Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
Alexei
Today was the day our son came home, and I was so nervous that it felt like I was a kid again, and it was the first day of school. There was a kind of gnawing pit open in my stomach that made me fidget nervously from foot to foot with the huge bouquet of flowers in my hands as I waited for Amy.
Not that I thought flowers, even if I bought her a bunch every day for the rest of our lives, would make up for anything, but I had seen the smile on her face when I had given her some last night, and I wanted that smile again.
We would both smile today. Nicolai was coming home. Our family would be complete. All we had to do was wait for Amy to turn up, and we could go home and start our life as the family I wanted us to be.
On the other side of the room, the nurse flashed me a smile. “You look so nervous that I’m beginning to think this is a first date and not you guys taking home your baby. Who is perfect, by the way.” The grin she gave my son was full of adoration
Everyone loved Nikolai. Even tiny, he charmed everyone he met. He got that from his mom.
I was nervous, but not because this was our first date. We hadn’t actually had one of those yet, I realized with a start. And now that we had a newborn. I wasn’t sure when we would have time.
Make time, a small snarling voice growled in my brain, and the thought made me glance at the Rolex on my arm. The smile slipped from my face. Amy was late. Not just a little late, but almost an hour.
I tapped on the watch face like maybe there was some mistake, and my eyebrows slammed down. Amy would not be late today, even if there was traffic, she would have called. Or her driver would have. Today, I had made sure she had one.
Today was too important to our future to risk anything happening.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
Maybe it was the tone of my voice, but the nurse’s easy smile slipped from her face to be replaced by a look of worry.
“Is everything OK, Mr. Petrovov?”
I was already pulling open the door when she asked, but I paused long enough to force myself to smile at her. “Of course. I just need to make a call.”
Of course, everything was OK. Today was going to be perfect. Only when I dialed Amy’s number, the call rang off. I tried again, and exactly the same happened. The nervous pit in my stomach opened into a gnawing pit.
Why wasn’t she answering her call?
Almost instantly, my mood went black. My whole body shook with the energy it took to keep my temper in check, but people noticed anyway. The couple in the elevator took one look at my face and quickly vacated. I slammed my thumb against the button.
Where the hell was my wife?
Had she run again? But even though I thought it, I knew that would never happen. She would never abandon her child.
Striding through the hospital lobby, I froze when I saw a familiar car outside. My pace picked up until I was standing right in front of the driver’s side window. Rapping my knuckles on the glass, I watched the man jump, a curse on his lips before he saw me standing there.
“Where is she?” I asked the moment he had opened the door a crack.
Amy’s driver unfolded himself from the seat. “Sorry, sir?”
“Amy,” I sighed. “Where is she?”
He looked confused, looking around my shoulder to the hospital doors. “Inside, sir,” he said finally. At my side, my hands clenched into fists. “Clearly, she isn’t fucking inside if I am out here asking where she is.”
The blood drained from his face. “I watched her walk inside over an hour ago.”
Turning my head, I stared at the entrance. My breath was coming in pants. If she had walked in here, then she would have come upstairs. Nothing in the world would stop Amy from coming to her son. Not unless—
The pit in my stomach opened into a chasm. Not saying a word, I ran. There was only one thing that would stop Amy from being here for our child, and that was if something had happened to her. Behind me, I heard the thump of his footsteps rushing after me. “Sir?” he panted. “What’s going on?”
“Something is wrong.” In the lobby, I turned in a circle, quickly surveying my surroundings. There were so many people, but not one of them was Amy. In the corner, a movement caught my attention. A nurse pushed into the lobby through a half-hidden side door. I headed in that direction quickly.
Shouldering past people without even an apology, I pushed open that side door and stepped into a small brick alleyway. There were huge metal bins lining one brick wall. And lying right next to one, half hidden, was a phone.
It didn’t take a genius to know who it belonged to. But what was my wife’s phone doing out here? And more importantly, where was my wife?
“Sir?”
I could feel his heavy breathing behind me, but I didn’t turn to him. The feeling was swallowing me was like nothing I had ever felt before. It felt like I was drowning.
“She’s gone.” I managed to grind out. “Someone has taken her.” I took a deep breath, forcing the panic down with everything I had.
Someone had taken Amy.
Or at least that’s what it looked like. But I couldn’t let the panic get to me yet, not until I knew for sure. She might have just dropped her phone. Bending down, I went to pick it up, and something wet glued against my fingertips. Glancing down, I saw the smudge of blood on my fingers.
“Get—” I was shouting now, my cold, in-control exterior completely crumbled as I grabbed the phone and stuffed it in my pocket. “Men here and men in the apartment. Now.” I didn’t wait to see if he was going to do what I asked. I was already moving.
If someone had Amy, that meant Nikolai was in danger as well.
“And my grandfather. Get everyone fucking out of here and find my wife. Now.”
The elevators were busy, so I took the stairs two at a time, barreling into my son’s room a few minutes later and closing the door.
“Is he?” I looked at the nurse wildly.
“He’s right here, sir. Is something wrong?” The words died on her lips as she took in my face. “What’s happened?”
The way he said it told me she knew exactly who and what I was.
“Just stay there,” I ordered, and I positioned myself by the door, my fingers twitching to draw my weapon. “No one gets in or out of this room. Is that understood?”
Fear flickered into her eyes before she nodded. “May I move the baby to the other side of the room?”
I looked at her blankly.
“Away from the door and the window.” She answered my unasked question.
“Yes.” I didn’t turn away from the door. I needed to find Amy, but my first job was to protect our son. When I knew he was safe, I would look for her.
And God have mercy on the person who had taken her and made her bleed.
Twenty minutes later, my cell phone rang with a loud noise, causing Nikolai to wail and the nurse to jump.
“Have you found her?” I asked as a greeting.
There was a pause. Just one single second, and I already knew that they hadn’t.
“No, sir, but there are men outside your room now, and the older Mr. Petrovov is under guard as well.”
“And what about Amy?” I wanted to scream, “Where is my damn wife?”
“There’s no sign of her after she entered the hospital. We have people checking the traffic cams, but sir—”
I didn’t like the way he said that last bit.
“There’s something you need to see at the apartment.”
My heart sank. “What is it?”
“A file.”
She had tried to hide it behind some couch cushion, but my eye had found it almost instantly. And with every page I flipped through, my heart sank even further. It was all here in black and white. The proof of what a fool I had been.
Amy had it, and she hadn’t told me. She hadn’t shown me, even though we had spent last night putting together a crib like a family. I could have been angry at her, but part of me knew the reason why. Amy knew I wouldn’t have believed her. That meant she would want more proof.
“Get Violet on the phone,” I snapped. “Now.”
I flipped another page, and there it was. Bank records, money being sent from Violet’s account to the nurse who had conveniently not turned up the day my grandfather’s care home had been shot up.
She had meant for my grandfather to die that day. But Violet had countered Amy. My beautiful, brave, and strong wife, the same sweet woman who had been telling me for ages that Violet was no good. Damn, everyone had told me, but I just hadn’t seen it.
“There’s nothing.”
I growled out a response that was unintelligible.
If Violet had done anything to Amy, I would skin her alive. Except I should have done that already. And now I was about to lose the one person who would always be there for me because I had been blinded by the past.
I flipped through the last few pages. Bank statements, photos of Violet with numerous men, receipts for fake pregnancy bumps, and coroner reports. Violet has been planning this for months.
Amy was the only thing standing in the way of her getting everything she had ever wanted. The power that came from my name, and when she had it? It didn’t take a genius to know what she wanted. The downfall of my family.
Violet had been playing me like a fiddle since the moment I met her. She had fashioned her whole being to be attractive to me. And like a fool, I had fallen for it every single time.
The last page was almost blank. But I recognized my grandfather’s scrawl at the bottom, just like I recognized the name and number.
“Sir?”
My head snapped up.
“Kristoff’s car was seen in the parking lot of the hospital.” The man in front of me took a deep breath. “I’ve checked and double-checked all the cameras. He didn’t leave the hospital grounds.”
My hand clenched around the last sheet of paper.
“I don’t think he took her off the premises. I found his car on a lower level.”
The paper in my hand scrunched up as I closed my fist around it.
I would destroy him. I would destroy them all.
If one hair was out of place on Amy’s head, I would burn the whole fucking city to the ground because suddenly something was clear to me.
I loved her.