Page 45 of Marrying the Silver Fox

I pull the car out again, looping around the block and back onto the street. I’ve been trailing up and down the haunts I’ve showed Max on the rare visits he’s made to America. I doubt he would have been stupid enough to take her to any of them specifically, but he can’t know this place well, and that limits everything he’s going to be able to get away with. He knows as well as I do that knowledge is power, and if he can find somewhere he’s at least somewhat familiar with, he will have an easier job keeping me from digging him up.

No sign of his car yet. But it’s out there. A dark blue rented vehicle—I called up the company who must have hired it out to him, told them it had been used in a crime, and they assured me they would do everything they could to track it down. Seems like they don’t have trackers on all their vehicles, but they will want to make sure their product doesn’t wind up missing. Just because they’re a legitimate business doesn’t mean they don’t have overlap with how I go about my work, right?

I scan the sidewalks around me, peering at the faces of everyone I pass, though none look familiar. It’s early, early enough that the only people out on the road are a handful of joggers and a few overzealous office workers getting in before the sun rises to show their boss just how dedicated they are to the business. A few of them notice the car slowing alongside them, and glance in my direction, but they don’t stick around long as they catch me peering past the tinted glass. They hurry away, my dark circles and grim expression enough to warn them off.

All the bars I took Max to are shut, and as I circle around the parking lots out back, I see no sign of the deep blue vehicle he must have stuffed her into. I can’t stop replaying that moment in my head, the second I saw her grabbed on the street. I couldn’t see her face, but I can only imagine the terror she felt, how much she wished she could turn around and rush back to the house where I could keep her safe.

But I can prove it to her, can’t I? I can still show her that I mean it when I promised to keep her safe. To protect her, to love her. That’s what I said in my vows. And though I didn’t know I would need to prove them quite so soon after we were married, if this is what it takes, then so be it⁠—

My phone rings, and I snatch it up at once. “Hello?”

A smooth voice comes down the line. “Hello, Mr. Artesco?”

“Speaking.”

“The car that you believe was involved in a crime,” the woman tells me. “We have reason to believe that it’s at the Kruyff Heights apartment block. Do you know of anyone who lives there?”

My eyes narrow. Oh, I know someone who’s staying there, alright.

“Thank you,” I reply.

“Mr. Artesco, I would strongly advise that you leave police to manage this matter⁠—”

I hang up the phone. I have everything I need. All I can think about is her—Andie.

I pull up the map on the GPS, tapping the name of the apartment block into it swiftly and peering down at it for a moment. Only twenty minutes or so from here. I could call all of my men and tell them to get their asses over there, storm the place, kill anyone who stands in our way.

But I get the feeling I won’t need them. This is a family matter. And it should be dealt with the same way.

Does Max know that Andie is pregnant? I have no clue. But I know that I will do everything in my power to get my child out of there alive. The child that I know my father will cherish, the heir he has been waiting for.

But it’s more than just that. Andie—I need her.

I know I haven’t let her know that, but I do. Her knowledge, her wit, her self-sufficiency, she is everything I could have hoped for in a wife—a far cry from the dependent little socialite I know I would have ended up with if I had gone through with that marriage to Natalie.

Andie and I might not have been intended for each other. But on some level, if I were to believe in things like fate—I might think that the universe has brought us together because we provide something for each other that we both keenly need.

And if my brother thinks he can stand in the way of that, he has another thing coming.

I pop open the compartment next to the steering wheel, and my gun glints back at me, cruel, unyielding.

I know Max is not ready for the hell I’m about to rain down on his head.

23

ANDIE

“Max! Max, let me out!”

I slam my fists against the door, my voice hoarse and tearing in my throat as I do everything in my power to get that bastard to listen to me. He has been utterly ignoring me since the moment he walked out of here—no food, no water, nothing. I don’t know exactly what he has in store for me, what he’s planning to now that I’m locked up and entirely under his control, but I’m going to have find some way or another to survive it.

I can’t stop thinking about what he said to me—the way he told me, so harsh, so blunt, that I was going to belong to him. That this child would be raised as his too. The thought turns my stomach. I will not—cannot—let that happen. I know how it feels, to be trapped as a kid by the people who raise you, and even if Max will be able to provide all the luxuries in the world, none of it would come close to making up for the fact that he’s the kind of monster who would steal a child from their father just for…

Just for what? His own ego?

It seems ridiculous that he would put so much on the line just for the sake of sating something so stupid, but then, he has proved himself to be the kind of person willing to act out to get what he wants. Back in Russia, when we first met, I felt it in him then—the uneasy sensation of knowing that he thought so little of me, and that he saw me as little more than a piece he could move around on the board, the way he thought his brother had too.

Nikolai. Even now, as I slump back against the bed to catch my breath, I don’t know what he’s going to do. After the way we clashed when I revealed the pregnancy, the way he seemed more interested in what this could do for him than what it meant for me.