Page 44 of Ice & Steel

He rose quicker than I’d anticipated and rapped his knuckles on the table. I whipped around with my hands tight on the arms of my chair.

“Wait—what do you want from him? I can give you whatever it is.”

He looked down at me like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe. “I want to strip everything from him that should have been mine. I want him to disappear, to be nothing. I would kill him, but I know that fading into obscurity is a far greater punishment for sick men like your husband. Then I will take everything he has and watch him slink away like a beaten dog.”

I reared back. Stunned by the vitriol in his voice.

The silent woman appeared, flanked by another man. Rage flooded my chest and I lurched forward, but Riccardo stepped back and I was seized from behind. My arms were pinned at my sides and I was ushered into the hall. Riccardo swerved past me, not bothering to look back, and disappeared into the darkness.

Leaving me to bite back my tears as they hauled me upstairs and chained me to the bed.

Alone, I let all my fear overflow. No one heard my cries but the empty walls.

They echoed them back.

The broken cries of a mother torn from her children.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

LUCIEN

The cold stone dug into my back, but I was too numb to feel anything. On my chest was a raw, seared patch where the skin had been flayed from me. Tender, oozing water, and pumping with my heartbeat. Overhead, the ceiling was completely black except a single dot of light where the concrete crumbled between bricks.

I’d watched it for days. Locked in my own personal hell.

Naked, burned, skinned, slowly dying beneath the ground. But never, ever willing to bend the knee because I had nothing to lose.

My nightmare broke.

I woke with a start, my neck crying out in protest. I’d fallen asleep in an armchair in Hugo and Marco’s room at the safehouse. It was past midnight and my older sons were in bed a few feet away. After Officer Randall declared the house a crime scene and taped everything off, Enza arrived and took the boys to our safehouse on the other side of the river, outside the city.

I’d spent the entire day with my soldiers and Officer Randall’s men. Combing the city, questioning everyone who might know anything, making contact with anyone who could help including Viktor.

Then night fell and I knew my sons were waiting for me at the safehouse with Enza and Iris. I managed to keep it together long enough to calm them, to bathe them, and put them in clean pajamas and tuck them into bed.

“Dad,” Marco whispered. “Promise you’ll find mom?”

I sank to my knees beside the bed, my hands tangled in his blankets so tightly my knuckles were white. I had to keep it together and hide my emotions. I couldn’t let him see how fucking terrified I was without Olivia.

I brushed his dark hair back, hair the color of my wife’s.

“I swear, son.”

He lifted his hand, fisted with his pinky finger out.

“Pinky promise, dad?” he whispered.

I stared, confused. “What?”

“It’s what mom does,” he said. “You can’t break a pinky promise.”

My chest clenched and a tremor moved through my jaw. I reached out and he curled his little finger around mine.

“Now you say you pinky promise you’ll get her back,” he ordered.

I opened my mouth, but my voice wasn’t working. Taking a beat, I dropped my head and cleared my throat. He watched me critically, desperate for assurance.

“I pinky promise I will get your mother back,” I said. “You have my word.”