The Dancer and the Don | ✔️

Chapter 30

Wow, it's really been a while since I wrote this story. I had several large papers and projects due, but I should get a little better now that I'm through with most of them! This chapter really just wrote itself, but a quick warning: VERY LONG CHAPTER AHEAD! 

I'm really happy with how this one turned out :).

Let me know what you think!

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Francesca really didn't want to admit it. She really didn't.

But, as much as she didn't want to, she was going to. Fran stood in front of her bathroom mirror with her hands in fists at her side.

She'd forgotten what her husband smelled like. 

She figured she was a few days away from forgetting what her husband sounded like to and she wanted to scream as loud as she could.

Yes, it's a bit of a weird thing to think about, but she couldn't remember it and it was killing her.

It had been almost exactly two years since she'd laid eyes on him, and at least four months since she'd spoken to him. When she asked Nathan and Maran if they'd spoken to him, grim frowns covered their faces and they shook their heads.

Ella was two years old now. She blabbered on and on all day, speaking nonsense to her dolls or begging her mom to let her go play outside. She remembered her dad and got especially excited when she saw a picture of him.

He called her every night to tell her a bedtime story, but she hadn't spoken much then. Fran almost cried when she had to explain why daddy couldn't call anymore, because she didn't know herself. Nathan and Maran swore up and down they had no clue what was going on, and for a moment she thought they were messing her.

Maybe Tony was going to surprise her...but she waited months and he never came. What really sealed the deal that Nathan and Maran didn't know anything, was the looks of pity they always gave her.

She plopped down on the couch in the living room and blew out a breath so large she almost fell off. Fran had just put Ella down for a nap and watched as Nathan stepped into the room quietly. She huffed and flung her body into the back cushion. The large, grey-haired man set a cup of coffee on the table in front of the couch and sat down in a chair opposite Francesca.

"The tracker on his phone turned on," Nathan murmured. Fran felt her heart clench and a sob escape her before she even knew it was coming.

"Does that mean he's alright?"

"It could mean a lot of things," Nathan told her in an unsure tone. She clenched her fists in frustration.

"Just tell me!" Nathan jumped at her high pitched voice and cleared his throat to pretend like it hadn't happened.

"When there's a certain amount of...danger in a situation," he paused to take a breath, "Boss told us to turn our trackers off so it can't be traced back to the other men." Fran let out a loud sob and covered her mouth before waving for Nathan to continue.

"You said there were more options?"

"There's one more, but—I—are you sure?" It seemed like Nathan was really trying to get out of talking to her, but this was her husband and the father of her child. She wasn't going to let this go.

"If for some reason the enemy has access to his phone, they could have hacked into it and turned it on. I know your husband never lost his phone. I don't want to give you too much hope or doubt, because anything could happen—"