He turns away, leaving me with a mountain of questions and a rage burning its way through my sanity.
The door slams behind him with a final, echoing crack that reverberates through my skull long after he’s gone.
The room seems to exhale in shaky fragments as the girls peel themselves away from the walls, huddling together.
The girl with the braid reaches for me, fingers trembling as they press into my arm. “Don’t talk next time,” she hisses, fear soaking every syllable. “Don’t make him look at you again.”
I don’t answer.
Because it’s already too late.
He’s looked at me.
And now I’m going to make sure my face is the last thing he ever sees.
Chapter 46
Maps are spread across the dining table, men barking orders into phones, guns being checked and loaded. It’s eerily reminiscent of when we all rallied to save Cora, and fuck, do I wish we weren’t so familiar with this, so practiced, with plans already in place. It’s the smoothness that scares me. The speed and efficiency. Like we’ve rehearsed this a hundred times because life keeps taking the women we can’t afford to lose.
And it’s also why, despite Lily having been gone for less than twenty-four hours, I know none of us will rest. Not until she’s back in my arms, where she belongs.
The clock isn’t just ticking, it’s bleeding.
Jonathan is snapping orders in rapid-fire French into one burner phone and Italian into another, pacing tight circles like a man trying to outrun his own fear. Aidan’s at the far end of the table, shoulders rigid, jaw clenched, coordinating with the teams we have stationed near every major motorway. Owen’s slamming magazines into rifles with mechanical precision, the floor around his boots littered with ammo boxes and crumpled notes. Liam’s on the laptop, triangulating the last ping from Lily’s phone before it went dead.
And me?
I’m in the middle of it all, heart hammering, stomach knotting, barely holding myself together as adrenaline and dread wage war inside my chest. Every glance, every whispered order, every shift in the room reminds me exactly why Lily can’t wait another second.
We’ve put eyes on every airport, every road out of the city, every known safe house tied to Salvatore. And yet we’ve got nothing. Hours pass in a blur of motion, and the silence becomes its own form of torture—steady, gnawing, merciless.
I’m two seconds from tearing the room apart when the lift doors open.
A runner stumbles inside—barely more than a kid, breathless, cheeks raw and red from the cold. He nearly trips over the threshold, catching himself at the last second before bending over, hands braced on his knees as he fights for air.
“Boss—sir—Jonathan—I’ve got something.”
Jonathan is already moving, a sharp-edged shadow cutting through the room. “Which port?” he demands, the question honed to a blade.
The kid swallows hard. His eyes flick around the room—too many faces, too much weight—before locking back on Jonathan.“The docks, over on the north side.” He drags in another breath. “One of the watch boys flagged an unregistered shipment before dawn. No manifest, no logs.”
My stomach tightens.
“He mentioned seeing a girl too, but…” The kid hesitates, throat bobbing. “Didn’t think anything of it at the time. Not until the photo went out. Not until we were told to watch for Lily.”
The world lurches.
For half a second, it feels like the floor drops out from under me.
“He’s certain now,” the runner finishes quietly. “The girl he saw being moved—” He looks at me then, like he already knows what this is about to do. “It was her.”
Something roars in my ears. A deep, violent sound that blots out everything else. My vision narrows to a pinprick, the edges of the room dimming.
Dawn.
We were standinghereat dawn—talking, arguing, circling the truth—while she was being moved right under our noses.
Jonathan’s hand clamps down on my shoulder, solid and grounding. “Matt. Look at me.”
