by Amy Gamet
“Get your hands off my wife.”
Then Mason was gone, and her eyes flew open to watch Matteo’s fist sink into Mason’s face with an audible cracking of bone. She wiped at her face with a shaking hand and pulled her robe closer around her, watching punch after punch until Mason was clearly unconscious.
Maybe dead.
She hoped he was dead.
Then Matteo stood before her, his eyes intense and searching hers. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
She dove into him, desperate for the safety of his arms, the warm, familiar sweetness of this man making everything better, like cold water on a burn.
His hand stroked her hair, her back, her arms. “Are you okay?”
She nodded against his chest and opened her eyes. There on the floor was the father of her child, his face red and swelling, his pants pulled down around his knees and his penis hanging awkwardly to the side.
Men in security uniforms came to the door, instantly talking too loudly for her. “Get me out of here, please,” she said to Matteo, and he pulled her from the room.
29
Grace sat on the edge of the guest room bed, still wrapped in her towel. All she could see was Matteo punching Mason in the face. All she could think about was how it felt when he came to her rescue, the safety of his arms.
It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t hurt her. It wasn’t just that he’d saved the day.
She watched him from the corner of her eye as he wrung out a washcloth and brought it to her, lightly pressing it against her face. From the sting, she knew she must have an injury, but that was her first indication.
Get your hands off my wife.
It was those words, said in a heated moment of danger. Matteo hadn’t been pretending, or at the very least, she hadn’t wanted him to be.
She could see now, her feelings for him had been growing slowly over these last few weeks, with every shared confidence and kind gesture, with the way the baby looked at him and the way she was beginning to see him in her heart.
“Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Maybe some tequila?”
“No thanks.”
She thought of him asking to be her friend, and how she told him she needed a savior. In so many ways, that was what he had become. “Thank you for coming to my rescue,” she said.
“Anytime.”
She resisted the urge to talk about Mason, to tell Matteo that he hadn’t been like that before.
He wasn’t worth the time it would take to say the words.
She shook her head to clear it and stood up. Her breasts were full and beginning to ache. “Nico’s been sleeping for a long time. I fed him when we first got home, but that was hours ago.”
“I’m surprised the commotion didn’t wake him.”
“Thank God.” The last thing she needed was Mason finding out about her son. “I’m going to go check on him.”
Matteo eyed her with concern. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“Thanks, but I’m feeling better. I really appreciate what you did, Matteo.”
He nodded.
She walked down the hall to Nico’s room, opened the door quietly, and tiptoed into the darkness. She couldn’t control Matteo or her feelings for him. She certainly couldn’t control his feelings for her, or lack thereof.
This would make everything all right, the sight of her son and knowing he would soon be nestled in her arms. She’d missed him so much while she was gone and their brief reunion before his nap this morning hadn’t filled the void that had been left by his absence.
She peered over the edge of his crib rail with a smile on her face and froze.
The crib was empty.
30
She looked frantically around the room, reaching for the light switch and turning it on. The window was open, a cool breeze blowing the curtains, a dresser moved out of the way, but her mind refused to acknowledge the scene.
Someone must have heard the baby crying and taken him, trying to be helpful. The maid or her father. One of the other staff. Somebody.
She walked into the hallway just as Trudy came around the corner.
“Have you seen the baby?” she heard the frantic edge in her voice, registered the concern on the maid’s face in response to it.
“Isn’t he down for a nap?”
“My father must have taken him. I’m sure that’s it.”
“No, ma’am. Your father left more than an hour ago, before the police came.”
The police. The police were here because Mason had been here, right in her room. How had Mason gotten inside?
“Matteo!” She was running now, screaming his name and flying back down the long hallway as fast as her feet would take her. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the note that had been left in the baby’s crib weeks before.
Bastard.
Matteo was in the hallway, jogging toward her. “What is it?”
“The baby! Nico’s gone. Somebody took my son.”
Then Matteo was on his phone barking out orders to close the gates, call in the security team, to stop anyone on the premises.
The light of her life was gone. An overwhelming dizziness swept over her and her vision got dark around the edges. She passed out before she hit the ground.
31
Matteo was pacing.
It had all been right in front of him the whole time, and he blamed himself for not putting two and two together.
Grace’s lover was involved in the plot to take down her father. The whole scene this afternoon was nothing more than a distraction to keep the household occupied and the baby alone.
Alone and vulnerable.
Mason Petrovich was in custody and not talking. Hell, they probably couldn’t even hold him for very long even though he was clearly involved. He wasn’t the one who had kidnapped Nico.
Matteo stared at President Vasile, suspicion getting the better of him. “Did you know her boyfriend was part of Ten Komanda?”
“I told you she needed protection.”
“Oh, my God. You knew.”
“I wasn’t certain.”
Matteo hung his head in his hands. “You should have fucking told me.”
“I couldn’t prove it.”
“You should have fucking told me! This isn’t a court of law. You thought your daughter was sleeping with one of the most dangerous men on the planet, and you said nothing. You should have told me your suspicions so I could better protect your daughter and grandson.”
“She cut me out of her life completely and left the country with him. By the time she came back here I wasn’t willing to ask the questions that would tell me for sure, but Talia was steadfastly convinced.”
“If I’d known, I would have done better,” said Matteo.
“I didn’t want to lose her again.”
A police officer walked in the room and Matteo pounced on him. “I’d like to interrogate him.”
“Under what authority? You are the victim’s husband.”
“There’s more going on here than you understand. I need to get in that room.”
“I’ll take full responsibility, officer,” said Vasile. “Let him do it.”
Matteo walked into the interrogation room, surprised by the intense desire he had to attack this man again.
“We meet again.” Petrovich took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled, the smoke filling the small room. “We have something in common, you and me, it would seem. She is very good, yes? I taught her to fuck well.”
Matteo’s hands twitched with the need to hurt him once more.
“I am the man who broke in your wife,” Petrovich said. “Who knocked her up with my big dick, my seed growing in her belly like a parasite.” He laughed. “The bastard, come to deliver our country from Vasile.”
Matteo grabbed the back of the man’s head and banged Petrovich’s forehead on the metal table. He kept hold of his hair and spoke next to his face. “Your real name is Vladimir Petrov,” he said, repeating the information
Logan had sent over an hour earlier.
Now he had his attention.
“You’re thirty-four years old,” he continued. “You received a dishonorable discharge from the Russian army after you were caught selling munitions on the black market. You were suspected of raping two female soldiers, but they wouldn’t identify you, so you walked away instead of going to prison.”
“I want a lawyer.”
Matteo banged Petrov’s head on the table again. “I want my son back.”
“Marrying the whore doesn’t make him yours. You’ve been doing a lot of pretending, but Grace was pregnant before I left Switzerland.”
“You knew.”
“Of course. Did you think I was there because I loved her? I know Grace has some delusions, but you are a grown man.”
“You were trying to get her pregnant.”
“Most fun assignment I’ve ever had. It took longer than expected, however. I can’t say I was displeased about that.”
“Your organization is responsible for the terror attacks, too.”
“We’re not that different, you and me. You work for one side, and I for another. Each of us will do what is necessary to do our jobs well.”
“You took an innocent child away from his mother. I would never do such a thing.”
“Come now, it’s really just shifting the babe from one side of the family to the other.”
“The public is going to feel bad for President Vasile. Their sympathy will affect their vote.”
“The public isn’t going to hear anything about this. If they do, they will also learn of his duplicity in this sham of a marriage you have created. We have the priest, minus half his leg, of course. He’ll admit to falsifying the date on the marriage certificate. Either way, Vasile is out of the race. Either he steps down or he is shamed into doing so.”
“And what about you?”
“Mason Petrovich is being bailed out as we speak. He has done nothing illegal, though I may need a new alias, just to be safe.”
“You’re not going anywhere. This whole interview is on tape.”
Petrov smiled. “No, it isn’t. Do you think I would be so foolish?”
A knock on the mirror brought Matteo’s head up sharply. He walked into the other room, where a two-way mirror revealed Petrov grinning like a Cheshire cat. A lone officer stood in the room. “The camera’s not on, buddy. I just walked in here.”
“What about the officers who were in here when I arrived?”
“What officers? We were all in a meeting.”
32
Logan hung on to the stabilizing bar overhead as the chopper veered left and began its descent. “For fuck’s sake, Hawk, try to keep it in the air,” he yelled.
Cowboy’s deep voice came through Logan’s headset. “Red is waiting for us on the roof. He says they’ve got the local police and the president’s whole security team looking for the kid. So far, no ransom note or contact of any kind.”
The chopper dipped and Logan closed his eyes against a wave of nausea. “Ten Komanda isn’t going to be easily defeated.”
“What’s their background?” asked Cowboy.
“One guy came from military intelligence after a stint with Russia’s elite army unit. They’ve got another guy who’s an ex-pat from the U.S., former Secret Service.”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” said Hawk. “Secret Service agents don’t go AWOL.”
Logan nodded. “Unless they’re batshit crazy. This one lost his wife to a terrorist cell.”
“That would do it,” said Cowboy. “Who else do they have?”
“A research analyst. Former computer programmer and cryptologist for hire.”
“Kind of like you.”
“That’s exactly right. They’re all kind of like us. But dark. Evil.”
“The complete opposite of HERO Force.”
“But just as strong.” Cowboy pointed his finger at each man. “If they’ve really got the baby, and I think they do, it’s going to be harder than hell to get him back alive.”
Logan furrowed his brow. “I don’t get it. What does a big, bad terrorist organization like that care about a little baby?”
“Who said they care? They’re getting paid. That’s enough for these people.”
“But a baby? Who does that?”
“It’s not about the baby. It’s about leverage. It’s about the people who love that baby.”
Logan wondered if Matteo was one of those people. “There was a picture of Red and Grace on the newswire this morning. Any of you guys see it?” he asked.
“What did it look like?” asked Cowboy.
“I can’t describe it. The look on their faces is just so… They look like they’re in love. Is that crazy?”
Cowboy turned to Logan. “When was it taken?”
“Yesterday. She’d just given a speech at some political rally. The caption said he was supporting his new wife in her latest endeavor, but something about that picture didn’t seem like they were pretending to care about each other. It looked real.”
“Not so crazy,” said Cowboy. He cursed colorfully. “We’ve got to find this kid and bring him home safety. Not just for the president and his daughter but for Red.”
33
Grace was beside herself. From the moment she’d woken up from her faint, she’d been an uncomfortable mix of frantic energy and desperation, needing to find her son and having no idea where to begin.
She was pacing the house, the grounds, going from one group of policemen to another, hoping to hear of a plan or something she could do to help in the search and repeatedly coming up empty.
Her hand trailed along the paneled wall of the hallway that led to her father’s room. His deep, booming voice could be heard before she reached the doorway.
“They have no need to issue demands. The threat has already been made. Drop out of the race or Nico will be killed.”
“If he’s still alive,” came Matteo’s voice.
She stormed into the room. “Don’t say that! My baby is alive. He’s going to come back to me.”
Matteo stood and put his arms on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there.”
“At least give my son the courtesy of assuming he’s alive and in need of rescuing before you simply write him off forever.”
“I’m not writing anyone off,” he said. “I believe he’s alive, and I will do everything in my power to get him back to you.”
“That responsibility is mine,” said Vasile. “I’ve had my secretary call a press conference for one o’clock, where I will officially drop out of the run for president.”
“But Father—”
“It’s the only thing they want. The only thing that can bring my grandson home to his mother. And to me.” Her father’s voice cracked, the most emotion she’d seen him express in years.
“What happens to the country when Trane wins the presidency?” she asked.
“We pray for them. Our family has made enough sacrifices in the name of patriotism. Now it’s time to protect our own.”
Grace nodded, her face crumpling into tears. Her father was giving up his ideals, everything he’d worked so hard for. She knew how much that meant to him, the price he was being asked to pay. “How can we be sure they’ll bring him back?”
Matteo walked to her and opened his arms. She fell into them. “We can only hope,” he said. “HERO Force is on their way in. They’ll be here within the hour. Together we’ll do everything we can to bring Nico home.”
“I want to help. I need to do something.”
A knock on the door and it opened, Talia standing there. “Sir, they’re ready for you now.”
Vasile nodded solemnly and led the way out of the room, Matteo and Grace following him, taking their seats to the side of the press corps. “This is a sad day for history,” she whispered as her father took to the podium, cameras flashing and recording.
“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow countrymen,” he began. “It i
s with great sorrow that I tell you I am resigning from this campaign.” A collective exclamation buzzed through the room. “I will not be running for the presidency in this term or any other. I have enjoyed my time leading Lutsia, but it is time for me to step aside.”
The camera flashes went crazy as reporters vied to have their questions answered. “Mr. President, can you tell us what’s prompted this sudden change of direction?”
“I have decided to put the needs of my family before those of my countrymen. I sincerely hope the hardworking people of Lutsia understand.”
“Mr. President, who will be left to lead the charge against Victor Trane in the coming election? Has your party nominated another candidate?”
“It’s too early to say who my party will delegate to run in the election. We have not yet made any plans for my replacement.”
Grace whispered in Matteo’s ear, “He’s leaning forward. Is he okay? Why’s he doing that?”
“And he’s white as a sheet.” He took her hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“What’s happening?”
Before he could answer her, Vasile fell to one side, just barely catching himself on the podium. The room filled with concerned noises as Grace and Matteo made their way to the front.
Vasile fell over, landing on the floor with a heavy thud.
“Daddy!” Grace screamed.
“Back up! Give him some space,” said Matteo. “Get a medic in here, now.” Matteo searched Vasile’s pockets frantically, desperate to find the vile that could save his father-in-law’s life.
“What’s happening?” asked Grace. “What are you looking for?”
“Nitroglycerin.”
She didn’t speak again. He found the pills, quickly opening them and placing one beneath the president’s tongue. He looked different this time than he had during the other attack Matteo had witnessed, his color paler, his features still.
Matteo feared he was dead. “Is there an AED in the building?”
“What?” asked Grace.
“A defibrillator to shock his heart.”
