Page 66 of Read This Before the Villain falls in Love with You

"Pull every camera on the coast road going both directions," I tell Adrian. "I want the second car's plate, model, anything."

Adrian's fingers shake so hard he misses three keys in a row before swearing and stabbing at the board. Sweat glints on his hairline. "Already running the filters. I should have put two cars on her. I knew the clinic run was predictable. I let her talk me out of the escort because she smiled and told me I was smothering her. God damn it, I let her walk straight into a trap!"

"We don't have time for a fucking autopsy on your schedule," I snap, cutting him off.

Adrian's spine goes rigid as a steel rod. "It's exactly the time. I flagged her file as low priority because she asked me not to hover. I let her ask me that."

Matteo frantically hammers keys on his keypad. "She asked all of us. She threatened to dump pasta sauce in my shoes if I tracked her to the clinic."

"That was not an excuse for me to drop protocol," Adrian bites out, refusing to blink.

Matteo looks up from the monitor, surprised enough by the tone that he actually stops typing. "Adrian."

"What."

"You okay?"

Adrian whirls on us, his chest heaving against his dark shirt. He drives both heels of his hands hard into his temples, his breath tearing out ragged, shuddering like a man on the edge of a cliff. "I'm not fine! None of this is fucking fine!"

A dead hush slams down across the entire command center. Matteo freezes mid-keystroke, staring with his mouth slightly parted. Enzo halts on the hardwood, his eyes widening in pure shock. Even Nora, standing in the shadow of the doorway, goes completely rigid.

Adrian has run our security head for twenty years. I have watched him pull shrapnel out of his shoulder without blinking. I have seen him stare down a hit team at twenty yards and report their weapon counts into his radio without his pulse jumping a single beat. He does not yell. He does not shake. Seeing him come unglued over my little sister sends a cold shock straight through my chest, and every second he fractures threatens to pull the whole room down with him.

The screen changes. A different angle, a gas station camera two miles up the coast, and there it is, the second car pulling in fast, a plate that's almost certainly cloned but worth running anyway. Two men get out, and this time the frame is clear enough to see faces. Neither of them is anyone I recognize personally, but the tattoo on the taller one's wrist, three dots in a curved line, I've seen that mark before, on a body we fished out of the harbor eight months ago wearing a Bellini courier badge.

"That confirms it." My knuckles turn white against the wooden desk. "Run facial recognition on both of those bastards. I want names by morning."

Enzo steps directly into the glare of the screens. "We don't have until morning. Vincenzo doesn't grab a girl to hold a press conference. He grabs her because he wants blood, and he'll call within the hour to demand it."

Matteo throws his hands up. "He's going to ask for the port authority keys. Or the northern rail line. Or my firstborn child, which he can gladly take because I don't have one."

I watch the map coordinates redraw. "Shut up, Matteo."

"I know how the old bastard operates," I mutter, my teeth grinding.

Matteo glances between us, confused, and decides wisely to redirect. "What do we tell Nonna?"

"Keep her out of it for now," I direct, head shaking. "She doesn't need this panic yet."

"She's going to know something's wrong the second she sees all of us standing around like this."

"Then we move our operations to the back room where she won't see us," I command. Matteo lets out one short, ugly bark of a laugh that has no humor left in it, just raw pressure venting out.

"Great plan. Real tactical genius. Hide in the pantry."

"Matteo."

Matteo drags both hands through his hair until it sticks up in messy spikes. "I'm scared. I'm allowed to be scared. She's the baby. She's the one who used to sneak into my room during storms because she didn't like the thunder. I'm allowed."

"Nobody said you weren't," Adrian murmurs, his voice softening by a fraction without his gaze leaving the road map.

I grab him by the shoulder to steady him. "You're allowed. Just channel that fucking anger into finding her."

He nods, wipes his face with the back of his hand, and goes back to the terminal like he's been given permission to hold it together, which maybe he has. That's the thing about running a family like this. Sometimes the kindest order you can give someone is a task, because a task is a place to stand when the ground won't hold still.

The phone on the desk rings before anyone can speak. Not my cell phone. The old landline, the hardwired unit we keep strictly because it cannot be traced through cellular towers, the line that only ever rings when an enemy wants to prove a point.

Everyone in the room goes still.