His Pregnant Wife Saw Him Holding Another Woman on Christmas Eve, and by Sunrise the Most Feared Man in Chicago Was Begging Everyone to Find Her 2

By 4:00 AM, the search had become an unmitigated nightmare.

Roman had not stayed at the estate. He had taken an SUV himself, speeding through treacherous, unplowed highways alongside Dante and three patrol cars whose officers were working off Roman's personal payroll.

They had checked every hotel. Every hospital. Every ER within Lake, Cook, and McHenry counties. Nothing. It was as if Savannah Vascari had vanished into thin air.

Roman stood on the snowy shoulder of Highway 12, his hair caked with ice, his charcoal coat soaked through, screaming into his satellite phone.

"What do you mean the traffic cameras were blinded by snow?" he roared. "She was driving a maroon 2012 Subaru Outback! It’s not an invisible ghost, Marcus! Find which toll gate she passed before the sensors went down!"

Celeste Armand pulled up behind him in an all-wheel-drive Mercedes. She stepped out into the freezing wind, wrapping a fur stole around her neck, her makeup pristine despite the hour.

"Roman!" she called, hurrying toward him over the crust of snow. "Stop this. It's four in the morning. You're going to freeze to death out here. She’s throwing a tantrum because she saw me at my apartment. She’s probably at some luxury hotel under an alias laughing at you."

Roman turned slowly. The look in his eyes made Celeste freeze in her tracks. It wasn't the measured, calculated coldness Roman displayed in boardrooms. It was the terrifying, unhinged wrath of an animal that had lost everything.

"Get away from me," Roman said, his voice deadly quiet.

"Roman, be reasonable—"

"I was at your place tonight to keep your father from putting my family in danger," Roman said, stepping toward her, every word dripping with raw venom. "You staged that photo on the terrace. You made sure Dante let her see you draped all over me. You wanted her to run."

Celeste blinked, her lips parting. "She wasn't cut out for your world anyway, Roman. She's weak. She panicked—"

"If my wife or my child dies tonight," Roman whispered, his face inches from hers, terrifyingly calm, "you and your father will not have a single dollar, a single business, or a single safe haven left in this hemisphere. Dante! Take her back to the city. If she speaks to me again, shoot her."

Celeste turned pale, stumbling backward into her car without another word.

Roman walked away, his boots crunching in the deep drifts. He walked toward the edge of the embankment overlooking the frozen expanse of the lake, his phone pressed to his ear.

"Boss," Marcus’s voice crackled through the static. "We got a hit. A county snowplow operator reported seeing tail lights deep in a ditch off Old Mill Road, just past Marengo. But the plow broke down two hours ago. He didn't check."

Roman’s heart stopped. "Coordinates. Send them now!"

He didn't wait for Dante. Roman jumped into the driver's seat of his SUV, threw it into four-wheel drive, and slammed the accelerator, spraying snow thirty feet into the air.

Twenty minutes later, he reached the desolate stretch of Old Mill Road. The sky in the east was beginning to turn a pale, bruised violet. The storm was finally breaking, revealing the frozen wasteland beneath.

Then he saw it.

A hump of snow forty feet off the road, nestled in a steep ravine. Only the roof rack of a maroon station wagon was visible above the drift.

Roman slammed the brakes, threw the door open, and ran.

He tumbled down the icy embankment, sliding on his knees, tearing through snowdrifts up to his waist.

"Savannah!" he screamed, his voice cracking, tearing his throat. "Savannah!"

He reached the driver's door. The glass was caked in thick frost. He pounded on the window with his bare fists, shattering the ice crust.

Inside, huddled on the front seat beneath a pile of blankets, was a motionless figure.

"No, no, God, please, no..."

Roman grabbed the handle. Frozen solid. He didn't hesitate. He took off his heavy leather belt, wrapped the buckle around his knuckles, and smashed the rear quarter glass. Reaching through the jagged opening, he unlocked the door from the inside and hauled it open.

The cold inside the car was suffocating.

"Savannah!"

He touched her face. Her skin was pale as marble, her lips faintly blue. But when his trembling fingers brushed her neck, he felt it—a weak, fluttering pulse.