Selene screams. “Arron, Solenne!” But there is no answer.
I follow the blood in a hurry and find a security guard dead in a larger pool of blood. He was trying to reach his backup walkie-talkie after they attacked him and left him to bleed out.
Selene is already running towards the twins’ rooms, and I scream for her to stop.
What if… she doesn’t need to see that… if Alek…
I run too. The fear is worse than anything I have ever experienced in my life.
We find two more guards, both dead.
“Raya!” I shout into the house.
The silence is deafening.
The twins’ room is a mess. There are toys everywhere. The table and chairs I got them has been kicked over or thrown. There is blood on the blankets. Not a lot, but enough to worry me.
And the twins are nowhere to be seen.
“Raya!” I shout, running from the room, leaving Selene on her knees, sobbing as she clutches Arron’s spaceman toy.
The rest of the penthouse is empty. Three dead security guards, no Raya, no twins.
My other security team bursts through the doors into the living room.
“They’ve taken Raya and the children,” I inform them with a deadly coldness in my voice. “Leave right now and track them. Track anything. Find the video footage.Find my children!”
The men turn and leave just as quickly as they had arrived.
I walk back to the twins’ bedroom and scoop Selene into my arms.
“There’s so much blood,” she murmurs, her body shaking. “We should never have left them; I should never have left them.”
“It’s not their blood. The blood is from the security guards. It’s not theirs.”
“You don’t know that!” she screams at me.
“Selene!” I take her by her shoulders and shake her. “Our children are no use to your father if they are hurt. He needs them to bargain with. He isn’t going to hurt them.”
“You don’t know what he’s capable of.” She collapses against me, and I wrap my arms tightly around her.
***
It’s been twelve hours since our children were taken. We haven’t slept. We haven’t stopped looking. Matvei and his team have been canvassing the city. My other brothers are out there looking, too. Adrian is here with me, going through every security feed we can find from every camera in the city.
A team is in the penthouse doing a clean-up downstairs, and Selene and I are upstairs in the library with Adrian.
“How the fuck did you let this happen?” Matvei’s voice comes from the doorway, and we all spin in fright.
Matvei is furious. “Did you find anything?” I ask, ignoring his question.
“You went to a meetup?” he snaps. “You had a meetup with a massive rival of ours, and you didn’t think to tell any one of your brothers?” he snarls, slamming his fists against the wall.
“You think I don’t fucking know this is a bad situation!” I yell back at him, exhausted and stressed.
“How the fuck did you not tell us?” he snaps, turning to glare at me.
I clench my jaw, close my eyes, and try to breathe. I didn’t tell him because I wanted to protect Selene. I thought I was making the right choice.
