Total pages in book: 21
Estimated words: 19922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 66(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 19922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 66(@300wpm)
And people also ended up saying things that they didn't really mean—
(We both know you're the kind of idiot who'll keep loving me anyway even if I don't love you back.)
MYKOS RECEIVED ORION'S call while he was at his desk. In his office. Doing his best not to think of his wife instead of working.
That would matter to him for the rest of his life. He would remember that while he had been doing his best to forget his wife, she was being abducted.
"They took her away."
Mykos found himself rising to his feet upon hearing this.
"The Eliopoulos."
He stared at his surroundings, but all he could see was her. Her face the night she'd told him she loved him. Her face at the foot of the stairs, waiting for him in the dark, asking what did I do?
And he had walked past her.
"I'm sorry."
Orion's voice broke on the apology, and Mykos had never heard Orion's voice break, not in fifteen years, not through violence, crisis, loss. Orion did not break.
But Orion had just lost the one person Mykos had tasked him to protect above all others, and the weight of that failure was in every syllable.
And somehow, even when everything inside of him seemed to turn into ice, Mykos heard himself say, "We have protocols for this. Get moving."
His tone was flat. His words, a command that served a purpose. But the moment Mykos hung up was the moment it hit him—
His wife.
His Maika.
The girl whose heart he had stomped into pieces.
She was in danger.
Because of him.
And just like that, he was crashing to his knees as everything became clear.
He should forget his own wife.
Love is a lie.
His life was under his control.
Those were all the things he had gotten wrong.
Because the truth was...
He had thought himself better than his own father but he was not.
He was just as helpless as any man.
He had thought his own pride and strength had gotten him to where he was.
But that, too, was a lie.
The reason he had been empty and restless all these years...
The reason he had always felt like there was a monster about to break free from within him...
It was all because he had been trying to do everything on his own when he didn't have to.
So, please God.
The words of his first prayer somehow came easily.
Save her.
Help me save her.
WHAT FOLLOWED AFTER that, logic would find challenging to explain.
The world would think it was simply a series of miraculous coincidences, but they would only be partly right.
Because coincidences weren't real.
God was the very antithesis of coincidences. But instead, He was why miracles existed, and so when Mykos also began to move...
There was a calmness in him that didn't come from being a cold-blooded killer.
Instead, it came from a peace that surpassed all understanding.
And whereas Mykos's protocols had once failed to protect his wife from being abducted...
This time, because Mykos knew it was no longer him who was in control but God...
This time, all the other protocols worked.
The trackers they had secretly embedded in every pair of his wife's shoes pinpointed a location within minutes. A warehouse on the outskirts of the city, owned by a shell company that Orion's team traced back to the Eliopoulos family in three calls.
The favors they had painstakingly collected over the years were now called in. Contacts in law enforcement who owed Mykos for the men he had delivered to them. Officials who knew the Ravensworth name and what it meant when that name made a request. None of them hesitated.
And in an almost ridiculously short amount of time...
They had the blueprints of the very property Eliopoulos had taken her. A two-story warehouse with a basement level. One access road. Four exterior cameras that Orion's team disabled remotely.
They knew exactly how many men were there. Seven. Armed, but not organized. These were hired hands, not soldiers. They had been paid to grab a girl and hold her, but they hadn't been paid enough to die for her.
And this time...
Just like how he delivered the wrongdoers from his world...
The authorities were the ones who charged in. Tactical units through the front and side entrances, simultaneous breach, the way it had been done a hundred times before in this city. Except this time, the man who had made the call was standing outside the perimeter, and he was not patient, and he was not calm, and the peace that had carried him this far was now being tested by every second his wife remained inside that building.
And it was over in minutes.
Orion was the first one at his side when the all-clear came. "She's alive, sir. Basement level. They're bringing her up."
All Mykos had to do was walk into the room where they held his wife captive...
He found her gagged and bound to a chair. Her blond hair was tangled, her wrists raw from the zip ties, and there was a bruise forming on her cheek that made something inside his chest crack wide open.