The world narrows as I run through scenarios.
“When?” I ask.
“Two hours ago. Maybe a bit more.”
Something cold slides down my spine. I’m already pulling my phone out again before he can finish. Pacing, Quinn answers on the second ring.
“Roman. I was hoping you’d call—” Her voice is syrup-sweet and it makes me want to vomit.
“Is Fae with you?”
The line goes quiet, only my heavy breathing reverberating back to me but just as I go to press her, her voice comes through. It almost sounds like she’s worried… is she worried about Fae? Since when?
“What? No. Why would she be?”
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Quinn. She was meeting you. Where is she?”
“I’m not lying! I waited for her at the café. She never showed.”
The air in my lungs turns to stone.
“You’re sure?” I husk out, my mouth dry as my heart pounds in my chest. My eyes flick to Felix, who is turning ashen.
“Of course I’m sure. I sat there like an idiot for an hour and she didn’t arrive.” I don’t respond to the faint edge of irritation in her tone.
“When did you leave?”
“Ten minutes ago. Why? Is something wrong?”
I ignore that too.
“If she contacts you, you call me immediately.”
“Roman—”
I hang up. The noise in the house collapses into a dull roar, like I’ve been dropped beneath the surface of something dark and heavy. Sound bends. Faces blur. My pulse isn’t racing; it’s hammering, hard and violent, each beat trying to punch its way out of my chest.
Felix is watching me. Atlas too. Victor and Riggs have gone completely still. They can feel it. They can see it in the way my shoulders have locked, in the way my jaw has set too tight.
Something is wrong.
“She never made it,” I say evenly and the calmness in my own voice is so controlled it borders on unnatural.
The girls gasp. The sound scrapes over my nerves. I don’t bare my teeth at them, but it takes effort. It takes restraint not to snap that this is not their concern, not their moment to gasp and whisper and look frightened.
Panic doesn’t explode inside me. It spreads. Fast. Like ink dropped in water. Black veins thread through my bloodstream, turning everything colder. My stomach drops; not a flutter, not nerves, just a sickening plunge like I’ve stepped off a ledge I didn’t see.
No, this isn’t how this goes. She was meant to be furious. She was meant to be screaming at me as I pulled her down the aisle. She was meant to fight me as I confiscated her weapons. She was meant to let me bleed for her. She was not meant to be… missing.
Heat floods my limbs, but it’s not warmth; it’s adrenaline. My body is preparing for something before my brain has fully caught up. Every worst-case scenario slams against the inside of my skull at once. Is she in a ditch from a car crash? Did herFather come for her? Did Fisher? Was it the same person who took Robyn? Is she alive?
God, if she’s dead and our last words were an argument…
Three hours. Three fucking hours and then she could have been mine. The air feels too thin. My chest tightens until breathing becomes painful and forced as it feels like a bear is sat on me.
“Roman,” a hand touches me and my instincts react, grabbing it aggressively before I look into Victor’s wide eyes. “Breathe for me, mate. Breathe.”
She’s been taken.
