Page 136

“It’s probably the pendant,” Sienna said, stepping closer. Selina tried to remove it with trembling fingers, when she couldn’t, I did it for her.

“It was my mother’s ; it’s precious,” she told me, glancing over her shoulder. I nodded, carefully placing the pendant into the inside pocket of my jacket.

Tarik ran the detector over her neck again, and it emitted the same sharp beep. Selina gasped.

“Damn it,” Tarik muttered, stepping back as my wife brought her hand to her neck, turning toward me with tearful eyes.

“He tagged me like an animal ?” she whispered, her lips quivering. In her white dress, she looked like an angel fallen from the sky.

My fingers tingled as I reached for her delicate face.

“I… I don’t even know when he did this. What else has he done to me without my knowledge ? And Rafael ? Oh my God !”

“Hey, hey, calm down,solnyshko, calm down,” I tried to soothe her, though I knew she was probably right. Sonia had mentioned Alia watching two points on the tablet. The other point had to be Rafael.

That son of a bitch.

That damn son of a bitch.

“We need to remove those trackers. They might have microphones, or even devices that could harm you,” Sasha said, placing a comforting hand on Sienna’s shoulder as she quickly wiped away her tears.

“I’ll call our doctor right now,” Elif said, rushing inside with Grigori following closely behind.

I held my trembling wife against me, “it’ll be okay, Selina. Everything will be fine.”

Everything would be fine as soon as I cut the breath out of that bastard. And I would—tonight.

Then I’d come back to my wife for our wedding night.

Chapter thirty-six

Selina

Two.

They removed two trackers from me—one in my neck and another from the sole of my left foot. And a third from Rafael’s right armpit.

Yes, he had tagged my baby, and I didn’t know when or how.

He must have drugged us, knocked us out, touched our bodies without my knowledge. What else might he have done to me ? How many times ?

“Mom, why did Rafael get another shot ?” Andrei asked from his bed in our house in California.

We had returned that morning, right after the doctor assured Nikolai we had both recovered from the minor surgeries.

I didn’t want to stay in a place Antonio already knew. I placed the bedtime story I had just read to the boys on the table and froze, staring at my three little ones nestled in bed, looking up at me.

Rafael didn’t really understand why he needed local anesthesia for the procedure. He hadn’t noticed anything—Roman had distracted him with a game while I cried silently the entire time, held tightly by Nikolai, who never left my side.

“Uh… it’s… his last vaccine didn’t work. His body is so strong that it rejected it, so we had to do it again,” I lied, clenching my fists as their wide eyes fixed on me.

“Wow ! You’re so strong !” Andrei exclaimed, hugging Rafael, while Alexei nodded and patted his back, making me smile despite myself.

“If you want to get stronger, you need to sleep now,” I told them, kissing each of their cheeks before pulling the blanket up to their chins.

They giggled beneath the covers.

“Goodnight, my angels.”