“No.”
Relief rushed through me, but I refused to let it take hold. I wouldn’t rest until she was in my arms again. “You’re sure?”
“Not that I could see. They wanted her alive.”
Alive.
The word should have been comforting but instead it sharpened everything. Kyrill was already studying the scene, eyes moving across the courtyard, the vehicles, the angles of impact.
“This wasn’t random,” he observed quietly. “They knew you’d be gone.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “They did.”
Which meant someone had wanted this to happen.
Someone who knewexactlywhere to strike.
I looked toward the villa, with its front doors hanging open and a tray of her muffins sitting on the counter.
The image of her standing in the kitchen earlier, laughing at Misha’s antics and arguing with Kyrill about something trivial, flashed vividly through my mind.
Now she was fucking gone. Taken from our home.
Kyrill stepped closer. “You need to think. This was planned. They want leverage.”
“Well … seems like they fucking have it,” I snarled.
“If you rush into this—”
“This is abouther,” I barked. “There isnothingmore importantthan her.”
He studied my face for a moment; he had an odd expression, as if he knew something I didn’t. “I understand this is hard, bratan, but you’re making this personal.”
I turned toward him slowly. “Of course I’m taking it fucking personally.Mywoman was taken from our own goddamn house.”
The realization slammed into me with the weight of a freight train, and my knees actually went weak.
Kyrill watched me for another long second. “You love her.”
It wasn’t a question, and I made no attempt to deny it.
“Yes.”
Kyrill exhaled slowly. “Well.”
“What?” I snapped.
“This is extremely inconvenient timing.” He sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“Why?”
Was he trying to piss me off with his cryptic shit?
“Because,” he said dryly, “you’re about to become irrational … and this is usually my job.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“We need to find her. Right the fuck now.”