Page 110 of Vow to Claim You

Every word of it is shaped like a snare—and I have spent my whole life in a world where snares wear the faces of people you trust. I should hang up right now, walk into that bathroom, and repeat every syllable of this to Aric.

But it’s Farida. My mother’s friend, the woman who used to call me ya omri, Luca’s mother… And the not knowing about Luca has been a stone in my shoe for weeks—through the funeral, through every sleepless night spent wondering what truly happened to a man I once thought I’d build a life beside. If Farida has the answer, I have to hear it. I owe it to him. I owe it to her. I owe it to the girl I used to be.

I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, the shower still running a wall away.

I’ll go. I’ll hear her out. And then I’ll tell Aric everything—after. Once I know what it is I’m even telling him.

After. Right?

“Where?” I breathe.

She gives me a place. A time. A village an hour up the coast that I’ve never heard of. I memorize it and write nothing down.

The water shuts off. I slide the phone face down onto the nightstand and gather my expression back under control.

Aric comes out, toweling his hair, and he looks at me the way he’s only just started looking at me—like I’m the single good thing in a life made of damage and darkness. I smile at him, and I say nothing.

I feel absolutely terrible because the first lie of my marriage isn’t a word. It’s a silence.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Aric

The meeting runs long. Supplier dispute. Territorial negotiation. Two hours of watching men talk themselves into corners.

Tassilo stands behind me, hands clasped over his abdomen. Eero lounges with one leg slung over the other, looking bored out of his mind.

I let the men barter. By the time I leave, the outcome is exactly what I’d decided before I walked in. It always is.

The car cuts through the city. My thoughts should be on the deal. On the numbers. On the next move.

They’re not.

They’re on her.

Again.

I catch myself doing it—picturing her in some room of my house, moving through rooms that have belonged only to me for years. I don’t know what she’s doing right now. Reading. Playing the piano. Reducing some unfortunate soul to ash with that razor tongue of hers.

We arrive back at the estate around midnight. The door opens, and I see Maylin. Her troubled face—a face usually carved from stone. A stillness that does not belong on a woman who is supposed to be standing next to my wife.

Everything in me goes quiet. The dangerous kind of quiet.

Something’s wrong. Something about Ayanna.

I know it the way I know a gun is loaded without checking the chamber.

“Where is she?”

“She told me she was going to sleep, but Elske wouldn’t stop growling at the door, and I knocked and got nothing, so I went in.” She shakes her head. “She wasn’t there. I pulled the cameras.” Her breathing changes; it gets shallow and heavy. “She went out through the east service entrance. A car was already waiting on the service road, had pulled up before she reached it. She got in, and it left.”

The words hit like bullets.

Someone reached my wife inside my own house, arranged a car on my own land, and took her off this estate without a shot fired or an alarm raised. That’s the detail that turns the cold in me to something worse. Nothing happens in this country without my leave. Nothing crosses this property without my men knowing. Whoever drew her out had reach. Connections. Enough authority that my own men never questioned it. That isn’t opportunity. It’s access. Someone with power did this, and I will find out who.

My jaw tightens. “How long?”

“Half an hour. Maybe more.”