Lily’s laugh.
April’s laugh.
Two pieces of my world that deserve far better than the darkness circling us.
I rap my knuckles on Owen’s office door and push it open, only to freeze in the doorway. His usually meticulously maintained office is trashed.
Maps cover every wall. Ports, routes, dead zones, all bristling with coloured pins. Bank statements are stacked in leaningtowers across every available surface, paperwork spilling like it’s been torn apart and put back together one desperate piece at a time. And in the middle of it all is Owen—unshaven, hollow-eyed, running on something that isn’t sleep.
Knowing him, he hasn’t had any in days.
“What the bloody hell happened in here?” I grunt, stepping over a leaning pile of folders.
Owen doesn’t look up from the map. “Never mind that. Nico’s shipment has diverted off its usual route.” He taps a cluster of red circles. “They should’ve passed through all the standard ports, but they didn’t. Instead, they only stopped in unmanned dead zones.”
My stomach drops. “Picking up girls.”
“Or avoiding being caught,” Liam says from the corner, eyes never leaving his laptop.
Aidan grunts beside him, the sound thick with disgust.
Owen doesn’t look at me as he speaks, just keeps tapping points on the map. “We’re deploying runners to every port we can get eyes on. We don’t know where the shipments go once they arrive, but if they move, we’ll catch it.”
He taps another red dot.
“We think they’re rotating drop points. No fixed warehouse. That’s how they’ve stayed off-grid. The trucks offload the girls somewhere random, then they’re transferred. New vehicles, new handlers, new drivers.” His mouth twists. “It’s smart.”
My jaw locks. “So we scatter.”
“We scatter. The more ground we cover, the more chance we have of catching them,” Liam confirms, looking up from his laptop, his face a mask of grim determination.
I let the word sink in.Scatter. Every step we take is a gamble, every port a thread in a mess we can barely touch. The thought of Lily flashes through my mind, twisting my gut, but there’s no time for it. Not yet.
“That’s not everything,” Owen says, low and wary, and I can feel it in my ribs—whatever he’s working himself up to say is far from good. “I went deeper into the accounts, back to Orchis.”
He lifts his gaze to mine, and the look alone has me taking a cautious step back, leaning on a wall for support.
“We know by now that Jen and Benedict were also tied to it, right? But buried in those files you sent us, I found traces of it all over Antonio’s books.”
Liam leans back in his chair with a sigh, clearly out of patience for skirting around whatever the hell Owen’s found. “Owen, don’t hold back. He needs to know.”
Owen swallows, voice tight. “There’s emails from Antonio to Jen. Instructions, mentions of ‘lining her up,’” he pauses, swallowing hard, “referring to Lily.”
My chest seizes. My hand flies to my jaw, dragging across it as if the motion could steady me, could make the words somehowless real.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe, but it’s more like a growl, ragged and raw. My stomach twists, adrenaline spiking so fast I can feel it in my fingertips.
Owen nods grimly.
I ball my hands into fists, nails biting into my palms. My lungs tighten. Every instinct screams—get to her. Now.
The room tilts. The ticking of the wall clock stretches, cruelly slow. Every sound feels distant, muffled by the pulse in my ears.
“How long have you known?” I growl, teeth clenched. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? I’ve been under his roof, playing nice, pretending, clueless, while she—whileLily—was right in the middle of it?”
Owen snaps back, nostrils flaring, eyes wild. “Ionlyfigured it out in the last twenty-four hours, Matt! I didn’t want to tell you until I was certain.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you tell me this morning?” I bark, chest tight, heart hammering. “I could’ve been moving—planning—getting her—”
