Page 101 of Vows of Silence

Good.

Because at this point, I was absolutely snooping. A tiny voice in the back of my mind suggested that perhaps I should feel guilty about invading his privacy.

I ignored it. The man had cameras in my bedroom, for fuck’s sake. Privacy didn’t exist in our world. If anything, my snooping like this was long overdue. This was about equality.

My eyes drifted toward the search bar at the bottom of the screen.

Curiosity immediately reared its ugly head.

Before I could stop myself, I typed my own name, immediately being bombarded with page after page of news reports.

Apparently being engaged to a billionaire tycoon and then later disappearing without a trace came with a disgusting amount of media coverage.

I clicked the first article and immediately found myself staring at a photograph of me leaving some charity event nearly a year ago. I barely recognised myself. The girl smiling back at the camera looked carefree. Effortless. She looked like somebody whose biggest concern was deciding what dress to wear to an event rather than whether the man she’d been kidnapped by and was currently playing house with was currently alive.

Quickly, I looked away from the picture and focused on the article instead.

There wasn’t much there that I didn’t already know. Most of it was speculation dressed up as journalism. Anonymous sources claimed I had been abducted. Others insisted I had fled the country voluntarily. One particularly imaginative publication suggested I had secretly entered a rehabilitation facility and my family were attempting to protect our reputation.

I rolled my eyes. Because of course this is what they reduced me to. A vapid, nothing existence. A young woman who had no worries other than drinking and partying that had quickly spiralled into an addiction.

The internet truly was a disgusting place.

There were even some generated images of me looking worse for wear, holding up a police identification placard.

Assholes.

As I scrolled lower, another headline caught my attention. The surname alone was enough to make me stop.

Falcone.

I clicked it immediately and the article opened with a photograph of Rafael.

For a long moment I simply stared at it, trying to reconcile the image on the screen with the man I had met.

He looked exactly as I remembered him. Stern. Arrogant. The sort of man who expected the world to move aside whenever he entered a room. Only this time there was a date beneath the photograph. A date marking his death.

His death?

I checked the date on the computer, seeing that his death had been announced the day Silas had chased me through the house. I knew that because Silas had marked it on my calendar with a massive circled rose. He’d then also highlighted the day I was due on my period with a countdown.

Why hadn’t he told me?

It wasn’t that I doubted the information. It was simply difficult to imagine someone like Rafael being gone. He had possessed the sort of personality that felt permanent. Like one of those ancient statues scattered around the manor. Cold and unpleasant, perhaps, but impossible to remove.

And it seemed impossible that Silas wouldn’t have been affected by this. Rafael had raised him when he had nobody else. Silas had been orphaned at seven, leaving his grandfather as the only parent he had ever truly known.

Yet there it was in black and white.

Funeral arrangements, public statements, tributes from people who had probably feared him more than loved him.

He was gone.

My thoughts immediately shifted back to Silas. Was that where he was? Was he dealing with the fallout from this?

It would explain the sudden disappearance. Family obligations. Lawyers. Inheritance discussions. A hundred different responsibilities that came with becoming head of an organisation as large as the Falcone empire.

The thought left an uncomfortable knot in my stomach. Because though it made sense that this would keep Silas busy, it didn’t explain why it would keep him away. Why couldn’t all of this be dealt with from home?