Page 108 of The Wrong Man

As I am pulled across the threshold, I take one last look at the street behind me. Somewhere out there, Dante is going to come back to an empty flat and broken doors. Somewhere out there, he is going to realize I am gone.

Find me, I think, hoping somehow the universe will carry the message to him. Please find me.

The door closes behind me, and I am swallowed by the darkness of my brother’s house.

Chapter thirty-one

Dante

Something is wrong.

I feel it before I even reach the building. A prickling at the back of my neck, an instinct honed by decades of violence and survival. The air feels different. Charged. Like the moment before a storm breaks.

I walk quickly and silently, my hand already reaching for the gun holstered beneath my jacket. The entranceway is quiet. Too quiet. No sound from behind my door, no soft movements or clattering of baking equipment or any of the small noises that have come to mean Dylan is home and safe and mine.

The door is open.

Not just unlocked. Open. Hanging off its hinges, the frame splintered where someone kicked it in. The locks I installed, three of them, top of the line, meant to keep the world out and Dylan in. Useless. Destroyed.

I draw my gun and step inside.

“Dylan?”

My voice sounds strange. Hollow. I move through the flat, room by room, clearing each space with mechanical precision, even though I already know what I am going to find.

Nothing. No one. He is gone.

The bedroom is the worst. The sheets are tangled, half pulled off the bed. A mug sits on the nightstand, empty, next to a crumpled wrapper from a packet of biscuits. McVities dark chocolate digestives. The ones I bought because he mentioned liking them once, days ago, in a rambling tangent about comfort food.

He was here. He was right here, safe in my bed, and someone took him.

The door has been forced open from the outside. The evidence is clear. Dylan hasn’t escaped. He didn’t leave of his own free will, and I hate how comforting that is. What kind of a monster am I? Dylan choosing to leave me, is infinitely better than Dylan in the hands of my enemies.

I sink down onto the edge of the mattress. My hands are shaking. I can’t remember the last time my hands shook.

Who? Who would dare? Who even knew he was here?

Carlo. Carlo knows. But Carlo would never betray me. We have been friends for years. He agreed to cover for me, lie for me, after he almost died at my hands when I thought he was threatening Dylan. He wouldn’t do this.

Which means someone else found out. Someone tracked Dylan here. Someone with the resources and the manpower to find me, break down my door and take him by force.

I pull out my phone and tap Carlo’s number. He answers on the second ring.

“Dante? What’s wrong?”

“Dylan is gone.” The words taste like ash. “Someone took him. Broke down my door, signs of a struggle. He is gone.”

Silence on the other end. Then Carlo’s voice, sharp and focused. “When?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been gone for three hours.”

“Any idea who?”

“No. But whoever it was, they had numbers. At least three men, maybe more, based on the damage.”

“I’m on my way. Don’t do anything stupid until I get there.”

The line goes dead. I sit in the wreckage of my bedroom, staring at the empty bed where Dylan should be.