Page 48 of Diary from an Inked Throne

His fingers dug into mine, forcing my attention on him. “It’s not that. I know physically, you’re good. I can see that.” He stared at me miserably. “You have no idea how heartbreaking it is to get a lead, then by the time you get there, nothing. No sign of them. It’s nearly destroyed me more than once. I can’t do that to you. It’s cruel.”

Tears formed behind my eyes, and I swallowed down the growing lump in my throat. “I didn’t realize you’d gotten that close. You never said…”

He ducked his head, so we were eye height. “I never wanted to get your hopes up.”

My voice cracked. “It’s just as hard having none.”

He looked like I’d taken a knife and shoved it right into his gut, twisting it for good measure. But then he nodded and took his phone from his pocket. He tapped the screen a few times and then handed it to me.

A video was cued, a white triangle in the middle waiting for me to push it to start the footage rolling. I glanced at Luca. “What’s this?”

He nodded at it. “Gas station footage from last week. We only got it two days ago. Almost five days too late for us to do anything with it.” He eyed me. “You don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to. But I just want you to understand, I never asked you to stay here to make it easier for me, or because I thought you were incapable of doing what Lynx and I’ve been doing. It was always because I wanted to spare you pain.”

My fingers trembled. But I had to know what he’d seen. I hit play on the video and gasped as I made out Enzo’s form at a gas pump, filling an SUV. He wore a baseball cap low on his forehead, and he avoided looking at the surveillance cameras, but I would have known his face anywhere.

I saw it every time I closed my eyes. There was no escaping it.

I watched it for long seconds that felt like hours, my mouth trying to form the words my heart was too scared to say.

I wanted to ask where James was. If Enzo was alone, where the hell was my son?

And then the back door of the SUV opened, and a woman stepped out.

A tiny baby in her arms.

Screaming filled my ears, and it took Luca engulfing me in his arms and holding me tight to realize the screams were mine. I bit down on my tongue, trying to fight the hysteria that rose inside me at seeing my tiny baby in the arms of another woman. A stranger.

The phone shook in my fingers so badly I could barely make out the little movements of James’s arms and legs. I realized, despite the video having no sound, that he was screaming too.

“I’m going to be sick,” I whispered through tears that streamed down my face.

The video cut out, and I instantly hit play again, this time zooming in on his tiny screwed-up face.

I’d had barely any time with him, but it didn’t matter.

I knew him.

He was the missing piece of my heart, existing without me.

On attempting to watch it a third time, while my heart was so completely shattered all I could do was try to breathe in between sobs, Luca took the phone and scrolled to another image.

“This was from another day. From a motel security camera in a different state. I saved this one to circulate to the guys so they knew the face of the little boy they were all out searching for.” He swallowed thickly. “I was wrong for not sending it to you too.”

I traced my finger over the screen. This image of James was clearer, the image taken during the day when there was more light so it wasn’t dark and grainy like the gas station footage.

The zoomed-in photo of James settled me. His dark eyes stared right into the camera, like he’d known it was there, or that at some point I’d be watching it. His button nose was so perfect, his rosebud lips so sweet.

He wasn’t crying in this image, and he appeared clean and warm, and it gave me hope that the woman traveling with Enzo was at least taking care of his basic needs. “He has hair…I don’t know that I realized that. He was covered in blood and amniotic fluid, and I only got to hold him for a second.” My face crumpled. “What kind of mother doesn’t even know if her baby has hair or not?”

Luca just held me tighter, whispering that none of this was my fault.

And yet it felt like it was. “It was my job to protect him,” I whispered. “I’m his mother, and I couldn’t.” I stared up at Luca. “We have to go to wherever this video was taken. They can’t be that far.”

Luca shook his head. “We already did. There was no trace of them. And they’re moving fast, skipping from state to state. We’ve been one step behind the entire time.” He sighed. “What we’ve been doing isn’t working. And the answer isn’t either of us going back out there. We need more than just my men. We need every person, everywhere, searching for Enzo. I want to make it so he can’t hide. So wherever he goes, someone will recognize him.”

I nodded slowly, agreeing wholeheartedly. But I didn’t know how to make that happen. “We need the police to put out one of those missing person alerts, except they don’t care. Half of them have to be in Enzo’s pocket. How else would they have gotten Lynx out of jail? When Dax and I reported James missing, they told us Enzo has the right to take his son wherever he wants.”

Luca’s hand slammed against the closet wall sharply. “Not his son! Our fucking son! Ours!”