Then the darkness takes me.
The last thing I hear is Livy screaming.
And somewhere beyond her, far away on the road, Stefano makes a broken sound.
Alive.
He’s alive.
He saw who this was. He knows who it is.
Please, God.
Let him live. Let him find a way to tell Maverick.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Maverick
They should have been back an hour ago.
Stefano said they were on their way and would be home in twenty minutes.
That was seventy-three minutes ago.
I know because I’ve checked the time every thirty seconds since.
“Can you track them from your phone?” Foster asks over the phone. “I’m at your gate. Tell them to let me in.”
I nod at Luca, and he immediately makes the call.
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “I never asked Amelia to turn on her tracking for me.”
The words taste like failure.
There are a thousand ways I could have protected her. A thousand pieces of technology I could have placed in her phone, her car, her purse. Hell, I could have assigned three men to follow her shadow without her ever noticing.
I did none of those things.
Because I wanted her to feel safe with me, not owned by me.
Because I looked at the woman I love and decided that trust mattered.
And it does. But it wasn’t enough.
Now she’s gone.
Olivia is gone.
Stefano is gone.
And the only thing standing between me and losing my mind is the thin possibility that there is a harmless explanation.
A flat tire.
A dead phone. Two dead phones.
An animal emergency that took longer than expected.
