Page 65 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

Besides, there’s no turning back now.

25

BASTIAN

I wake with my head splitting and a dry, sandy mouth. The sun is fully up already, high in the sky, which means it’s late morning. I’ve overslept and I didn’t mean to.

The whiskey did its job keeping me from thinking about her too much. I don’t think I had a single positive thought all night.

Every dream I remember was horrible, every doubt and fear I’ve ever felt surfacing in one night to torment me so I don’t do what I vowed last night I would do. But it won’t stop me.

Today is the day I stop being paranoid and letting my past dictate my future. I push myself up out of bed and sit for a moment, getting my equilibrium right.

I’m dizzy, probably the alcohol and a tinge of dehydration, and the pounding in my head only gets worse, but I rise to my feet.

The tie once tied tightly around my neck now hangs loose, the top few buttons of my shirt undone. I cross to my dresser and look at myself in the mirror.

I’m unshaven and there are large dark circles under my eyes, evidence of several nights of not sleeping well. I’ve avoided looking at myself because I know what I see when I look in this mirror.

I see a man desperate enough to do something colossally stupid just to keep the woman he loves. I see a man ready to damn the consequences.

And I look away.

The ring I gave Agnya, once my mother’s, is still in the top drawer of my dresser hidden behind my socks and boxers. I pull it out and open the small, worn, velvet box it rests in.

If I offer this to Raina she will know immediately what it is, and I won’t have to say it with my own words.

If not, I’m not sure how to articulate it, but I hope she understands that I’m trying.

I palm the ring and set the box down, moving toward my door. I vowed last night I would speak with her, and that’s just what I’m going to do.

But when I knock on the door, expecting to hear her call to me or the cry of my son, neither comes. The room is silent right now. So I knock again and put my ear to the wood.

“Raina, may I come in?” I ask, gripping the handle as I wait for her reply, but again none comes.

She may be sleeping; I know Ingrid said she hasn’t been resting much. I’d feel bad if I interrupted that. She needs to rest to be a good mother, but I’m too eager to speak to her.

I open the door and step in, but the light isn’t off as if she were sleeping. It’s on, and the room is empty.

Her bed is made up and the crib in the corner is empty, stripped of the bedding with no trace of Felix anywhere.

The dresser where her brush and her bottles have sat for weeks holds nothing. I haul the closet open to a rod of bare hangers and her shoes are gone too.

“Raina!” I shout, turning back to the empty room as anger starts to boil up. Where is she? Where is my son? “Raina!”

Racing to the bathroom I’m starting to feel frantic. She has no way to get out of here without my approval; my guards are under very strict orders. But she’s not in the bathroom either, nor the nursery.

And the worst thoughts imaginable spring to mind—she was taken, they are dead, she left me.

“Boss, what’s happened?” Akim bursts into the room with wide eyes, grabbing both sides of the doorjamb as his eyes fall on me in my disheveled state.

“She’s gone, and the boy with her.” The words feel like acid in my mouth. “Where are they?”

“Nobody’s said a word to me about her leaving.” He steps past me and looks around slowly. “There’s no way she could get out, Bash.”

“Find her!” I shout. I never shout at him. I don’t have to shout at my men. They move when I look at them with a cross expression.

This is outrageous.