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For a few weeks, I’d been coming home to find her waiting for me in the kitchen. We’d eat dinner and talk about my day. It was the most like a television sitcom my life had ever felt, and I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. We’d eventually make it up to the bedroom to fool around, but sometimes we just laid in bed and continued talking. Or, sometimes, I’d watch one of the terrible television movies that Sam liked where a couple moved into their dream house, but it was stalked by their psychopathic neighbor who broke in at night and terrorized them. They were terrible, but I liked to laugh at them while she cowered in fear against my side.
The call went straight to voicemail, so I waited another ten minutes. I was trying a new thing where I gave her space and didn’t hover. I wanted her to feel free to do as she pleased in my house. But as the minutes ticked by, I felt myself growing more and more frustrated. She should at least leave a note if she weren’t going to be home until late.
I was pacing around the kitchen, working myself into a rage that I planned to unleash on Sam as soon as she walked through the door. She was pregnant with our child and men had just tried to break into my home and attack us a few nights before – though I had neglected to tell Sam about this – and it was dangerous for her to be out without anyone knowing where she would be.
I was just about to pick up my phone and call her again when my phone rang. I answered it without reading the name, assuming it was Sam.
“Where the hell are you?”
“Boss?”
I recognized Eric’s voice right away but didn’t alter my tone. The question was directed at him, as well. “Where the hell are you?”
“Boss, something went wrong.”
Suddenly, my rage shifted to an intense focus. “Tell me.”
“Sam is gone.”
I took a deep breath through clenched teeth. “I need more than that, Eric. Did she run away?”
I hated to admit it, but the thought that Sam would run away from me cut deep. Since finding out about the baby, things between us had softened. It seemed like she enjoyed being with me, and I didn’t hate being with her. In fact, it was a nice way to end the day. A good way to unwind and destress after handling mafia business all day. But if she did run away, I’d deal with that. I’d get custody of my child and let her live on her own with her ill mother and her dumbass of a brother. Fuck her if she didn’t want to be with me.
“No, she was taken.”
My internal diatribe went silent. “By who?”
Eric sighed. “I think it was her brother.”
“What the fuck was she doing with her brother?”
“You told me to take her where she wanted to go, and she met up with him once before, and it was fine, so I didn’t think anything of it today.”
I spun around and threw a punch, knocking a hole in the drywall next to the fridge. My knuckles stung immediately, but I didn’t care. If anything, the pain helped me focus. I felt my pulse beating in my neck, and I tried to take deep breaths to calm myself. I was going to kill Eric.
“Are you telling me they’ve met up before?”
“Four days ago,” he said, his voice shaking. “They went for coffee, and it all seemed to go fine, so I took her to meet him again today. I was giving them some privacy, and then they got away from me. By the time I caught up, he was forcing her into the back seat of a car and driving off.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“You gave them privacy? What the—” I took another deep breath. “Did you follow them?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Well, I tried. My car was in front of the building, so by the time I got there and took the road they did to escape, they were gone. I didn’t see them.”
“Do you know the plate number?”
Eric rattled off the number, and I wrote it down on a sticky pad stuck to the fridge.
“Okay, now get back here. Now.”
“Boss, I’m sorry.”
“Get back here,” I repeated before hanging up.
Immediately, I called Ivan and told him to run the plates to find out the owner of the car and an address. “And call everyone you can find and tell them to meet at my house in fifteen.”
Thankfully, everyone except for Eric showed up in ten minutes because I was beginning to lose it. Every minute I spent not searching for Sam, was another minute she could be being hurt. I didn’t want to think her own brother could be hurting her, especially after what she’d done for him by giving herself to me, but why else would he abduct her? Did he know about the baby?
