Diamonds are Forever (Diamonds Are Forever Trilogy 3)

“Twenty minutes, sir. I ran down to the parking. Her car is gone.”

I’m already tracking her number with the geolocation app. “Her phone?”

“She left it in a trashcan in the toilets. I monitored her location. That’s why I thought she was still in there. I kept on checking her location, sir. I swear—”

“Stop making fucking excuses. Call our connections. Put word out that we’re looking for her. Give them her car model and license plate number.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nobody fucking touches her. Anyone who lays a finger on her is dead.” I cut the call.

Fuck.

Stabbing my fingers into my hair, I stare at the circus unfolding around me while I try to think like Zoe. What would she do? Where would she go?

My mother enters the lounge dressed in her finest. Holding out her hands, she says with a glowing face, “There he is.”

The Zanetti clan trickles in behind her—Paolo, Leonardo, Izabella, and her mother, Noemi. I barely spare them a glance.

My hands are shaking with the urge to commit murder. I’ve lost something precious, and I can’t live without it.

I want her back.

Now.

Turning on my heel, I leave the room without offering anyone a greeting. In a far-off corner of my mind, I register Izabella’s fallen expression. The manners my mother has drilled into me dictate that I stop and offer an explanation, at the very least, an apology. It would be only that. Manners. I’m too apathetic toward my future fiancée to care how she feels. All I can think about is that Zoe is on the loose in a dangerous city where at least a hundred or more dangerous criminals would love to capture and torture her to get to me. Kill her.

Fuck!

I slam the door open with a palm and rush through the foyer.

“Maxime!” My mother’s voice and clacking heels chase after me. She finally catches up with me at the entrance. “Where are you going?” she cries, grabbing my arm. “What’s wrong?”

“Not now.” I shake her off. “Zoe ran.”

Her body jerks. Her face goes white. “What did you say to me?”

“I said, Zoe ran.”

“This is your engagement weekend, Maxime.”

“I don’t give a damn!”

“Oh, God.” My mother places a hand over her heart. “This isn’t happening.”

I follow her gaze. Izabella and Leonardo are standing just inside the door. Izabella’s face is drawn. Leonardo looks furious.

How similar they look, my mother and Izabella. So groomed. So composed. So perfect. Like cut flowers cultivated for a vase. Pretty to look at, but their petals have no smell. They’ve been brought up to accept their fate. Not like Zoe. She’s a wildflower, a rose that smells sweet like a rose should. She’s authentic.

Leonardo must’ve told his family what Zoe means to me, yet Izabella hasn’t run. She’ll never run because of another woman. She’ll turn a blind eye and the other cheek, over and over, just like my mother does, no matter how many times my father comes home smelling of whores and infidelity.

Then it strikes me. That’s what makes Zoe different from the women facing me. She believes in love. She believes in something beautiful. Not convenience or money or duty or a business deal. She believes in the real thing, the once-in-a-lifetime kind of love you find with a soul mate. That’s how she survived, how she managed to stay afloat in family violence and poverty. That’s how she survived me.

Fuck me.

That’s her secret, the knowledge I was chasing so hard, the hope I wanted to steal.

The answer is love.

I’m incapable of love, but I want hers. I want it more than anything. If I don’t find her, there’s no hope for me. If I don’t get her back, my happiest moments will be confined to the stolen years we spent together.

I don’t fucking think so.

Trying to hold me back by grabbing a handful of my jacket in her fist, my mother says, “Maxime, if you walk out of here now, I’ll never forgive you.”

I couldn’t give a damn.

Jerking free, I make my way down the porch steps with long strides.

“Your father will disown you,” my mother calls behind me. “Is that what you want?” When I don’t stop, she goes for the ultimate insult. “You’re behaving shamefully, like a lovesick puppy, not the respectable head of your father’s business.”

Her words still me. I pause with my hand on the door handle of the car.

I guess she’s right. In a way, this is my own kind of loving.

Just not the selfless kind.

I’m going after Zoe with everything I’ve got.

Chapter 2

Zoe

Our flight lands just after ten at night. Stepping from the plane onto South African soil is like an out-of-body experience. I feel lost and unanchored. This is home, and it’s not. I’ve become a stranger to my homeland and a stranger to myself. The woman who returns is nothing like the girl who left.