Chapter 103 Echoes of the Past
❄︎ Viktor ❄︎
I stepped out of my car, felt my boots crunch against the gravel, and my hand instinctively went to the gun tucked in my waistband.
My men stood in a line at the front of the house, like stiff statues under the lamps.
Their faces were grim, every one of them, like they were waiting for a funeral to start.
My pulse picked up. I didn’t fucking know why. Not only did I not remember all of their faces, but I couldn’t recall if this kind of reception was normal. They looked like they’d swallowed glass.
For a fleeting second, I wished Adrian was beside me, but I crushed the thought. I was the don. With or without my memories, that didn’t change anything.
My bodyguards closed in on either side of me as I walked forward, heading toward the man who stood half a step ahead of the rest.
Now that I was up close, I could see their control slipping. Clenched fists, twitching shoulders. They were trying hard not to shake. Curious.
“Speak,” I ordered flatly.
I flicked my eyes toward the house, at the window of my bedroom. My chest tightened in the briefest, strangest way as I half-expected to see the curtain shift, for her face to appear, watching me like she always did when I came home.
The warmth of that thought barely had time to touch me before the soldier opened his mouth and cut it to ribbons.
“Don… every soldato in New York is investigating her disappearance. We didn’t call you because… because Adrian said not to disturb you when you were out on mission.”
The words barely registered at first. Then they hit me.
My chest froze. My vision narrowed. “What?” My voice came out low, like a dare.
The man swallowed. “Donna Rosa… she disappeared this morning. Taken by masked men. Jacques tried to stop them, and he’s still unconscious from the tranquilizer dart.”
I didn’t hear the rest.
My hand moved before thought. I pulled the pistol free and whipped it across his face. The crack of his jaw split the silence, his teeth scattering like dice on the ground.
No one moved.
I leaned in, my voice a feral whisper. “Twelve hours. Twelve fucking hours my wife has been gone, and you didn’t think it was a top priority?”
Silence. My temples burned.
The men stood rigid as stone, not daring to breathe while I waved the pistol, the weight impossibly heavy in my palm.
My heart was a hammer against my ribs, my skull pounding along with it.
Somewhere deep inside me was the echo of this panic, a ghost of memory clawing at my chest. But I shoved it down.
Panic wouldn’t bring Rosa back.
“Where the fuck is Jacques?” My voice snapped across the air. “And get me the security footage. Now.”
I stormed into the house, my boots pounding on the marble. From the corner of my eye I caught movement, and Enza appeared, wringing her hands at the kitchen archway.
I turned toward her instantly.
She shrank back as I closed the distance, her eyes wide. I didn’t care if I looked like a monster right now.
“What do you know? Everything.”
Her lips trembled. “I… I went shopping with Isa this morning. When I came back, the kitchen had been used. One of Rosa’s oats was gone… she must have gone jogging right after.”
I spun on the men trailing me. “Who else accompanied her?”
They shifted uneasily. Finally, one answered. “Just Jacques. He called in for a car after thirty minutes, but when one of us got there… there were signs of a struggle. Jacques was unconscious.”
Two more men stepped forward.
One held out a lilac water bottle. Rosa’s. My hand closed around it, and I squeezed until the plastic groaned, my pulse hammering behind my eyes.
The other held out a tablet. “Don… the abductors shot out every camera on the route. We couldn’t get a clean trail.”
White heat burned through me.
My fist smashed against the wall before I could stop it. Plaster cracked under my knuckles. I didn’t even feel the pain.
“Get Adrian,” I snarled. “Tell him I don’t care what hole he’s crawling through, I want him back now.”
I turned in place like a marionette. “Take me to the location.”
I tasted blood and realized I was chewing my own tongue to keep from screaming.
“And when I return,” I added, “someone better have Jacques awake… or I’ll put a bullet in his head.”
I left the house with a few men, the engine growling as we tore down the road. My road.
My estate stretched all the way to the gates, and still, they’d managed to get in. Rosa and Jacques never even reached the fucking main gate. Which meant the bastards had been waiting for her. On my land.
Somebody had fed them her routine. Somebody betrayed me.
My teeth ached from how hard I was grinding them. Rage poured through me, but underneath it there was something worse. Pain. A white-hot needle in my skull, stabbing every time I breathed.
And the panic… Christ… the panic felt too familiar, like déjà vu. Like I’d done this before. Like I’d hunted Rosa down from the hands of kidnappers once.
The car slowed a few miles from the gate, and before it even stopped, I was out. Tape marked the ground, fluttering weakly in the wind.
One of the men mumbled something about their forensic team combing through it already, finding nothing.
Of course they’d found nothing. These fuckers were professionals.
I pushed deeper into the woods, my breath loud in my ears, until I spotted another mark. “What happened here?”
The soldier beside me shifted uneasily. “They, ah the team assumed… she came in here to relieve herself. That’s when they must have taken her.”
I pressed my eyes shut.
“Get the fuck away from me,” I snapped, and he obeyed, his steps crunching off into the distance.
I dropped to my knees and pressed my palm into the dry soil where she’d knelt. My fingers sifted through the dirt, grain by grain.
My body shook not just with rage but with something darker that had its claws buried in my chest. Obsession. Need. Rosa was my elixir, and without her I was unraveling.
I lifted the dust to my face, breathing it in, desperate for even a trace of her scent to calm the pounding in my head. There was nothing, only dust and green. But the act, the small ritual, steadied me, if only for a moment.
I stood, dirt clinging to my palms, already reaching for my phone. I’d call Dante. Put every resource on this search. We’d find her faster.
But then I froze.
Right in front of me, carved into the bark of a tree, was a sigil.
A snake’s mouth, open wide. A pistol jutting out between its fangs.
Pain detonated inside my skull.
White-hot and blinding, like a comet tearing through my brain. I staggered, a sound like a snarl and scream ripping from my throat.
The world tilted sideways.
My men’s shadows swam above me, their voices muffled, distant.
I tried to push up, tried to curse, to promise Rosa I was coming for her.
But the pain split me open, the sigil branded in my skull.
Then nothing but the cold embrace of the ground and the darkness swallowing me whole.