He doesn’t stop.
I turn. Expecting to see him at the top of the stairs.
But he’s outside.
Behind the sliding door. Alone. Panting. Leashed. Bleeding.
The leash was in her room.
I step outside, heart crawling into my throat.
“Hank.” I crouch. “Where is she?”
He whines in response.
But there’s a chunk missing from his fur. A clean strip—knife work.
Fuck.
I spring to my feet, already moving—two stairs at a time—then shoulder the door open.
Her bed. Untouched.
Bathroom. Empty.
No signs of struggle. No blood. No noise.
Just gone.
“God—”
I slam the wall and hit the alarm on my phone, sirens cutting through the house like a scream. Red lights. Gunfire-ready energy. Doors slamming. Radios crackling.
But none of it matters.
They took her.
They fucking took her.
I should’ve stayed in her room. Sat in the corner like a dog if I had to, just to make sure she didn’t do anything reckless.
Instead, I gave her space. And now she’s gone.
Hank showed up outside, a warning sign I was too stupid to see. Leash on, coat ruffled, a patch of fur missing like someone used a blade to take it.
Aurelia De Luca isn’t someone you just take. Which means this isn’t about ransom. This is about power.
Nikolai Orlov.
Always polite, always controlled—a man who doesn’t want to set off a landmine, but enjoys pressing his foot down anyway. His interest in Aurelia was never casual.
And now she’s in his hands.
The thought sends acid through my bloodstream.
I should have noticed the signs. She took Hank without telling anyone. That’s not random. She felt something last night. And I dismissed it because I was too busy screwing someone else on her marble countertops like a soulless idiot.
She saw it and I broke something in her. Maybe trust. Maybe whatever thin string of hope she’d kept tucked in her chest that I’d one day choose her.
