BEATRICE'S POV
I frown at the view through the car window. Long, silent road. Dense woods pressing in from both sides, branches knitting together overhead like the trees are trying to keep something from leaving.
Adrien asked me to follow him. No explanation. No context. I assumed it was another meeting — we'd almost patched things up this morning, hadn't we? The apology. The hair tuck. The way his finger lingered behind my ear like he was memorizing the shape.
Yet here I am. Three hours into a silent ride through increasingly remote countryside. Angel driving with a grim expression. Adrien beside me typing on his phone without pause. And a strange, shimmering fear building inside me that I can't name.
My phone buzzes.
I check the screen. My breath stalls.
"Hey, Sonnenschein."
I blink rapidly. Theodore. Of course he has my number — a man who tracked my bus schedule and café locations wouldn't be stopped by an unlisted phone number.
Another text.
"Currently you are on your way to the mansion of the Pakhan of Nochnye Kogti."
My body turns to lead.
I look at Adrien. At Angel. Both faces unreadable. Both clearly tense.
A sharp sense of betrayal presses against the inside of my ribs. They knew. They've known since we got in the car. And Adrien didn't feel the need to warn me. Didn't think I deserved to know that I was being driven toward one of the most dangerous men in the Eastern European underworld.
Then what was this morning? The apology? His finger on my ear? His voice going soft when he said he was sorry?
A bitter lump forms in my throat. I force it down.
If Theodore hadn't told me, I would have walked into that mansion blind. Adrien would have let me.
My phone lights up again.
"Pakhan won't touch you even if he wants to ruin the Laurent family."
Theodore said the same thing before. The Pakhan won't harm me because Theodore stands behind me. A quiet, absurd warmth spreads through my chest — I never expected the man who's been eating my head with his persistence to become someone I actually trust.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. "Aren't you a trustworthy one?"
The reply comes instantly. "Told you. I'll keep pursuing you until you give in."
A pause. Then:
"Might as well flaunt my power while I'm at it."
A chuckle escapes me before I can stop it, crinkling the corners of my eyes. Am I seriously laughing at this man's absurd attempt at showing off?
I type back: "I said I won't sell you information about the Laurent family."
His response is immediate. "I don't need that. Just..."
Three dots appear. He's typing.
Three dots disappear.
Three dots again.
He never finishes the sentence.
"Don't laugh."
Adrien's voice cuts through the car like cold water. I look at him. Those blue-green eyes stare at me with an intensity that borders on accusation — as if my smile is a crime he doesn't know how to prosecute.
My smile dies.
"Why not?"
His jaw clenches. A vein surfaces along his neck. "We are driving to meet the man who nearly killed my mother. My sister. And two hundred other people that night."
So he's telling me now. After three hours of silence. After Theodore already gave me the full picture.
I keep my face neutral. "Who?"
"You wouldn't recognize the name." He looks away, eyes burning with something older than anger. Vengeance, maybe. Or grief wearing a mask.
"Yet you're taking me with you." My voice drops. "Why? Because I'm the one who ruined his plan? You want to hand me over as a peace offering —"
Before I can finish, Adrien turns and grips my wrist, pulling me against his chest. Not rough enough to hurt. Hard enough to sting.
My chin trembles with anger.
"I would never let anyone harm you." His voice comes out low, rough, almost unrecognizable. "And I need you here because that sharp mouth of yours is more valuable than you know."
Tension boils in my stomach. My eyes sting. "You cannot keep throwing me into danger without telling me what I'm walking into, Adrien."
His expression fractures. "I'm not throwing you into danger."
"Yes. You are."
The words come out louder than I intend. My lips tremble.
I can't tell him that Theodore warned me about the Pakhan and the Nochnye Kogti. I can't reveal the blood feud between these two families that Theodore laid out for me. But what if Theodore hadn't been there? What if the Pakhan didn't have reason to think twice before harming me? What then?
This man — Adrien Aurélien Laurent — becomes blind when his family is threatened. And in that blindness, everyone who isn't blood becomes expendable.
Adrien's thumb traces my pulse. His voice comes out strained. "I won't let anything happen to you."
"I don't trust you."
He closes his eyes. Breathes in deeply. When he opens them, there's something in his expression I've never seen before. Close to pleading.
"Please."
That one word, in that trembling voice, cracks something inside me.
"I'll explain everything. Just... help me."
I bite my lip. Look away. "Let go of my wrist."
He doesn't.
I pull. He holds. Not hard — but he doesn't release.
"Let go, Adrien."
"No."
"Adrien."
His eyes soften when I say his name. No title. Just him. I glare, but he keeps holding my wrist — gently now, thumb still resting on my pulse like he needs to feel me breathing to believe I'm here.
"You look adorable when you're angry," he murmurs. Softly. Almost contradicting the man who growled at me to stop smiling thirty seconds ago.
"I look even more adorable when I'm breaking someone's jaw."
"Didn't take you for the violent type."
My neck aches with tension. This man is infuriating. And he's still touching my pulse.
Angel speaks. "Boss. Team Alpha 21 has reached the target location." A pause. Her voice tightens. "The Pakhan has been expecting you. His guards didn't resist when our team arrived."
Every trace of softness drains from Adrien's face. He releases my wrist and sits back.
"Any word from Dad?"
Angel shakes her head. "The Chairman is unreachable. He's with your mother. Nobody disturbs him when he's with her."
Ludwig Dominik Laurent and Jennifer Laurent. The power couple whose love story still fuels high-society gossip decades later. Seven children across thirty-five years of marriage. No succession war — because Ludwig and Jennifer raised their children with enough love to prevent one. And because Ludwig would burn the world for Jennifer.
He literally has. There's a rumor he torched a fashion house because the owner made a comment about Jennifer losing her beauty after having children.
Adrien looks at me. "Do you know anything about the Russian bratva?"
I know more than you think, courtesy of a tall Swiss banker with violet eyes and persistent texting habits. But instead I nod carefully. "Just that they're organized crime syndicates."
His face hardens. "The organization behind the gala attack is the Nochnye Kogti. The Night Claws. The most powerful criminal syndicate in Eastern Europe. Their Pakhan has been in a blood feud with my father for years — but until the anniversary, there was never a direct strike."
I keep my expression neutral. Theodore already told me all of this.
The car jerks violently. A screeching sound tears through the silence.
My body slams forward. Adrien's arm catches me instantly — pulling me against his chest, his other hand bracing against the window. My pulse explodes.
Three black Range Rovers block the road ahead. Three more close in from behind.
We are boxed in.
Adrien's face contorts into something predatory and silent — a rage that's more dangerous for how controlled it remains.
Angel draws her weapon. "Boss. We're surrounded."
I look through the gap between Adrien's arms. Armed men in tactical gear stepping out of vehicles. The trees pressing in from both sides like walls.
Adrien looks down at me. Cups my face with both hands. His eyes are fierce — and something behind them looks close to madness.
"Stay in the car. Do not move."
He reaches for the overhead compartment. Pulls out weapons. Hands one to me — cold metal pressing against my palm.
"If anyone opens this door, pull the trigger."
"Beatrice comes with Angel," he says, turning to his assistant. "Angel, you stay —"
"Boss." Angel's voice is steel. "Rosie is out there. You need me."
Adrien's jaw locks. He looks at me. Looks at Angel. The calculation takes half a second — and I see the exact moment I become the lower priority.
"Stay in the car," he repeats. Then he's gone.
Both of them. Out the doors. Into the woods and the guns and the men in black.
And I'm alone.
The gun trembles in my hands.
My fingers feel like lead. My feet are numb. Through the windshield I can see Adrien talking to a man in black tactical gear — short hair, sharp rugged face, the posture of someone who has killed more people than he can remember.
Beside him, held at gunpoint: a woman in a white dress. Black hair disheveled. Icy blue eyes that carry a strange, practiced stillness — the composure of someone who has been in danger before and survived it by refusing to flinch. Rosie Augustine Laurent. Second-born of the Laurent family. She runs the charity and art foundation alongside Jennifer.
Angel has her weapon trained on the captor. Rosie's hands are bound but her spine is straight. When Adrien reaches her, something in her composure finally cracks — she leans into him, and even from inside the car, I can see her shoulders shaking.
He hugs her. Holds her head against his chest. His face twists with a fury so raw it looks like grief.
I sit inside the cold car.
Alone. A gun I don't know how to properly use heavy in my shaking hands. Watching the man who promised to protect me hold someone else while I sit forgotten.
I'm not family. I'm not blood. I'm the advisor. The outsider. The nobody from the twenty-third floor who got pulled into a world that has no use for her when the real stakes surface.
My vision blurs. My hands won't stop shaking. The metal of the gun is so cold it burns.
Nobody is coming back for me.
I didn't want this. I never wanted any of this.
The car door opens.
A choked sound dies in my throat. My hands seize around the gun, finger hovering over the trigger, body locked in a terror so complete I can't even look up.
Then — through the fear and the cold and the static in my brain — a scent reaches me.
Faint at first. Then unmistakable. Agarwood. Leather. Something cool underneath, like cold air over warm skin.
The scent I've only ever smelled on one person.
I turn my head.
Theodore.
He stands at the open door. Leather jacket. Dark clothes. Hair windswept. Those violet eyes scanning my face with a calm that's barely holding together at the edges — steady for my sake, restless underneath.
He opens his mouth to speak.
I don't let him.
I step out of the car and wrap my arms around him.
No thought. No calculation. No pride.
My tears hit his chest before I can stop them. A silent sob fractures something deep inside me — something I've been holding together with willpower and stubbornness since the day I walked into Laurent Corporation's thirty-second floor.
His heart beats fast against my ear. Too loud. Too real. Too alive.
I didn't realize how much fear I was carrying until his arms close around me — warm, solid, impossibly secure. He is a large man. Strong enough to crush. Yet when he holds me, it feels like he's cradling something that would break if he breathed too hard.
One hand rests flat against my back. The other curves gently around the back of my head, fingers threading into my hair.
I shudder. The tears don't stop.
"I'm scared." The words come out raw and broken — three words I've wanted to scream at Adrien for days. Weeks. Maybe since the beginning.
I don't scream them. I whisper them into Theodore's chest. And he hears every syllable.
"I'm here." He presses his lips to the top of my head. Softly. So gently that it makes me cry harder.
I hate how easy it is for this man to irritate me and yet feel like the safest person I've ever known. How those two things coexist in one human being. How his persistence — the flowers, the texts, the showing up, the relentless, patient, infuriating showing up — has built something I didn't notice until this exact moment.
Trust.
He picks me up. I wrap my legs around his waist instinctively, face buried in his neck, still crying. His arms lock beneath me — steady, sure, holding me like I weigh nothing and matter entirely.
"We're getting out of here. Hold on to me."
Yes. Take me.
Take me away from these woods that feel like they'll swallow me whole. Take me away from the man who keeps pulling me into his orbit and leaving me in the cold when something more important appears. Take me somewhere I don't have to perform strength I don't feel.
Theodore turns on his feet. I peek over his shoulder through blurred vision.
Adrien's back is still turned toward the car. Angel is still holding position. Rosie is still in his arms.
He doesn't see me leave.
And by the time he realizes I'm gone — it will be too late.