Every second stretches into an eternity of pure, soul-crushing terror—the fear that the man I love more thananything is gone, or worse, trapped and suffering in ways I can’t even imagine. My heart is a wild, frantic thing trying to claw its way out of my chest.Please. Please let him be alive.
"We think she has him," Andrei states. "Inside the estate. There hasn’t been movement that suggests otherwise.”
The room tips violently. I put my hand flat on the kitchen counter, and I breathe. But it’s not enough.
The panic rises anyway, hot and choking, flooding every inch of me until I feel like I’m drowning.
Valeria has him. She’s had him all this time.
Three weeks of me on a bench by a moat watching swans and counting days and telling myself the flowers not coming was logistics, was Japan, was nothing to read into—and the whole time she has had him in that estate. She killed Mary and she kept him and she built a story around his disappearance that gives everyone a reason not to look.
I look at Ian, tears silently running down my face, my whole body trembling with the force of it all.
His hands are on the counter closed into fists and his knuckles are white and he is doing the thing I have watched him do for twenty-five days—holding it together, compressing it, keeping it behind glass—but the glass has a crack in it now that wasn't there before, running edge to edge. His eyes are wet. His jaw is locked so tight it looks painful.
"Ian," I say, my voice breaking on his name like fragile glass under too much pressure.
He looks at me, and I choke on a sob because his expression is one I’ve never seen before. It’s not the controlled mask he’s so good at wearing. This is raw,exposed, devastating—the face of a man who has just watched his entire world fracture and is trying, with everything left in him, not to shatter along with it. There’s fury there in his eyes—cold, lethal, barely leashed—but underneath it is something far worse. The knowing that something fundamentally destructive had just taken shape. That he no longer holds on to the certainty that Reth is okay.
"We're going to get him," he says.
But the words don’t land. They can’t. Because suddenly the full weight of it crashes over me like a tidal wave—Valeria has him. My mind spirals, dark and vicious, flashing images I can’t stop: Reth, broken, paint cracking on his face, blood on his hands, Valeria whispering in his ear.
Has she finally done it?
Has she finally broken the last good piece of him? Is the man who held me like I was his salvation gone forever, replaced by the painted killer she always wanted him to be?
A broken sound tears out of my throat—half sob, half scream—and my legs give out. The room spins. I’m falling, clutching at the table, at anything, because the terror is too big, too sharp, ripping through me like claws.
“She has him,” I gasp, voice cracking into something wild and unhinged. “She has him, and she’s breaking him, Ian. She’s breaking him for good this time. He’s gone. He’sgone. I’ve lost him. Oh, God, I’ve lost him?—”
My chest is caving in, breath coming in short, panicked gasps that won’t fill my lungs. The panic is madness now, pure and blinding. I can’t see straight. I can’t think past the image of Reth’s winter-blue eyes going flat and empty, just like my nightmares. My goddamn nightmares. It’s comingtrue.
“Oh, God.” My hands are shaking so violently I can’t even hold on to the counter. A raw, animal sound rips out of me as I start to slide to the floor.
Strong arms catch me before I hit the ground.
Ian. His grip is iron around my waist, pulling me against his chest, one hand cupping the back of my head as he holds me upright. “Sophia. Breathe. Breathe with me. In… out. Come on, Crazy. In… out.”
I can’t. I’m shaking too hard, sobs tearing through me, the terror so overwhelming it feels like I’m being torn apart from the inside. “He’s gone, Ian. She has him and she’s destroying him and I wasn’t there—I wasn’t there?—”
“Youarehere,” he says fiercely, his voice rough but steady, grounding me. He presses my face into his shoulder, holding me so tight it almost hurts. “You’re right here. And he’s still fighting. He’s still fighting for you, okay? So you better do the same, Crazy. You better fucking fight for him. Now breathe.”
I try.
I clutch at his shirt, fingers digging in like he’s the only real thing left, forcing air into my burning lungs. The sobs keep coming, but slower. Still raw. Ian doesn’t let go. He keeps breathing with me, one hand rubbing firm circles on my back until the worst of the spiral eases.
When I finally pull back enough to look at him, his eyes are wet but burning with something fierce and unbreakable.
“I’m going to find him,” he says, voice low and absolute, every word carved from pure determination. “I swear to you, Sophia. I will tear that fucking estate apart stone by stone if I have to. I will drag him out of there—no matter what she’s done to him, no matter how broken he is—and I will bring him back to you. Alive. That’s a promise. You hear me?”
I nod, tears still streaming down my face, but something steadies inside me at the raw conviction in his voice. He means it. With every piece of him, he means it.
While still holding me, Ian looks at Andrei. “Tell us everything. Every detail. Leave nothing out.”
11
RETH
