Someone laughs. “He’ll live,” a calm voice says from the front of the van. “Men like that usually do.”
That voice is wrong in a way my instincts recognize immediately.
Smooth. Polished. Controlled.
It’s the same voice that said my name in the hallway like he’d already decided I belonged to him. The van jostles over a pothole, and the man’s face comes into view as he turns slightly in his seat.
Alexander Grant.
The name’s like a curse in my mind.
I’ve written about men like him. Not directly, because men like him don’t like their names in print. But I know his reputation. The corporate fixer who shows up when companies want problems erased. He’s rumored to have ties to private security firms, offshore accounts, and legal teams that crush whistleblowers like bugs under a shoe.
A few months ago, a source slid his name into my notes with shaking hands and said, “If you find Grant in the paper trail, walk away.”
I didn’t.
Now he’s sitting ten feet from me in the dark, relaxed like he’s in the back of a town car, not a kidnapping van.
My stomach churns with a sick, twisted satisfaction. One of my leads was real. One of my instincts was right. That should feel like victory. Instead it feels like a death sentence.
Grant turns further, and the dashboard light catches his face. Clean-cut. Expensive coat. Hair perfect. Eyes cold and amused. He studies me like I’m an object he’s deciding whether to keep.
“Well,” he says softly, “you’re persistent.”
I spit blood and saliva onto the floor by his shoes, because I refuse to give him a polite response.
One of the men at my side jerks my arm painfully. “Watch it.”
Grant lifts a hand. “Easy. She’s earned her attitude.”
I glare at him, breathing hard. “Where’s Sin?”
Grant’s smile barely shifts. “The bodyguard?”
“He has a name,” I snap.
“Does he,” Grant says, as if the concept is adorable. “He’ll recover. The gas was unpleasant, but effective. Your lover interfered. That was inconvenient.”
My pulse spikes. “Lover?”
Grant’s eyes flick over me. “Don’t pretend. You’re glowing with it.”
My throat tightens, and I hate that he can see anything. I hate that he’s reading me like a file he already opened.
“Did you take him?” I demand.
Grant looks bored for half a second. “No. We didn’t need him.”
Relief hits me so hard it makes me dizzy. Then dread follows right behind it. If they didn’t need him, then they didn’t care if he lived. I swallow hard. “You’re making a mistake.”
Grant laughs softly. “That’s what everyone says.”
“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” I say, voice shaking with anger now. “You think you can scare me into shutting up. You think you can make me disappear.”
Grant’s eyes sharpen. “You were already disappearing. You just didn’t know it.”
My stomach drops. “What does that mean?”
