Page 46 of Merciless Vow
The heavy atmosphere in the room shifted. The elevator doors at the far end of the lounge opened. Adolphus Vane stepped out, flanked by four of his personal guards. He looked older than he had in my office just days ago. His face was lined with the stress of a crumbling empire, but his eyes lit up when he saw his son.
"Elias." Adolphus hurried forward, his arms outstretched as if to claim a lost prize. "Welcome home, son."
Elias didn't stand. He didn't even reach for his father’s hand. "Vidar and I just stopped in for a drink. We have a mountain of work to get back to."
Adolphus’s expression didn't fall; it curdled. The joy vanished, replaced by a barely contained, purple-hued rage. He looked at me, then back at his son.
"You’re outnumbered in this room, Vidar," Adolphus hissed, his hand dropping toward his waistband. "You aren't going anywhere with my boy. He's staying here, where he belongs."
Elias didn't move toward his father. He moved toward me. "You’re acting like I’ve been kidnapped. I’m in the middle of a very lucrative business deal that I negotiated with the Blackwoods. Unless you want to jeopardize the family’s remaining liquidity, I suggest you let us finish our drinks."
Elias turned his back on his father—a move of staggering disrespect—and downed his whiskey in one gulp. "I'll see you in the car, Vidar."
I sat there for a long moment, staring directly into Adolphus Vane’s eyes. His men were tensed, waiting for the word to tear me apart. Adolphus was paralyzed. He looked at his son’s retreating back and then at the man who had effectively stolen his heir’s loyalty.
I noted something then that made the ache in my chest flare anew. In all of Adolphus’s bluster, in all of his demands for his son, he hadn't asked a single question about his daughter. He hadn't asked if Addie was safe, if she was fed, or if she was even alive.
I stood up, adjusted my jacket, and followed Elias out. No one touched me. No one followed me. No one said a single word.
My phone rang as I crossed the threshold of the Vanguard. I pulled it from my pocket, answering when I saw the caller ID. That earlier feeling in my gut blared warning signs.
"Sir, she's not at her desk. She's gone. We think she's been taken."
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ADDIE
The darkness wasn't absolute, but it was heavy. It pressed against my chest like all the mediocre male managers I'd dealt with over the years. As a wolf, the shadows should have been my playground, a map of grayscale and motion. Instead, everything was a blurred, suffocating fog. My head throbbed as if my brain was trying to push out of my skull. My skin felt too tight for my bones.
It wasn't my first experience with wolfsbane, unfortunately. I'd been introduced to it as a child when I misbehaved. It didn't just dampen the wolf; it severed the connection entirely, leaving me trapped in a human frame that felt fragile and dangerously weak.
Whoever had taken me assumed that because my wolf was sidelined, I was helpless. They didn't realize I had experience with the drug, or that I'd spent the last ten years of my life perfecting the art of beingjusthuman. While other shiftersrelied on their heightened reflexes and brute strength to navigate the world, I had spent my time in lecture halls and boardrooms, meticulously suppressing my own nature to blend in.
I was used to the dullness. I had lived in the gray for a decade, pretending my nose couldn't track a scent from three blocks away or that my ears couldn't hear a heartbeat across a room. I had trained my human mind to be twice as sharp because I couldn't rely on my claws.
The wolfsbane made me sluggish, yes. It made my muscles ache. But it didn't make me entirely defenseless. I still had my mind. And I knew I had to get out of here.
I reached out, my fingers brushing cold stone and rough velvet. I wasn't tied up. My hands were free. It didn't matter. I couldn't even summon the strength to stand, let alone shift and fight my way out of whatever hole I’d been dropped into.
A flickering fluorescent light hummed to life, stinging my eyes. As the spots cleared, I saw them. Men. Rough, older men with the hard, hungry eyes of predators who had spent too long in the shadows of moonlight. They leaned against the damp walls of what looked like a converted cellar, their leers barely concealed. The scent-dampening drugs made the world smell like wet cardboard, but the primal vibration in the room was unmistakable. They were all wolves.
The heavy iron door at the end of the room groaned open. A man walked in, his heels clicking sharply against the stone. I recognized that gait before I even saw his face.
Dante Lupetto.
I had seen him once, ten years ago, on the night my father had tried to hand me over like a piece of livestock. I had looked into Dante’s cold, calculating eyes, felt the rot behind his smile, and I had run.
Today he looked impeccable. His suit was dark, tailored to a sharp silhouette that screamed old-world authority. But as he stepped into the light, the facade crumbled. The lapels were slightly frayed. The silk of his tie was from a collection five seasons old. Like my father, Dante was a ghost clinging to a throne made of dust. If memory served, his sons were infamous for their absence, ghosts in their own right who refused to bolster their father’s failing legacy.
Dante stopped a few feet from me. His gaze swept over my body with a clinical focus. He didn't look at my face; he looked at my throat.
"Adolpha, you’ve grown into quite the prize." He wasn't looking me in the eye. He was looking at my breasts.
"My husband won't take kindly to his wife being kidnapped."
Dante stepped closer, reaching out with a gloved hand to hook the neckline of my plum dress, yanking it down just enough to expose my collarbone. "The skin is unmarred. No tooth marks. No scarring." He leaned in, his scent—stale tobacco and sour wine—filling my dampened senses. "A contract was signed a decade ago, little runaway. You were promised to a Lupetto. You rejected my eldest, that you wereunfitfor our line. And yet, here you are, carrying a Blackwood's scent."
He let go of my dress, his eyes flashing with a yellow, predatory light. "His scent, but not his bite. Which makes you fair game."
