Page 74 of Thorns of Deceit

I should have known better. Fuck!

“Sir… Sir…” A short, stocky police officer came to stand in front of me, but when I just sidestepped him, he got in my face. “Do you live here, sir?”

“My wife…” Dammit. Two weeks ago, the idea of calling someone my wife was so fucking foreign. “My wife is here. I have to find her.”

“I’m sorry.” He grabbed my arm and yanked me back. His eyes darted behind me. “We might need you to identify… a body.”

Pain pierced through my chest while I stared at the bald spot on his head, the shrill ringing in my ears making it impossible to process his words. The guy was wrong.

Two paramedics carrying a stretcher covered by a white sheet appeared in my peripheral vision and my heart dropped to my feet. A slight tremor started in my limbs and stretched outward.

No, no, no.

It couldn’t fucking be.

I jolted awake, drenched in sweat, moisture burning my eyes.

That was the worst day of my life. I had to identify a charred, burnt-to-unrecognizable body with only one recognizable clue: the wedding ring on the blackened bone of my wife. Or who I thought was my wife.

I reached blindly across the sheets for Raven, but I found nothing but cold linen.

“Raven,” I called, my voice echoing through the Parisian penthouse I hardly ever used. Silence. The kind that pressed down on your chest until breathing hurt. “Raven!” I roared, the word cracking in two.

She fucking left. How dare she leave again?

My world tilted, much like it had that day I found nothing but ashes and charred remains after what investigators concluded was a gas leak or a faulty wiring. Bottom line, it was quite inconclusive.

Such a small thing that had erased an innocent life and started a five-year-long war with Duncan Lyons. The man had blamed us for not alerting him to the presence of his family in New York City sooner. In turn, Uncle Jack held Lyons accountable, claiming he and his men were at fault for having him followed.

And I… I fucking wanted to murder both of them.

She’s alive.

I had so many questions. But first, I had to devise a plan that would ensure Raven could never leave me again.

They said if you loved something, you should set it free. I had no idea who came up with that bullshit, but I disagreed wholeheartedly. If you loved something, you locked it the fuck up in the tallest tower so nobody could touch it or take it away.

And I fully intended to do that with Raven. There’d be no more running, no more disappearing, no more waking up to cold sheets and ghosts.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, grabbed my phone, and dialed my brother. It rang once.

“Yeah?” Kyran’s voice came through, groggy but alert.

“Raven is alive.”

Silence stretched, and then, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m fucking sure,” I gritted out.

“Where are you? What happened to that fashion show Enrico Marchetti was hosting?”

“That’s where I saw her. In the fucking flesh.” I shoved my hand through my hair. “She came to the penthouse with me, but this morning… She fucking left.”

There was a pause. “And you’re sure it’s Raven?”

“For fuck’s sake, Kyran,” I ground out. “I’m sure. We spent the night together.”

I heard a rustle of movement on the other end. “Jesus Christ, whose body was found in the ashes, then?”