56. Mikhail

Viviana already looked worn. As soon as I walked in the kitchen and saw her slumped at the counter, I wanted to wrap her in my jacket and carry her upstairs. I haven't been around as much as I wish I could, and I don't think she's been sleeping. She looked exhausted and sick. Her collarbones were poking out of the wide neck of her t-shirt, and I thought, I don't have the bandwidth to worry about her health on top of everything else.

Now, this.

"He's missing." I barely get the words out before Viviana buckles.

The only reason she doesn't crack her knees on the floor is because Anatoly catches her. He helps her into a chair, but it doesn't matter. Viviana is up and on her feet again a second later. She stumbles towards me.

"Where is he?" she rasps. "Mikhail!"

My mind is whirring. It's chaos, but I've always thrived here. When everyone else panics, the fog clears for me. For the first time in days, I feel like I'm exactly where I'm meant to be.

I pull out my phone and call Raoul. He answers on the first ring.

"Dante," he says. I have no idea which informant told him, but I'm glad. It saves us time.

"Find him, Raoul."

"I'm already on it."

He hangs up and I text the guards at the front gates. I want every available set of eyes, ears, and hands looking for my son. Nothing else matters.

"Anatoly."

My brother is in front of me before I can even look up. "I'll go look for him."

I shake my head. "No. Stay here with Viviana."

I know he hates doing nothing while the rest of us search for Dante, but there's no one else I trust to watch her. There's also no one she trusts more. I'm including myself in that category.

Viviana grabs the front of my shirt. Her fingers are cold. "I want to come with you. Wherever he is, I want to?—"

"I don't know where he is," I tell her.

I hate that it's true.

I hate that I didn't see this coming.

I hate the way she's looking at me right now.

Tears well in her eyes. They spill over when she blinks, pouring down her cheeks. "Is it Christos? Is it—Is he—He has to be okay, Mikhail."

She breaks, falling against my chest.

I hold her for a second. For one second, I let myself wrap an arm around her waist and hug her to my chest.

Then I pass her to Anatoly.

"I'm going to find him, Viviana. Dante is going to be okay."

The voices in my head beg to disagree. He might not be okay. It might already be too late. You fucked up and now, Dante is paying the price.

I quiet the dark thoughts and focus on what I can control. "Whoever did this is going to pay with their life. I promise you that."

Viviana wraps her arms around herself. She's trembling and wide-eyed, split open in a way I've never seen before.

I tip my head to Anatoly. "Take care of her."

"With my life," he vows quietly.

I grab my keys and jog to the garage. As the door closes behind me, Viviana wails. I think she drops to the floor, but I know she'd rather me go look for Dante than return to comfort her.

So I keep moving and I don't look back.

I make it to the doors of a nightclub—the third Greek-owned business I've hit in the last hour—and Raoul is already there.

We've been working off of the same list. He started at the bottom, I started at the top. Now, we've met in the middle and there's still no sign of Christos.

Which means there's no sign of Dante.

"Christos isn't here," Raoul confirms, furiously tapping out a mess on his phone. "I'm following other leads, but Christos hasn't been seen anywhere tonight. Are you sure it was?—"

"It was him," I snap. "Christos was caught on the school's security cameras an hour before Dante went missing. He paid off one of the guards at the front gate."

The school called to tell me that no one on Dante's floor could find him, but "you shouldn't panic. We are doing everything we can to locate him. I'm sure he just wandered to another building."

But I knew. An hour before the school was willing to admit that Dante was gone, I'd already put my entire Bratva on the scent. I've reached out to every ally and called in every long-forgotten favor. In a matter of hours, I've turned this city upside down.

Still, no one has seen my son.

Raoul pockets his phone and paces. "We can put a man at every known Greek hangout. We can watch and see if Christos makes any moves, but that could take days."

"Too long," I snarl. "We don't have time. That's my son, Raoul."

An old ache rises in my chest. One I know all too fucking well. I know what it's like to lose a child. I can't do it again. I won't.

Viviana is safe at the mansion with Anatoly, but if anything happens to Dante, she'll be gone, too. She blames me for this, and I agree with her. I'm the one who sent him away. I'm the one who separated them.

If I can't bring him home, I'll lose them both.

"We don't have time to waste."

I push past Raoul and through the blacked-out double doors of Christos's club. It's a weeknight, so the dance floor is sparse. But multi-colored lights strobe around the room and music thumps through the speakers.

A waitress in a mini skirt and fishnet top peels away from the bar and makes her way over to us with a smile. "Would you two gentlemen like a table or booth?"

"Take me to the office," I order.

"I can get you a private room." Her eyebrow arches. "I'm available for dances. I'd be happy to take care of you."

Usually, I'd let the woman down easy, but my patience ran out hours ago. "If you want to take care of me, then take me to your boss," I say. "I only came to kill one person tonight, but I'd be happy to add you to the list if you push me."

Her eyes go wide. She looks from me to Raoul and I watch as recognition flickers across her face. She knows us. I'm sure our faces are on a "kill on sight" sign somewhere in one of the back rooms. Christos doesn't like anyone toeing into his territory.

She swallows and nods. "Okay. Follow me."

Her hips don't sway nearly as much as they first did as she leads us across the dance floor to a door in the back right corner of the club. We step into a dim hallway that still feels painfully bright after the strobe lights from the main room.

I think about Dante being held in a place like this, scared and alone while music thumps through the walls. I focus on all the arts and crafts I can make with Christos' intestines to keep myself from tearing the building apart brick by fucking brick.

The waitress takes us to the middle of the hallway and then points to a door straight ahead. "He's in there—and, if anyone asks, I didn't bring you back here."

"Won't they already know?" Raoul asks, his eyes flicking to the two obvious cameras affixed to the ceiling.

"The system doesn't work," she replies. "The cameras haven't recorded anything for a couple weeks now. Not at any of Christos's clubs. The dancers think he's planning something."

"Like what?" I ask.

She holds up her hands in innocence. Her long, silver nails reflect the dim fluorescent lights. "I don't mess with that side of things. I'm here to make money and feed my kids."

"Keep everyone out of this hallway for the next half-hour and I'll forget we ever met," I tell her.

She nods and hurries back into the club like her life depends on it.

As soon as the door closes behind her, I kick open the door at the end of the hall.

"What the hell?" The square-shaped man behind the desk starts to stand up, his face twisted in a scowl. Then he sees me.

He doesn't need a refresher the way the waitress did. He recognizes me immediately.

His face falls and he drops back into his chair. The metal legs squeal under his weight. "This area is for employees only."

"That's perfect. Because I've got a job for you." I gesture for Raoul to close the door and it clicks shut a second later. The music from the club is even more muted. No one will hear him scream. "You tell me everything I want to know. In return, I won't kill you."

His eyelids twitch. "If you want money, I can open the safe. The bar has cash. I can clear it out for you, if you want."

I pull the gun out of my pocket and aim it at his forehead. "I'm not interested in cash. I want to know where Christos Drakos is tonight."

Sweat drips down his forehead. His collar turns a darker shade of gray as panic soaks through his shirt. The room smells stale and bitter.

I hope Dante isn't in a room like this. I hope he isn't with a man like this.

"Mr. Drakos owns the club, but I don't know anything about?—"

His lie is lost to a yelp as I press the barrel of the gun to kiss his forehead. "You have no fucking clue what I know, apparently. Because I know for a fact that you have at least one useful piece of information for me in that block head of yours."

He's shaking from head to toe. "I swear I don't know anything! I don't know where your son is."

There it is.

I feel Raoul stiffen behind me so I know he heard it, too. A confession. As good as, anyway.

I cock the gun, ignoring the man's sob of terror. "Explain to me how a random mudak like you, sitting in the back of a dingy club with low-rent dancers, knows my son is missing before almost anyone in the world?"

His eyes widen as he realizes what he did. What he said.

"You've already betrayed your boss's trust," I explain, tracing the round line of his face down to his fleshy jaw with my gun. I wedge the barrel there against his neck. "So you might as well save your own worthless life in the meantime."

He licks his lips and blows out a shaky breath. "What do you want to know?"