But what if this isn’t about me?
A cold realization slides through me like ice water. What if this was a ploy to get me out of the house?
To get to Elara.
My pulse spikes. I can almost feel her name vibrate in my chest. I put every possible security measure in place—men stationed at the perimeter, alarms, motion sensors, coded locks—but still….
I don’t trust anyone. Not fully. Not anymore.
Especially not when it comes to her.
Just as I’m about to tell the men to retreat and head back to New York, Luka’s phone rings.
He answers without hesitation, pressing it to his ear—and I can tell immediately from his face that something’s wrong. His expression drains of color. The muscle in his jaw locks tight.
The call lasts less than thirty seconds, but it feels like a lifetime.
As soon as he lowers the phone, I’m on him.
“What is it?” I demand.
He hesitates for a fraction of a second, and that’s all it takes for my stomach to twist.
“It’s Elara,” he says finally, voice rough. “She’s gone. Kidnapped by Chang’s men. They breached the estate and took her…. We don’t know where.”
The world goes silent. Then it explodes.
My fist connects with the wall, and the sound is a dull, terrible crack. Pain blooms up my arm—hot, sharp—and when I pull my hand back, I look down to see a thread of blood running between the knuckles. For a second, the world narrows to red and the taste of iron at the back of my throat.
Luka’s on me in a blink, grip on my shoulder, voice clipped: “Roman—”
I push him off. Hard. Not because I want to strike him, but because the motion feels necessary—a shove to clear the air, to make room for the animal inside me. He stumbles, catches himself, and there’s a tightness in his face I don’t like. My hands are shaking, and I don’t care.
“Don’t touch me,” I say, and the roar in my voice strips the room bare. Every man snaps to attention; silence drops like a blade. I can feel their eyes on me—hungry, steady, waiting for the order they were born to carry out.
“Calm down, Roman,” Dimitri says, voice easy but sharp. He thinks he’s defusing me. He doesn’t know the temperature of this fire.
“Calm down?” I spit the words back. “You want me to calm down after they take what’s mine? After they drag her through whatever hell David’s cooked up?” My hands curl until my nails bite into my palms. The hurt is a new thing—not for me, for her. That focus makes the rest of the world small and ridiculous.
“You’ll never know what it means to love someone like that.”
The words come out harsher than I planned. They land in the van and ricochet off metal and muscle. Dimitri blanches, then gives a short, humorless laugh. “Ouch,” he says, but there’s no mockery in it—only the recognition that I’ve crossed a line most of them wouldn’t touch.
I don’t apologize. I don’t want to apologize. Strategy is dead for me; this is no longer a chessboard move. This is personal. This is the part of me that answers to blood and bone. My pulse hammers behind my eyes; every breath tastes like steel.
“I want his death on my hands. That’s the only way I’ll breathe easy.”
Dimitri sighs. “Alright,” he says, softer. “We do it your way.”
An hour later, we’re on the jet, engines a low animal thrum under my feet. I don’t sleep. I call men, reroute squads, put everyone I can spare on a single instruction: find ELARA.
My thumbs jab commands into the secure line like hammer strikes. The Rusnak network hums to life through my device—cars mobilize, safe houses go dark, thermal teams lift off. I order a city-wide lockdown where we have reach: every neighborhood, every dock, every known Chang node gets swept. If they try to move her through their usual channels, we’ll choke them out.
Dimitri sits across from me, phone to his ear, talking to Lev and Lukin in clipped sentences I barely hear. He feeds them what we have—last ping, decoy warehouse, the merc caught with Chang’s insignia. They parse it like chess players. “Cut off exits to Jersey and the port,” Lev says. “Push press buffers so Chang can’t drum up more sympathy.” Lukin wants to hit the brokers’ accounts first. I approve everything and then tell them to prepare for all outcomes.
Luka pulls a tablet toward me. “We pulled the camera sweeps. There’s one jump—a white van—left Manhattan twenty minutes after the decoy hit. Last sighting near an industrial strip in Queens.” He taps coordinates. “We’re pinging plates, fueling intercepts now.”
My stomach knots and then steels. No more mistakes. “Run perimeter and PR containment. Have men hold reserves for rapid extraction if we get the call. No heroics. Fast in, faster out. Bring her back alive.”
