Chapter 1
Chapter One
Henry
The red dot on my cell phone’s tracker app pulsed like a countdown, each blink a reminder that Ariana was too far ahead. That I was too goddamn slow.
My hands choked the steering wheel of my truck, knuckles white as the mountain road blurred beneath my headlights.
Sixty miles of distance between us felt like six hundred.
Every second that passed was a chance for the Bratva to reach her first. A chance for her to keep believing the worst about me.
I never should have left the duffel bag where she could find it.
Never should have allowed myself to forget what happens when I let my guard slip.
Now she thought the phone inside belonged to me.
Thought I’d been hired to abduct her. She’d drugged me and ran, praying she’d never have to see me again.
But she didn’t understand. I wasn’t the one who’d been paid to abduct her. I rescued her. At the time, I didn’t know who I was rescuing her from. Now I did. And I also knew if the Bratva found her, her time left on this planet was dwindling with every beat of her heart.
I kept checking the tracking signal every few seconds, grateful she was still moving. Then her signal slowed. Stopped. My pulse spiked. Had they already caught her?
I zoomed in on the map, trying to figure out where she was. When I saw she’d stopped at a gas station, I blew out a relieved breath. Based on what I could recall, the Jeep didn’t have a full tank of gas. That still didn’t mean anything. I wouldn’t feel better until I saw that little dot move again.
I added pressure to the gas pedal, increasing my speed.
Every second that ticked by with no movement on the tracker made my anxiety increase a little more.
Finally, the signal started moving again.
Relief washed over me, despite the fact she was still over fifty miles ahead of me. At least she was moving.
At least, I hoped she was moving.
I had no way of knowing if she was even in the Jeep.
She could have been attacked at the gas station and forced back into the vehicle.
So many different scenarios floated through my mind, each one worse than the one before.
But I pushed them aside, refusing to be consumed with all the what-ifs.
Instead, I focused on the road. On what I could control.
On getting to Ariana before someone else did.
I continued following her, gradually closing the distance between us.
Thankfully, I could navigate these roads blindfolded.
Had driven them on countless occasions. Right now, that worked to my advantage.
I was used to driving in the snow and ice.
Ariana probably hadn’t driven in this sort of weather in years.
After a few minutes, the signal on the Jeep seemed to slow before taking a hard right, veering off the road.
A part of me wondered if she’d found a motel and planned to sleep for the night, not knowing the danger that was after her.
But when I checked the map, there was no motel. Nothing but thick forest.
An unsettled feeling formed in my gut, and I increased my speed even more, my anxiety mounting with every minute that passed. The blinking, unmoving dot continued taunting me. Reminded me this was all my fault. That I could have avoided this if I’d just been honest with her and told her the truth.
When I finally closed in on the signal forty minutes later, the dread was almost unbearable, weighing me down to the point that I wasn’t sure if I could muster the strength to get out of my truck. Especially when I saw a pair of tire tracks cutting down the snowy embankment.
Grabbing my gun from the glove box, I stepped into the cold. Cato leapt out behind me, his fur bristling, nose already to the ground. My boots crunched against the snow as I followed the path, praying like hell she’d just hit a patch of black ice and lost control of the Jeep.
But when the vehicle came into view, I knew it was more than that. Tires blown out. A shattered back window. A single set of footprints approaching and retreating. A steady stream of blood lining the path, the dark red stark against the white snow.
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing down the unbearable ache building in my chest, and continued toward the Wrangler. I already knew what I’d find, but I needed to see it for myself.
The driver’s side door was already open with shards of glass from the windshield covering the entire passenger compartment. But that wasn’t what had me wanting to scream. It was the blood.
So much blood.
I couldn’t think the worst. Not yet. I had to believe Ariana was still breathing.
And I’d do everything in my power to find her.
I may have hated my father with every fiber of my being, but he did teach me one very important life lesson… How to act under pressure. So instead of panicking, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit Blake’s contact.
“Boss man,” he answered on the second ring.
“I need you to pull flight records for every airport within two hundred miles of the cabin,” I ordered without so much of a greeting as I shined my flashlight over the site of the crash, searching for anything that might help.
“What’s going on?” he asked in concern as he typed on his keyboard in the background.
“Just fucking do it.” My voice cracked raw, all the control stripped out of it.
“Anything I should be looking for?” he pressed, ignoring my outburst.
I stared at the carnage in front of me. The blood. The broken glass. The unnerving silence of the woods.
“Ariana…” Her name stuck in my throat, sharp and jagged. “She found the duffel bag. The cash. And the burner phone.”
“Shit,” he exhaled. “So she—”
“Thinks I abducted her. I mean, I did, but not like that.” My chest heaved. “And that’s not even the worst part.” I dug my fingers through my hair as I recalled the news I’d received earlier.
“What is?”
“When we didn’t get a hit on who this guy could be, I called in a favor with Salvatore.”
“I had a feeling you might.”
“He put out some feelers in Miami to see what he could find.”
“And what did he uncover?”
“That a Bratva hitman who’d been paid to acquire a high-ticket item went dark.”
“And you think that high-ticket item was Ariana?”
“I know it was. Worse, Salvatore called a little while ago to tell me the Bratva enforcer’s phone had been turned back on.
But I’ve kept that phone off since I killed him.
When I checked, it was gone. Along with Ariana.
Now my Jeep looks like a war zone, and she’s missing.
They fucking found her. If my gut is right and her husband is behind this? ” My throat squeezed at the thought.
I knew what he was capable of. Knew the hell he’d put Ariana through for years. I swore I’d keep her safe. Swore no harm would come to her while she was with me. And because I didn’t tell her the truth, because I was a fucking coward, I delivered her straight into the devil’s arms myself.
“If I’d—”
“Henry,” Blake cut me off, his voice sharp. “I think I’ve got something.”
I perked up, hope building inside me.
“A Pilatus landed a few hours ago at a private airstrip about forty miles from you. Came from Miami.”
My pulse thudded. “Any information about who the plane is registered to?”
“West Industries. A return flight plan has been filed. Departing in about an hour.”
An hour. That was all I had.
“I’m on it. Find out everything you can about West Industries.”
“You got it, boss.”
I shoved the phone back into my pocket, and sprinted toward the truck, Cato on my heels every step of the way. The tires spit snow as I tore onto the road, the only thought in my head as sharp and relentless as gunfire.
If a single strand of Ariana’s hair was out of place, I’d burn their world to ash.
Then I’d take back what was mine.