She’s not getting away from me that easily. My monster won’t let her. I won’t let her.
Fuck the safe word. We’re not playing a game anymore. This is real. This is for keeps.
She’s not at her old apartment when I check. I slip a few hundred bucks to the doorman, and he confirms he hasn’t seen her in weeks.
She could be at Vito’s place, or with any of her brothers. But going to those places asking if they’ve seen her is going to raise questions I can’t answer yet. Questions I don’t have the time or patience to answer.
So I try the Mercury Opera House. But when I slip into my usual spot behind the curtains in the private box, my heart sinks. I see her friends, Naomi and Milena. I even spot the two bitches who left her in that alley that night.
No Bianca.
That’s when my skin starts crawling with a nervous, dangerous energy.
Something’s wrong if she’s not here. I know how much dance means to her. I know from her own mouth that she’s literally only ever taken three days off in eighteen years of ballet.
Even with everything that’s just happened, she wouldn’t not be here. Dance is her therapy.
Still, I wait until the bitter end, hoping for Bianca to stumble in late with an apology.
She never comes.
My nervous energy turns to full blown panic as I sit in the darkened box. The stage is empty now, but I’m still glaring down at it, as if I might finally see her pirouette onto the stage.
Eventually, I head down. I poke my head into the dressing room; by now, the other dancers have changed and left. I open a few of the lockers, until I know the one I’ve come to is hers.
It smells like her. The scent makes something in my chest tighten.
Inside, there’s a picture of the two of us, from our wedding no less, tacked to the back wall. It’d be easy to roll my eyes at the memory of the utterly staged shot taken by the photographer no one asked Ya-ya to hire for the day. But when I pluck it out of her locker and look at it closely, a crooked smile spontaneously splits my lips.
“Kratos?”
Slowly, I turn. When I see who it is, my mouth twists angrily.
Alicia Houghton flashes me a weak smile from the doorway of the dressing room. “I know you don’t like me,” she says quietly, her hands twisting in front of her. “But I… I really need to tell you something.”
My brow furrows as I nod. “Yes?”
“You know Grisha Lenkov…?”
“We’ve met,” I growl.
She trembles. “Okay, so, he came over to my apartment last night. We’re broken up, because he’s a complete asshole. But he was drunk and making a scene, so I let him in so he wouldn’t wake up the whole building.”
She chews on her lip nervously.
“He was being a drunk douche, and trying to get me to sleep with him. Eventually, he got a call and stepped into my bathroom to take it. Except, he was drunk, and loud, so I heard…”
Her face pales as she looks up at me.
“He was bragging to someone about how he and ‘the witch’ had taken the ‘Italian princess’, and how they had her now.”
Alarm bells start to ring inside my head.
“I…” she shudders. “I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time. But when I didn’t see Bianca today…”
Oh fuck.
She sucks on her lip, hugging herself and looking genuinely scared. “Kratos… I think Grisha might have Bianca. Like, maybe he took—”
She’s not even done speaking before I’m shoving past her and bolting out the door. I slam open the theater door and race to my car. Just as I get to it, my phone rings with an unknown number.
My blood chills, my jaw setting as I answer it.
“Hello, Kratos.”
The alarm bells in my head turn into an air raid siren when I hear Amaya’s smug voice.
“I have something of yours,” she purrs.
Red swims through my vision.
“I’m going to kill you,” I hiss.
Amaya laughs coldly. “How about instead we make a trade.”
My blood roars in my ears.
“You bring me Drazen Krylov, I give you your little plaything.”
