She nods.

I jump up from the couch, furious. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have stopped her. Why didn’t you stop her?” I shout.

“Keep your voice down, Landon! I have neighbors,” she snaps.

“I don’t give a damn about your neighbors. I want to know where my wife is!”

Sonia does not say anything, just waits for me to calm down. I pace the floor for a few minutes, tugging on my hair before I sit down on the couch.

“She was happy. We were happy. Or at least I thought she was. Am I just an idiot who could not see how miserable she was? Did she hate me that much? Resent me, the contract? Did she think the contract still bothered me?”

Sonia looks at me with sad eyes. “No, that’s not why she left.”

“Then why?” I croak out.

“I don’t know why she left, or where she went. But I do know that she loves you and Cahal very much. I do not know your story. Why you got married or why you acted like strangers when I first met her. She didn’t share that with me.”

We lapse into silence again. I mull her words over. “You really don’t know where she is?”

Sonia looks me dead in the eyes. “No, I don’t know where she is.”

There was something in her expression. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Silence.

“Sonia. Please she is my wife. I don’t… I love her…” I plead.

“I have a phone number.” Hope flares through me.

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell me?”

“She made me promise. I’m sorry.”

I growl in frustration. “What good are you to me then?”

“You know, when I first met Brooke, I asked her why she let you treat her the way you did. Do you know what she said to me? She said you were kind and gentle, that you were an honorable man with a good heart. Women don’t use words like kind, gentle, and honorable to describe someone unless they have experienced the opposite. Cruel, rough, and deceitful.”

Her father. Could she be running from him? Afraid of what he would do know that the contract is broken. Did she think he would come for her? That I would let him take her?

“Thank you for the coffee, Sonia, but I have to go pay a visit to my father-in-law.”

*****

Stepping foot on Connor Robinson’s residence was something I have promised myself I will never do again. His study is a cold place where blackmail happens more often than actual business.

“You ready for this?” Jared asks me.

I pick him up on my way here, needing someone to keep me from bashing his face in. “No,” I say as I open my car door.

A staff member opens the door and asks us to wait in the living room while they went to get Connor. I glance around at the stiff, expensive look of the manor. I try to imagine how it was for Brooke to grow up here. Cold and lonely.