You won’t find her by being loud.
I smile for the first time since the gas station, and there is nothing kind in it.
They think they’re in control because they took her. They think I’m still the man who reacts instead of plans, who burns everything down in a straight line and calls it justice.
They’re wrong.
I look at the city, lights bleeding into the rain, and let the anger settle into something cold and deliberate.
Hazel is alive. I know that the same way I know how to breathe. They want me enraged. They want me desperate. Which means she’s essential to this chaos, but she’s not the target. Somehow, I feel like this is to distract us from the real plan, from what’s really happening. I don’t think that she’s truly in danger.
And that means I still have time.
I type one last message—not to them, but to myself—a reminder etched in digital ink.
Burn the map. Follow the lies.
Then I start the engine and drive straight into the city, ready to tear it apart piece by piece until I find where they’re hiding her.
Because I’m not asking for her back.
I’m taking her home. My sunshine, my daisy, my light. I fear I’ve fallen for the one who’s forbidden, and I will stop at nothing to get her back.
CHAPTER THIRTY
UNDER PRESSURE
HAZEL
Time stops behaving like time pretty quickly when you’re tied up to a chair at some abandoned warehouse.
I don’t know how long I’ve been on the floor before the light flips off, plunging the room back into a darkness so complete it feels intentional. Like the absence itself is part of the design. Without the bulb, there’s no sense of direction—no way to measure distance or movement—only the steady ache in my wrists and ankles and the slow thud of my heartbeat reminding me I’m still here, still breathing, still conscious enough to be afraid. I count breaths for a while—inhale, exhale, over and over—until even that starts to blur, the space between seconds stretching so thin I can’t tell where one ends and the next begins.
When the voice comes back, it doesn’t announce itself.
It’s just suddenly there, calm and close enough my skin prickles, speaking into the dark like we never stopped our conversation at all. “You’re trying very hard not to panic.”
I swallow against my dry throat and force my voice into something that resembles my own. “Is that an observation or a critique?”
A quiet pause follows, long enough to make my pulse spike. “An observation,” the voice says. “You’re good at control. At reframing. Humor instead of fear. Brightness instead of reality.”
I shift slightly, testing the restraints again, even though I know better, the bite of plastic against skin sharp enough to ground me. “Wow,” I say lightly. “You kidnap me and immediately psychoanalyze me. Do I get a clipboard at the end of this, or?—”
“You use humor to stay ahead of pain,” the voice continues, unruffled and uninterrupted. “You keep things light so no one notices how closely you’re watching exits, how carefully you read people. You don’t like silence, because silence gives your thoughts room to sharpen.”
The words slip under my ribs with unsettling accuracy, and my smile falters despite my effort to keep it in place. I tell myself not to react—not to give them anything—but my heart has already started beating faster, my body recognizing danger before my mind can argue it away.
“That’s impressive,” I say. “You got all that from five minutes and a bad first impression?”
Another pause. I can almost feel them considering me through the dark. “We’ve been watching you longer than that.”
Cold settles in my stomach, slow and heavy, and suddenly the darkness feels less empty and more crowded—like the walls are lined with eyes I can’t see. I force myself to breathe evenly, refusing to let that thought spiral. “Okay,” I say, forcing brightness into my tone like I’m flipping a switch. “Creepy confession aside, you still haven’t told me what you actually want.”
There’s a soft sound of fabric shifting maybe, or a step backward, and when the voice returns, it’s farther away, deliberately so. “What I want,” they say, “is for you to understand this isn’t about punishment. It’s about correction.”
“Correction,” I repeat, tasting the word. “Yikes.”
“You don’t see it yet,” the voice continues, calm and maddeningly patient. “But you will. You were always meant to be a catalyst, Hazel. You change the trajectory of people simply by existing near them.”
