Page 91 of His Son's Ex

Losing her is not an option.

CHAPTER 29

DANTE

“Sir.”

The guard snaps me out of the seething and immobilizing anger threatening to take over.

He’s standing rigid under the weight of my glare. “I did some digging on the woman Eva was with the other day. Her friend, Halsey.”

I stand in the security room—a repurposed office tucked away on the mansion’s ground floor—staring at the bank of monitors like they might cough up Eva’s location on the spot. They don’t, of course. The only images we have are from our own estate’s cameras, showing empty hallways and late-night staff from two nights ago, right around the time she snuck out.

I narrow my eyes. “And?”

“She works in media. I pulled her address, figured it might give us a lead. Then I found CCTV footage from outside of a storefront near Halsey’s place.”

“Play it,” I order.

He opens his tablet and pulls up the footage, grainy, low-res street cam, but it’s clearly Eva. Hoodie pulled low, duffel slung over her shoulder. My chest tightens at the sight of her.

“That’s her walking toward the subway entrance near Halsey’s building. Timestamp checks out,” the guard says, tapping the screen.

I move closer. “Zoom in.”

He moves through the footage slowly, frame-by-frame. Eva pauses on the sidewalk at one point, talking to a man. His face is partially obscured. My jaw clenches.

“Stop. Who the hell is that?”

“Still working on an ID,” he says. “Could be useful, could be nothing.”

I sigh heavily. “So she was meeting someone.”

“Or someone met her. After she left, I ran a trace on her phone. It pinged briefly near Halsey’s building, then nothing. Halsey appears to be out of town.”

I go still. “You’re telling me that Eva’s gone dark and there’s no sign of this Halsey?”

“Yes, sir. So far, no sign of either one of them since the footage.”

I stare at the screen, the frozen image of Eva burning into my vision. Something isn’t adding up. “Play it again.”

A man steps into the frame. He’s tall and broad, wearing a long coat with the collar up. He brushes past her, but I notice the smallest sleight of hand. Eva pauses after he walks past, her hand slipping into her pocket.

“Back it up,” I order.

He rewinds the footage, slowing it down.

“There,” I say, pointing. “See that? He dropped something into her pocket. That’s not just some stranger.”

“Exactly what I thought,” the guard agrees as he freezes the footage. “I couldn’t get facial recognition to lock in on him. The shadows are too heavy.”

I stare at the image, heart pounding. The posture. The profile of his face. The squared shoulders.

Suddenly it clicks.

Felix Sokolov.

A name I haven’t heard in years. Yuri Petrov’s closest friend. The man who vanished right after the Petrovs were wiped out.