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"Lev, Damien," I bark into the phone as soon as the conference call connects, my voice taut as a wire. "Robin's missing."
"What do you mean, missing?" Lev's voice crackles with concern. “I’ll come over right now,” his loyalty to his family is ironclad.
"I mean, she's not here. She's gone, and I don't know where or why!" Frustration roars through me, loud as the blood in my ears.
"Alright, Boris. Don’t lose your head. We'll find her," Damien's calm tone cuts through the chaos. He's the strategist, the thinker. If anyone can help me unravel this knot, it's him.
"Check the cameras, talk to the guards. If there’s anything unusual, I want to know about it," he commands. I pace like a caged animal. My mind races—debt, danger, retribution—it could be anything in our world.
“I’ll do that,” I tell Damien.
“Lev, you call Anoushka and see if she knows anything. She and Robin are pretty close.”
"Understood. I’m on it," Lev confirms, the edge in his voice betraying his own worry.
“Once done, I want you both to come meet me at my house,” Damien orders.
"Thanks, I’ll be there immediately," I end the call, the quiet mocking me. But I'm not alone in this—my brothers are with me, and we will find her.
Family is everything; it's the code we live by, the line we kill for. Robin is family now, whether she believes it or not. And I swear on my parents' graves, I'll move heaven and earth to bring her back to me.
I rush out of the door and round up my guards. None of them know a thing, and no one saw her leave the compound.
Angry, I curse myself for not tightening security around here.
I pace the length of my lawn after speaking with the guards, the dread in my gut twisting tighter with every second that ticks by. My phone feels like a lead weight in my hand as I call Damien and wait for him to pick up.
"Damien," I bark into the receiver the moment it connects, not bothering with pleasantries. "Tell me you've got something. The guards don’t know a thing."
"Keep your shirt on, Boris. I've got our guys combing through every inch of the city. We'll find her," Damien says, his voice a steady drumbeat of assurance over the line.
"Anoushka?" I press, feeling the sharp edge of urgency pressing against my chest.
"Lev's handling it. He's reaching out to her now," he replies, and I can sense the undercurrent of his own concern.
"Good. Call me the second—" The line goes dead before I finish, and my grip on the phone tightens.
Not a minute later, Lev's number flashes on the screen, and I answer it with a growl. "What?"
"Brother, we've got a bigger problem." Lev's tone is grim, and the air feels like it has dropped several degrees.
"Anoushka's missing, too."
"What the fuck?" The words explode from me. "Did anyone see anything?"
"Yeah, her guards. They saw her leaving with Robin. Robin came to her looking all frazzled, and it seems like the girls left in a hell of a rush," he reports, and my heart takes a nosedive.
"Any idea where they were headed?" I'm already moving, snatching my keys off the table.
"None. Anoushka didn’t take her bodyguards or her driver. This smells like trouble, Boris. The kind that doesn't end with a slap on the wrist," Lev warns, but I'm already halfway inside my car.
"Stay close to your phone. We're not letting them vanish into thin air. Meet me at Damien’s right now," I say, my voice steel-hard as I speed into the Philadelphia night.
"Family first," Lev affirms, then hangs up.
Robin and Anoushka are out there somewhere, possibly in danger because of our world. And I'll be damned if I let anything happen to them on my watch.
***
