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Hours passed like days as I waited for any news from Josef about a possible location based on the picture Kuzmin sent me. The rage from my helplessness was destroying me, shredding every nerve. I couldn’t sit still, but had nowhere to go. All my focus was on thoughts of finding Olivia, terror at what she might have been going through, making it hard to breathe.

If Rurik laid another finger on her, he’d never know another moment without pain. When I caught up to him, I fully meant to end him once and for all, but it wasn’t going to be quick or easy for that scumbag.

If I caught up to him. Because it had been fucking hours, and there was still no word. I barely noticed the growl I let out as I stormed from one side of the library to the other, where we’d set up a base. I had three of my security team who understood the intricacies of tracing data, and they were keeping tabs with Josef, who worked in LA.

“Why haven’t we heard anything?” I shouted, slamming my hand onto the nearest table. A cup of pens rattled, and several petals fell off of the flower arrangement in the middle. Olivia had put that there.

Every morning, she went around the garden that was flourishing in part to her hard work, and picked bunches of fragrant blooms to brighten up the house. Seeing the petals flutter down to lie in sad little piles nearly wrenched my heart out of my chest.

What if…

“Calm down,” Ivan said, shocked at the rising level of my anger. His tone was anything but calming, since he was upset himself.

As of now, we believed that Zoey was in danger as well, and that both women had been snagged off the street. Maybe they thought Olivia’s guard had just dozed off and took advantage of a rare moment to do something silly and innocent without supervision, never suspecting that someone had drugged him. Andre was beating himself up about it, and since he was one of the guys who was good with computers, he was hunched over a screen, tapping wildly at a keyboard.

I wanted to believe I could trust him, Josef, or any of the men who had worked for me for so long, but why was it taking so long to find anything out? All I could do was speculate. About what was happening to Olivia, about who was on my side. It was driving me insane.

My phone sat on a desk, wired up to recording devices, and it went off, set at the highest volume so we wouldn’t miss a thing. I was next to it in a shot, waiting to see what came through. Ivan hovered over my shoulder, swallowing audibly with nerves. He had it bad for Zoey. Maybe he wouldn’t admit it when I was so distraught over Olivia, but he was on edge and probably kicking himself for being so friendly to her in the first place.

That was a danger in our line of business. Anyone we cared about could become a target.

“It’s a video,” I said. My voice sounded strange to my ears, like it was coming from down a long hallway.

“Don’t watch it,” Ivan said. “It’s already being forwarded to Josef. Just let him do his job.”

Yeah, like I could do that. “What if he’s finally making his demands?”

I clicked play, and the same scene as the picture filled the small screen. The tacky bedspread, the bare walls, the plain headboard. And my wife, with such terror in her eyes that I nearly crushed the phone. She was still tied up, but sitting, and the champ that she was, she was telling whoever was filming her to basically fuck off. That I’d hunt him to the ends of the earth and rip his throat out.

“She’s right about that,” I said.

But then the person behind the camera spoke, and there was no longer any doubt that it was Kuzmin. Ivan hissed from behind me, also recognizing our rival’s voice. He taunted Olivia, threatened her until she screamed. Then the phone dropped, and I could only see a tilted view of the cracked ceiling. But I could still hear my wife struggling, gasping for breath while Kuzmin grunted with rage, and then it was quiet. The video ended a few seconds later with a palm covering the screen.

A rumble like a freight train barreling down the tracks rose from my throat. My hand shook as my muscles tightened, every fiber in my body ready to strike. And no target. No fucking clue where she was. If he hadn’t just ended her right then and there. I might never see her again or tell her how I felt. That I damn well loved her, and she was the most important thing in my life. She was my whole life. If she was gone, then I was done.

“She’s fine. She’s okay,” Ivan said, desperate to keep me from losing it. “He’s not that stupid.”

Stupid, no, but he despised me. He thought he had good reason, and finally had his chance to break me. Hatred that deep could easily override any sense the man had.

“I’ve got something,” Andre said, jumping up and pointing to his screen. “Call Josef and verify, but I think I’ve got a location.”

Before I could press the contact on my phone, it rang, and Josef quickly verified he’d also located where they were, based on the video file he just analyzed.

“Dumb asshole was in such a hurry to show off, he didn’t wipe his data,” Josef crowed.

I ended the call as a map loaded on Andre’s screen, no time to express any gratitude. I’d thank my extreme computer experts for their ultimate nerd skills later, when my wife was safe.

I didn’t have to ask Ivan if he was coming with me; he was already grabbing every gun he could get his hands on and ready to roll by the time I had the location info transferred to my phone. Within minutes, we were on the way, with Ivan driving at top speed while I desperately clung to hope that we weren’t too late.

“She’ll be fine,” he said, eyes glued to the road. “They’ll both be fine.”

He had to be right. He fucking had to be.