"Search the perimeter," I barked at the nearest team. "She's here. Find her."
But even as I said it, I knew the truth. Lorenzo wouldn't be stupid enough to hold her in the obvious location. This was misdirection. This was him dangling bait to see how far I'd chase.
My phone buzzed again. A video file.
I opened it.
Julietta stood in what looked like a basement, her hands cuffed in front of her, her jaw set but her eyes still burning with that dangerous intelligence. Behind her, Lorenzo Altieri smiled like a man who'd finally won the game he'd been playing for six weeks.
"Hello, Dante," she said, her voice steady. "I believe we have some negotiating to do."
I gripped the edge of the metal railing running along the warehouse floor, my jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might shatter.
I'd let her go.
I'd given her freedom because I loved her, because I wanted to be the kind of man she could choose rather than the kind she'd be forced to obey.
And she'd run straight into her father's arms.
No. Not ran. Walked. Deliberately. While I was watching from the shadows, pretending that distance was love.
She'd played me.
Or she'd needed to walk away so badly that she'd risked everything, and I'd let her because I was weak enough to believe that letting her hurt me was the same thing as setting her free.
The rage that had consumed me when I'd first realized she was missing crystallized into something harder. Something colder.
It didn't matter which version was true.
What mattered was that she was gone, and her father was holding her, and I had a choice: negotiate, or burn everything to find her.
I looked at the video again. Watched her eyes. Watched the way she held herself despite the cuffs, despite the basement, despite everything.
She was still calculating. Still planning.
She wasn't broken. She wasn't desperate.
She was waiting for something.
My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number, coming through on an encrypted channel most people didn't have access to.
Don't accept his terms. I have his location. Meet me at coordinates I'm sending now. Come alone.
The message was unsigned.
But I recognized the number. It was one of the burners I'd provided to Julietta when she'd started working operations with me. One I thought she'd never used.
One she'd apparently kept hidden in her pocket the entire time I was watching her on cameras and tracking her movements through the city.
One she'd activated the moment her father's men grabbed her.
I looked back at the video. Watched the way her eyes flicked to the left, just barely. The signal. The message.
I'm not a prisoner.
I'm bait.
And you're walking directly into exactly where I need you.
