Victor - Her Ruthless Husband (Ruthless Triad 3)

“Hell no, we didn't hire Yaron's brother,” Phantom answers a few moments later, confirming Victor’s suspicion.

He tries to send Dawn a message of warning. But he gets no response. Not even an indication that she’s read it. And when they attempt to trace her phone, they discover all location tracking services have been turned off.

After that he makes a call to Han. Several calls. And more suspicions are confirmed.

Yaron has disappeared, and Han can’t be sure he’s still on the island.

By now, Victor’s sick with anger and frustration. He can’t stop checking his phone, no matter how unlikely it’s becoming that Dawn will answer.

According to Phantom’s research, Yaron does have a brother named Jason. However, a visit to the address on record with the DMV yields nothing but an empty apartment.

How had this Jason infiltrated their ranks? Gotten close enough to Dawn to capture her without anyone suspecting?

That answer takes a little longer to discover. Bo, the guard Victor texted to drive Dawn to Pittsburgh with another guard of his choosing, is one of their most trusted members.

But they find his girlfriend with a slit throat in the apartment that they shared in Providence. It’s easy to put together the story after that. This Jason got to Bo by threatening his girlfriend. Most likely, he killed them both after compelling Bo to go along with the kidnapping.

Less than an hour after that discovery, a message finally appears in Victor’s text chain with Dawn. It’s a security camera feed link…

Victor’s stomach shatters when he sees where the link leads. And Phantom says. “Aw, fuck…”

To a video of Dawn and Lucy in what looks like a windowless bedroom suite.

There’s plenty of furniture in the room, but Dawn is sitting on the floor, crying with her arms wrapped around her belly. As if she’s trying to protect their precious baby from whatever would come next.

Remembered pain explodes in Victor’s chest, lungs, and throat at the sight of her. This is his worst nightmare. What happened to his mother all over again.

Then another message from “Dawn” comes through about five minutes after he receives the video.

Keep watching! Tomorrow’s lesson will be even better.

Part III

LOVE LIKE WINTER

33

NORA

“That glühwein must be delicious,” Koyamo says as she and Nora walk home together from the Christmas market. “The big smile on your face makes me wish I’d gotten a cup to go, as well.”

Yes, the hot spiced wine is delicious. But it isn’t the reason for Nora’s smile.

After a lazy morning in bed, they decided on a whim to go to a Weihnachtsmarkt—or a Marché de Noël as Geneva’s French-speaking majority prefer to call the city’s annual Christmas markets. The one they chose is relatively new. It was only established a couple of decades ago as opposed to the couple of centuries that many of Switzerland’s other Christmas markets could claim.

But Nora liked how this Marché International de Noël combined the staid Swiss traditions with foreign ones. And, miracle of all miracles, it hadn’t been too packed with tourists.

So even though, Christmas markets have always been a bit pedestrian for Nora’s taste, she and Koyamo enjoyed shopping for trinkets and sampling foods from both the Swiss and international stalls at the hundreds of open-air stands. She also ignored her girlfriend’s protests and dragged her on a few rides.

It’s been a perfect day out with Koyamo. Which makes it easy for Nora to press the white cup of glühwein into her girlfriend’s hand and tell her, “I want you to have the rest.”

It’s true. If it were up to Nora, she would give Koyamo everything she had. She deserves nothing less.

A bit of Nora’s happy buzz fades at that thought. The engagement to Victor Zhang is off, but it’s only a matter of time before her father allies with someone else and calls her back to the States to seal the union in the most ancient way.

“Do you want it back?” Koyamo asks. “Here, please take it. I only wanted one sip.”

Koyamo’s tone is so hopeful, Nora can tell that the real reason she’s so eager to return the wine is that she doesn’t like the “rudeness” of drinking openly while walking.

Before their reunion in August, Nora would have teased Koyamo about the oh-so-mannerly Japanese woman trapped inside of the brazen lesbian hussy who’d let her girlfriend do all sorts of not so polite things to her all over her apartment.

But Nora no longer feels like she has the right to make fun of anyone. Not when she’s making the most of things until she’s called upon to play the role of the traditional mafia wife.

Instead, she takes Koyamo by the hand and reminds herself that every day waking up in her professor’s bed is a blessing. A precious gift she’ll never take for granted again.

“I just love being here with you,” she tells Koyamo.