, but it does nothing to calm the pressure rising within my spine.