Page 49 of Punish Me, Daddy (Boston Kings #8)

N ikolai

Standing in front of the full-length mirror in the groom’s suite, the cuffs of my shirt open, gold cufflinks resting against my palm, I took a deep breath.

I was going to marry the love of my life today.

The light from the tall windows slanted in across the dark polished floor, hitting the edge of the decanter someone had brought in earlier, a gift from an old contact in St. Petersburg.

I hadn’t touched it. Too much noise in my head.

Too much weight in my chest. She was just two floors above me, maybe thirty yards away, maybe less. And still, it wasn’t close enough.

I wanted her in my arms, and in my bed.

I slid the first cufflink through the hole, then the second. My fingers moved with the kind of calm I’d built over a lifetime of needing to be still when I wanted to explode. The silence pressed against me like a held breath.

Then my phone buzzed.

Once.

Then again.

Then a third time.

I pulled the phone from my pocket, thumb already unlocking the screen. There was a text from Ivan. I expected a logistics update, a timing shift, maybe a press team panic or a warning about an uninvited guest. Something normal. Something I could control.

I saw a series of texts that made everything in my chest go still.

Ivan: She’s not in the bridal suite. One of the florists took her out to ‘approve a boutonniere.’

We just checked the footage.

She didn’t come back.

For a moment, the words didn’t register. They just sat there on the screen, blunt and clinical. The cufflink slipped from my fingers and clinked against the floor, rolling under the table. I didn’t move to retrieve it.

I didn’t think. I didn’t speak. I just walked out of the room. Into the hallway. Past the security positioned at my door who rose as soon as they saw me, one with a phone to his ear, the other already reaching for his earpiece.

“Sir—”

I didn’t hear the rest.

There was only silence.

That specific kind of silence I knew too well. The kind that was so deep, it sounded like rushing water in your ears. The kind I’d felt once, when the call came through from Moscow telling me my parents’ car had exploded and my mother was blown into pieces too small to bury.

That kind of silence.

Only this time, it wasn’t the woman who raised me, it was the woman I was going to marry.

My bride.

My wife.

She was gone.

When I stepped into the security corridor, the door slammed back against the wall, and I saw Ivan first, already mid-conversation, tablet in one hand, the other pressed to his headset as he scanned footage frame by frame.

Maxim was beside him, arms crossed, his face like stone, unmoving.

Sergei was standing next to them, suited, well-armed, and silent.

Aleksei paced near the monitors, jacket half-on, mouth a grim line.

I didn’t stop walking until I was in the center of the room.

“Tell me how this happened,” I said, voice flat. No heat, just cold steel.

Ivan answered me immediately. His fingers moved, swiping across the footage as he narrated.

“Camera two on the bridal suite hallway was cut from the inside. Whoever did it knew what they were doing, timed it perfectly, slipped into the vendor queue during a staff rotation. No flags on initial entry, but we caught her again on the east garden cam. It’s a low angle, but wide enough.

An unregistered florist. She walked Sloane out the side doors. Sloane followed.”

I didn’t breathe. My heart thundered behind my ribs and my pulse was loud in my ears.

“They stepped outside the frame. Eight seconds later, a black van pulled out onto the service drive. No plates. No marks.”

“How long ago?” Maxim asked under his breath.

“Seventeen minutes,” Ivan replied. “We caught it ten minutes late. By now, they’ve got a lead.”

My hands curled into fists.

“Too long.”

“I know,” Ivan said, meeting my gaze without flinching. “We’re already working it.”

Maxim’s voice was low, gravel and fire. “There’s only one person this could be, and that’s Stillwell.”

Ivan nodded once, eyes still on the surveillance feed. “He’s the only one with the motive, the reach, and the money to pull this off. This screams organized. This isn’t a cartel hit.”

Aleksei crossed his arms. “This could be retaliation for the sting that’s already in motion.”

“He took her,” I said. “Or he paid someone to do it.”

This wasn’t some opportunist. This wasn’t a power move by a rival family or a cartel looking to make noise.

This was a message, sent by a man too arrogant to understand who the fuck he was playing with.

They took what was mine.

And they had no idea what that would cost them.

I looked at each one of my brothers in turn. We’d survived blood and war and countries that chewed men up and spit out their bones. We’d burned our way into Boston and carved a throne out of glass and blood.

But this was personal.

“Run every street feed within twenty blocks. Check traffic cams. Burner signals. I want thermal imaging, drone sweeps, noise pings. I want to know everything,” I said, my voice hard.

I turned to Maxim.

“Flush every contact tied to Stillwell. Every backroom deal. Every shady shell corp. Every suspicious phone call. We find where he’s hiding his dirt and put him down. For good.”

“I’ll dig up everything there is to dig up,” Maxim confirmed with a nod.

Sergei looked at me without blinking. “And when we find him?”

I stared at him. The answer was already on my lips.

“Stillwell dies.”

Maxim slowly stepped forward then, the way he always moved when something dangerous had taken root behind his eyes.

“If we kill him,” he warned, “we start a war we’re not prepared to fight. It’ll be political, not a street war. He’s still protected. He’s still clean in the press. If we pull him down wrong, we look like the criminals they’ve always said we are.”

I nodded once. I understood what he was getting at, but I didn’t fucking care.

I was going to kill him with my own bare hands.

Sergei met my eyes, understanding flashing in his own.

Aleksei leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, his usual smirk replaced with a mean scowl. “We don’t just need a body. We need a story. A scandal. Something the public can eat up when his body eventually gets found.”

Ivan cleared his throat. “Look, this is how we spin it: Kingsley’s daughter. Your soon-to-be wife. Kidnapped by Stillwell’s people to cover up a trafficking ring of underage girls. That’s not a scandal. That’s a funeral.”

The room went still again. It was the kind of silence you only hear right before something detonates.

I let it wrap around me. Let it settle into my deep into my bones. And then I spoke.

“She’s not leverage,” I said. “She’s not a pawn or a plot device in a headline. She’s mine. ”

“I know,” Ivan replied, his fingers moving faster. “We’ll find her.”

“We don’t stop until we do.”

My hand went inside my jacket and squeezed tight around the gun holstered at my side.

Maxim looked at me, not like a brother, but like a man standing beside a king preparing to burn his kingdom down.

“And when we get her back?” he asked.

I didn’t blink.

“ When we get her back,” I said, “I’m going to marry her. In front of everyone. And then I’m going to kill the man who took her.”

A beat of silence.

Then Aleksei said, “That’s one hell of a wedding reception.”