My men stay silent. Smart.
Caesar’s head hangs. “I fucked up.”
“No,” I say. “You failed me.”
He flinches.
I stare at him for a long moment. The room reeks of sweat and fear, every breath he takes sounding like a confession he doesn’t have to give.
“She went to the hospital,” I mutter, more to myself than to him. “But she never came out.”
The possibilities claw at me in silence. Maybe she was hurt. Maybe she went there to meet someone. Maybe she realized she was being followed. No matter what the reason for her being gone, it all doesn’t sit well. I’m missing information.
My gut twists, not with rage, not even with betrayal, but with something far worse. Fear.
I never let a woman mean anything, because this is what happens when you do. Lilly didn’t just slip beneath my skin—she’s in my bloodstream. And now she’s vanished like smoke again, leaving me with nothing but shadows and a room full of excuses.
I turn back to Caesar, eyes narrowing. “You’re going to do better than this,” I say. “You’re going to give me every single detail.Who was there. What she wore. What time. Every fucking second she was in your sight.”
He nods furiously, desperate.
“Because if she’s hurt,” I add quietly, “I’m going to tear your eyes out since they are no use to me.”
I look to the others. “Get him cleaned up. Then put him in a cage until I decide what to do with him.”
They drag him out. I lean on the table, fists braced, trying to breathe.
She was right here. And now she’s gone.
I won’t let that stand.
The Hinsdale estateI visited during summers as a child hasn’t changed. The driveway is still a winding stretch of quiet stone, the hedges trimmed into perfect, soulless symmetry. I only begin to see the differences when we close in on the house. The fountain in the circular drive stands dry and cracked now, its once-grand display reduced to silence. The paint on the two-story high columns is chipping. Even the air starts to shift into something different. Stale, like grief wrapped in money.
They bring me in through the back door like cargo. No words. No apologies. It’s not like they need them. The message is loud enough. They found me and I’ve been caught in their trap. And they know I’m not going anywhere.
The house still smells faintly of his cologne and cigars. Every detail is frozen in time, like it’s been preserved for this exact moment—waiting for me to return. Either by my own will, or by his command.
They don’t take me to my old bedroom. That’s long gone, probably gutted the day I ran. They lead me down the long west hallway instead, and show me into a guest room—one I don’t recognize anymore. Different from what it looked like after my mother decorated it. The space is too clean. Too neutral. The kind of room they put people in when they don’t plan to let them stay, but aren’t ready to let them leave either.
There’s no lock on the door. There doesn’t need to be. Locksaren’t how he traps people. He uses debt. Shame. Force. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare out the tall window at the garden, past the stone fence that borders the estate. I can’t see the city beyond it—only trees, and a strip of sky that feels too far away.
I tell myself not to cry. Not here. Not now. I hold it together long enough to steady my breath, but the ache under my ribs doesn’t fade. It settles deeper, heavier, pressing in against my lungs like a reminder that the only family I had left is gone.
A quiet knock comes just as I’m pulling myself upright. A maid opens the door—young, maybe twenty, with soft features and eyes that never lift from the floor.
“He wants to see you in the study,” she says, voice soft.
I follow her down the staircase, past paintings I once stared at with suspicion, wondering which of the men on the walls I would eventually be forced to mimic. Their eyes all look the same—cold, empty, proud. Now I know why.
The study is all dark wood, leather furniture, a fireplace no one ever lights. He stands behind the desk, a glass of something expensive in his hand like it’s just another Tuesday.
“You look different than you did seven years ago,” he says, his eyes fixed on something on the desk in front of him, voice deceptively casual.
“I look like hell, thanks to you” I answer, arms crossed tight over my chest, my voice flat and unforgiving.
He finally lifts his gaze. There’s a flicker of something—recognition, amusement—as he offers a small, insincere smile. “Fair enough.”
I don’t sit. He hasn’t offered, and I wouldn’t do it if he had. Sitting in this room feels like surrender, like folding to a man who’s always thrived on having the upper hand. It felt that way when I was eighteen. It still does now.
