Page 166 of Bleed with Me

“Thank you,” I muttered toward Zyon as I dialed Lucas’s number. He answered after the third ring.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Dorian,” I said, gripping the phone tighter than was necessary. “Is Nina with you?”

“Nina?” Lucas woke up in a split second. “She left… almost two hours ago, saying she’s going home.”

My heart painfully missed a beat.

“H-home?” I involuntarily stuttered, everything crushing down on me with full force. “To me?”

“Where else?” he barked, shuffling on the other side. “She didn’t come?”

“No.” I looked at Zyon, who hypnotized the road. “The car was found abandoned with a smashed window.”

“Oh, fuck,” he exhaled, and something, probably a glass, shattered in the background. “If I help you, you won’t kill me, right?”

“Why would I…”

“I helped her kidnap you, remember?” he groaned, the familiar tapping on the keyboard I was used to from calling Malin echoing through the phone. “I’d do anything for her, but I won’t survive torture.”

“You’ll be tortured if you don’t help us,” I threatened, making Zyon chuckle.

“Okay, okay, mafia boss,” Lucas said. “I’ll text you my address.”

“Good boy.”

I ended the call, glaring at Zyon.

“What?” I asked when he didn’t stop grinning.

“You’re back.” He flashed me a surprisingly happy look. “I was really worried for you for a second.”

“Why?” I mumbled, turning to look out the window just to avoid looking at him.

“The last time you freaked out like that, Mom let doctors sedate you,” he replied. Considering how much our mom hated when they pumped me with drugs, it was huge.

“I killed people,” I reminded him of probably my worst episode. “And I don’t even remember it. She had to do it.”

“Is it that bad now?” His grin vanished, replaced by a concerned brotherly expression.

“Not yet,” I lied as the demon laughed maniacally in the background. “But if someone hurt her…” I couldn’t finish that sentence. My sanity hung by the thinnest thread.

“She’s that important, huh?”

“You have no idea.” I finally looked at him, my heart picking up speed just from a mere thought of something terrible happening to Nina.

“Well, we have ten minutes to our destination.” He pointed at the navigation. “Speak.”

-66-

Dorian

Talking kept me functional. It didn’t calm me down. It didn’t silence the demon clawing at the inside of my skull. But every answer Zyon gave, and every question Lucas asked, kept my mind occupied long enough to stop imagining Nina bleeding somewhere I couldn’t reach.

I’d spent weeks pretending she wasn’t my weakness. That if someone pointed a gun at her head, I’d remain the rational man my brothers expected. Tonight proved how spectacularly wrong I’d been. I was ready to tear the city apart until I found her. Whoever had taken my wife needed to put their affairs in order and pray for a quick death. Because when I found them…

“Everything still points at Lorenzo and Sonny,” Lucas said at least the tenth time in the last five minutes, cutting the thread of the murderous scenarios popping up in my head. “That arranged marriage nonsense is real. They desperately tried to find her.”