Gilded Tears: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 2) Nicole Fox (no david read aloud TXT) 📖

down into the corridor until the noise lessens.

We’re standing right outside the staff bathrooms when she turns to me.

“I’m Sara,” she says. “Are you really her husband?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want with her?” she demands.

Her voice is strong for such a small person. I know she’s nervous of me, but there’s a determination in her eyes that impresses me at the same time.

“I want to make sure she’s safe.” It’s an honest answer.

She studies my expression for a long time. “What’s her name?” she asks.

“What?”

“You say you’re her husband,” Sara says in a measured tone. “Then you’ll know her real name. It wasn’t Emily.”

“You’re right,” I say. “It’s Esme.”

I see the flash of recognition in her eyes. She seems to relax a little.

“She saved my life,” Sara whispers. “Right here.”

I don’t like the sound of that. “What happened?” I ask.

“There was a group here for dinner. A bunch of mafia guys with tattoos and bad attitudes. Kinda like you—no offense. One of the men followed me back here and… he was going… he was going to…”

“I get it,” I cut in. “You don’t have to relive that.” My stomach is curdling in anger already.

It’s bad enough that they—whoever “they” are—touched this sweet, innocent young woman.

But if they laid a hand on my wife…

“Yes,” Sara gulps. “I thought I was alone, but Esme was in the bathroom. She came up behind him and bashed his head in. She was so pregnant. Ready to pop. But she risked herself for me.”

“What happened after that?” I ask urgently.

“She told me to go back inside,” Sara admits. “She told me she needed to leave town.”

“Did she tell you where she was headed?”

“No,” Sara says, shaking her head. “I’m sorry—she didn’t tell me a thing. And honestly… I don’t think she knew herself.”

Disappointment sours through me. Another dead end.

So close and yet so far away.

How much longer will I be chasing a ghost?

And then I remember something.

“She didn’t have a car, did she?”

Sara frowns and thinks about it. “No, she didn’t,” she remembers. “I guess she took the bus out of town.”

I nod. “Thank you,” I tell the girl as I move past her towards the exit.

“Wait!” Sara calls out after me.

I glance behind me.

“If you find her, tell her…” She swallows hard, straightens up tall as if to psyche herself up, and then finishes, “Tell her I think of her every day.”

I nod solemnly. “So do I.”

Then I head for the bus station.

29

Artem

A stoop-shouldered African American man sits inside the ticket booth.

“Excuse me.”

He looks up and his eyebrows rise as he takes me in.

“You don’t look like the type of person who takes the bus,” he comments.

“I’m not here for a bus,” I tell him. “I’m here for information.”

“Route map is right over there,” he says, pointing at the stand of brochures behind me.

“Not that kind of information. I need to know if you sold a ticket to a woman in the last few weeks. She would have been dark-haired, exotic features, very beautiful. Heavily pregnant.”

“What’s it to you?”

I grip the edge of the counter hard between my fingers. This man knows something. The trail isn’t dead after all.

“I need you to help me find her,” I say. “I’ll pay you whatever you need.”

He scrutinizes me up and down. Then, seeing something in me—fuck if I know what—he sighs.

“Yeah, I know that girl,” the man says. “Except she wasn’t pregnant when she left town. She’d had her baby.”

My body goes cold with stillness.

Esme had given birth.

In this shithole of a town.

“Beautiful little fella, too,” the man continues. “Didn’t look much like her, though. But he had her eyes.”

“He?” I say, feeling my heart swell with an emotion I can’t quite name.

Is it joy? Pain? Hurt? Loss? Regret?

Maybe it’s all the above, and my mind simply can’t process it.

I have a son.

Fuck.

I have a son.

“Phoenix.”

“Excuse me?”

“His name. The baby’s,” he tells me. “She named him Phoenix.”

Phoenix?

“I’m guessing you’re the father, am I right?” he asks directly.

“Yeah,” I mutter. I’m still lost in thought, testing the name in my head again and again.

I have a son.

His name is Phoenix.

I have a son.

His name is Phoenix…

I wrench my eyes back down to meet the man’s.

“I’m going to get her,” I announce. Like I’m trying to reassure him. Like I’m trying to reassure myself, too.

“You should never have let her go in the first place.”

Well, I guess I deserve that.

“You sold her a bus ticket, didn’t you?” I ask.

“I did,” he says. “I can give you the name of the town. Better yet, I can tell you where she’ll be.”

I pump my fist in pure joy.

At last, a fucking break.

I have a son. His name is Phoenix.

I have a wife. Her name is Esme.

And I’m coming to save them both.

The shelter looks like a ravaged shell, a skeleton masquerading as a refuge. I don’t focus on any of the women who pass by me.

But I feel their eyes following me down the hall.

“She stayed here,” Maisie Blackwell tells me as she gestures to the large dorm room that holds at least a dozen chaotically organized bunk beds. “In that bed over there. Bottom bunk.”

There’s a woman lying on the bed now, with her back to us.

“How long did she stay?” I ask.

“Not long,” she answers. “A week.”

Fuck, I curse inwardly. So close yet again.

And yet here I am, grasping at air once more. Still chasing a ghost who doesn’t want to be found.

“You don’t know why she left?”

“She disappeared one morning before breakfast,” Maisie replies. “Maybe it was hard for her dealing with the other women. Not all of them took kindly to having a screaming infant around.”

It twitch instinctively at the mention of my son.

My son.

I have a son and nothing about that feels real. I know it won’t until I see him. Until I see her.

I think back to the moment I first found out.

Suffice it to say, it was nothing like I imagined it would be.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have any more information