Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Rocco hadn’t been here when I married Serafina or during our brief marriage. I had sent him to Canada instead, hunting a man who had stolen several million dollars from one of the Salvatore’s laundering operations before disappearing without a trace.
He thought a new country and identity would keep him alive.
It hadn’t.
Rocco came back two days after I woke up from my coma, so he only knew the shortened version of my marriage to Serafina.
“She’ll keep moving.” He shrugged. “Going to places no one would expect. She’s smart enough to figure out that she can’t stay in one place if she wants to evade the consequences of her actions.”
That I already knew.
Serafina had long realized that staying in one spot for too long would make catching her easier. That was why she kept moving every few days, staying no longer than a week in one particular city.
I trusted Rocco to find her. He knew people; he had eyes and ears in many places, in many countries. I knew he would eventually track her down, and this time, the trail wouldn’t go cold.
But I wasn’t enjoying the thrill of the chase anymore as I stayed sitting in my house, behind these goddamn walls, while my wife was running across continents.
No… this wouldn’t do anymore.
“You can stop the search.”
Rocco’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But—”
“I will find her.” I rolled my head from side to side, the vertebrae in my neck cracking as some of the tension bled away. “It’s been a bit boring staying here while everyone else does the job of finding her. She’s my wife, after all. This is my duty.”
“You’ve been healing.”
I waved a hand dismissively. “I am healed.”
It had been six weeks since Serafina shot me. My heart had stopped once, only briefly… and the doctor kept me under for a week while my body decided whether or not it wanted to continue. Dr. Woods insisted I was incredibly lucky the lack of oxygen hadn’t left me with permanent brain damage after my heart stopped.
As if waking up with a hole through my chest and a wife who wanted me dead qualified as good fortune.
Yeah, lucky… What a fucking joke.
When I woke up, everything had come back to me like a collection of broken clips, a looped tape. The sound of the gunshot, the pain spreading through my chest, the smell of blood.
And the look on Serafina’s face.
Her beautiful, cold hazel eyes.
The slow, merciless smile on her pretty lips.
I remembered how exquisite she looked.
Ethereal and deadly.
“She’s learning fast,” Rocco finally said after a second of silence. He closed the folder. “She paid off a girl in the Tangier market. The girl said she wanted to be invisible.”
“She can run as much and as far as she wants,” I said, my voice low and dark. “I’m good at finding people.”
I turned back around, facing the windows once again.
Rocco understood that I was done with the conversation. He left the folder on my desk, and I watched in the reflection as he quietly left my office. The door closed behind him with a soft click, and I was once again alone in my office. In the silence that Serafina had left behind.
In the darkness of the night, my eyes landed on Nyx first as she pranced around the perimeter of the estate and then her two brothers following behind her, Orion and Shadow.
Nyx paused at the far edge of the grounds and lifted her nose to the air, trying to catch the scent of something she wouldn’t find. Looking for someone who had left them behind.
My Dobermans had realized that Serafina was missing, that she wasn’t home anymore. They liked her, had accepted her as a part of the pack… and now, they were confused by her absence.
It was time to bring my wife home. For all of our sakes.
“The girl said she wanted to be invisible.”
I smiled despite myself.
My beautiful wife believed she escaped me; she believed she could disappear.
How adorable.
She had recklessly forgotten one simple truth.
The world might lose her.
But I never would.
She could change her name, cross oceans and continents, and bury herself beneath thousands of unfamiliar faces, and I’d still find her. Her attempts to vanish were ultimately futile.
Serafina would never be invisible to me, no matter how hard she tried.
I’d know which one was her shadow in a frenzied crowd. I’d recognize the rhythm of her heartbeat in complete darkness.
She wasn’t running from me.
She was only delaying the moment I had my hands on her again.
I’d built a bloody empire on finding people who didn’t want to be found.
And yet Serafina thought I wouldn’t find her.
How. Fucking. Adorable.
The crystal glass shattered in my fist, and blood trickled between my fingers.
Let’s see how well you can play the game, wife.
CHAPTER THREE
SERAFINA
THE PAST
The apartment smelled of lemon-scented cleaner and new paint. The carpet even looked spotless, as if everything had just been newly done right before my arrival this morning.