He turned to find Lillian on the far side of the room. She was watching him, eyes wide — already sensing something was wrong.
He crossed to her fast, cupping her face. “I love you. I need you to know that. I’m going to bring her back.”
She started to protest, but he kissed her — hard and certain — then turned and walked with purpose.
Liam grabbed Mary by the hand, pulling her into a fierce hug. “I’ll bring her home,” he whispered into her hair. “I swear it.”
Mary looked shaken but nodded, tears threatening.
We didn’t wait for anything else.
The three of us charged out, soaked, furious, and laser-focused. The gala music kept playing somewhere behind us, as if the world didn’t just tilt sideways.
Adonis led us through the facility’s back wing toward his secured office.
No one said it, but we were already at war.
Because they didn’t just take a mission target.
They didn’t take a soldier.
They tookLiz.
And we were going to tear down every wall, burn every stronghold, and destroyevery soulin our way to bring
her home.
---- ??? ----
The second we stormed into Adonis’s office, he was already unlocking the surveillance wall.
“Pull up every feed near the alley,” he barked. “Museum perimeter. Street cams. Traffic exits. Give meeverything.”
Liam stood at his side, hands flying across the control panel. I paced like a caged animal behind them, soaked to the bone and boiling from the inside out.
Then the footage loaded.
And there she was.
My heart cracked all over again watching it—Liz, standing in the alley, shaking, crying… and alone. My Liz. My lightning girl. And then that shadow came from behind. The way she struggled, the panic in her face, the way she screamed my name—
I slammed my fist into the wall hard enough to leave blood.
Adonis didn’t flinch. “We’ll get her.”
“She fought,” I muttered, voice barely human. “She foughtso hard.”
“Enhancing the license plate,” Liam said, zooming in as the black van peeled off screen.
Adonis cursed under his breath. “Goddamn it. It’s scrambled.”
But then the screen shifted. Another angle. A different feed. One that caught a flash of a face in the van’s window.
And I knew that face.
The sharp jaw. The cold, emotionless stare.
The man who trained her. Manipulated her. Built her.
