Chapter 81 Chapter 81

Chapter 81 Chapter 81
Massimo

“Massimo, wake up,” Ms. Tremaine says, giving me as hard a shake as she can given my size.

I have been a heavy sleeper since I was a child. With all the many medications I take on a regular basis, the moment I lay my head down on my pillow, I’m usually out for the foreseeable hours to come.

I grunt, fighting my way out of a groggy fog. The light creeping into the room reveals its morning time. The draft in the room tells me it’ll be another chilly winter day and we need to turn the heat up.

My hand scrubs over my face as if to clear up my fuzzy vision.

The space next to me in the bed is empty. Has Ayanna gotten up early and gone downstairs for breakfast.

Her mother is here. Perhaps they decided they wanted some bonding time alone over coffee.
“What time is it, Ms. Tremaine?”

“It’s minutes before seven. Massimo, there’s something…” she shudders out a deep breath.

“There’s something that happened last night.”

“Such as?”

Her shoulders slump, her expression flat and crestfallen.

It’s a look a wise woman who has been around the block a time or two like Ms. Tremaine rarely wears. She seems lost for how to proceed, taking her time to choose what she says with great caution. I’ve never been a patient man, and that hasn’t changed in this moment.

“Ms. Tremaine,” I snarl. “Spit it out. What is it? Where is Aya? Is she downstairs with her mother?”
Her lips stretch into a frown, and she shakes her head. “Massimo, she’s… she’s gone.”

“What do you mean she’s gone? Gone where? Downstairs to the breakfast room? Outside in the courtyard? Her dance studio?”

I have no idea why I’m listing off these places around the estate as if there’s not a deepening sense of dread burrowing inside me. A vague understanding of where this is headed and what Ms. Tremaine’s frown says before words ever could.

“She’s gone as in… she’s not here anymore. Her and her mother. She left this note for you.”

I snatch it from her and crumple it inside one of my fists. “She can’t be gone. She has to be here.”

“She’s not, Massimo. They’ve disappeared.”

“Disappeared?!”

My loud roar makes a solid woman like Ms. Tremaine flinch. She eases half a step back. Possibly to prepare herself for any other outbursts to come.

“There’s no way she could disappear. She’s on my property!” I shove aside the covers and charge through the room on a wave of instant fury.

“Where’s security? Have them search the premises! Review the surveillance cameras! Check every room, every… every place she could be!”

“Massimo, we have. What do you think we’ve been doing all morning? One of the sensors was activated, and that alerted the security team that something was amiss.”

“And you’re only just waking me now!” I boom in her face as she scurries to keep up with me.

I wrench the bedroom door open with enough power to almost rip it off its hinges and then barrel down the hall, heaving like a beast embarking on a rampage.

In this moment, that’s what I am.
I make it downstairs where several of my men swarm me. Angelo is first to launch into an explanation.

I hold up a hand to shut him up. “I don’t want to hear any fucking excuses! You imbeciles have failed to keep the premises secure—and worse than that, you’ve failed to keep my ballerina on the premises! What fucking good are you?”

“Massimo, we don’t know how she did it! How they did it! We think they used an exit through the east wing. They knew which spots to avoid so the cameras wouldn’t capture them.”

My glare darkens.

So my ballerina has been sneakier and more observant than I thought. As we’ve spent more time together and our relationship bloomed, I have trusted her more. I have given her privileges she never otherwise had.

Even after discovering the espionage manner in which Salvatore deployed the ballerinas in his dance company, I foolishly believed Ayanna wouldn’t betray me.

Not mia bella ballerina.
She had sworn to me she was mine. She had confessed she loved me. She had given me a fucking ring and vowed she wanted to be with me and only me.

How could she disappear into the night only hours later?

“Search the woods,” I growl.

“We’re combing through them now. It’s miles before civilization. Doesn’t even make sense how they’d be able to get so far.”

“It was planned. That’s the only way they could’ve managed. It was part of their scheme all along. That is why she begged to see her mother for so long. She was going to try to escape.”

Angelo blows out a breath as we descend the spiraling staircase into my underground compound.

“I’ll tell you what—she had me fooled. Really thought she’d fallen for you in recent weeks.”

His words remind me of the fact that I’m holding the note Ms. Tremaine said Ayanna left for me. I unclench my fist and open up the wrinkled sheet of paper. Ayanna’s penmanship is as graceful as her dancing:

Massi,
I didn’t want to have to do this. But I knew I couldn’t involve you in my mess. It’s for the best that I handle what’s happening with my family on my own. I’m sorry it had to be this way. Just know our time together wasn’t a dream this time.
This time, it was real. I love you.
Aya

Her letter only ignites an even hotter flame of anger that scorches me. I crumple it back up in my fist and release a roar that surely echoes for miles. If Ayanna and her mother are still wandering somewhere in the surrounding woods, they must hear it.

Buried further down from the rage and fury is the heartbreak. The twitchy heart that has been the bane of my existence from the time I was a boy snaps into smaller, more pathetic fragments. Fresh pain rolls through me that I’m unsure if caused by my condition or by the realization Ayanna has walked out on me.

She’s left me and everything we’ve begun building together.
If anyone ever had the power to hurt me, she does. Deep, deep irreparable pain that could destroy a man. It will destroy me if she doesn’t return.
But that won’t happen. Because I’ll destroy her first if she won’t be with me.

I grit my teeth, my balled up fist absorbing the words written on the paper clenched inside.

“Do whatever it takes to find her. Bring her back here. She will be punished. She will regret ever trying to run from me.”