ADRIEN'S POV
I thought I understood fear.
I've been raised to be the one who keeps the family safe. The eldest of seven. The shield. The spine. Thirty-four years of training for the moment when everything falls apart and someone needs to hold the line.
Yet with Rosie in my arms, something screams at the back of my skull. A sound without words. A pull I can't explain.
Look at the car.
I turn my head.
The door is open. No shadow inside. No movement. The backseat where Beatrice was sitting — empty.
Everything stops.
For thirty seconds I see nothing but that open door. The cold that spreads through my chest is nothing I've ever trained for. Nothing anyone has ever prepared me to feel.
I sprint.
Rosie calls my name. Angel gasps. I hear neither. My heart hammers so violently it feels like it's trying to break through my ribs. Blood turns to ice in my veins. My hands are shaking — not trembling, shaking — the uncontrollable kind that happens when the body understands something the mind refuses to accept.
I reach the car. Look inside.
No Beatrice. Not her bag. Not her phone. Not even the warmth of where she was sitting.
Gone. Like she was never here.
A sound tears out of my throat — something between a roar and a choked breath that I didn't know I was capable of making.
"WHERE IS SHE?"
My voice splits the silence of the woods. Birds scatter from overhead branches. Rosie flinches, eyes wide with a fear I've never seen her direct at me. Angel turns — looks at the car, looks at me — and the color drains from her face like water from cracked glass.
I have never lost my calm. Not as a child taken hostage at eight years old. Not in boardrooms where billions hung on a single word. Not once in thirty-four years.
That record just ended.
Mikhael Ivanov stands fifteen feet away, surrounded by his men, watching me with the calculating stillness of a man who has survived in the bratva long enough to read every room he enters. Broad-shouldered. Scarred jawline. Eyes that carry the particular deadness of someone who stopped counting bodies years ago. The Pakhan's right hand — his enforcer, his proxy, his knife.
The smug confidence on his face falters when I stride toward him with my gun raised.
"WHERE IS SHE?"
My weapon levels at his skull. Every guard in his formation draws on me simultaneously — twelve barrels pointed at my chest. I don't care. I can't feel any of it. The only thing that exists is the empty car behind me and the hammering in my chest that won't stop.
"You mean that little advisor of yours?" Mikhael tilts his head. His thick Russian accent wraps around the words with deliberate, taunting slowness. "I've been tracking her since the anniversary party. She's been quite the inconvenience."
Something inside me ignites that I didn't know existed. A rage that bypasses every circuit of training, every lesson, every wall I've built since childhood. It doesn't feel like anger. It feels like my blood has been replaced with kerosene and someone just struck a match.
This is my fault. I brought her here. I left her in that car. I chose Rosie first. I —
"Give her back." My voice drops. Cold. Flat. The voice of a man who has already decided what happens next and is merely informing the room.
Mikhael laughs. The sound is mocking, expansive, designed to demonstrate that he fears nothing.
"Aurélien, did you really think you'd ask and I'd hand her over? The Pakhan has plans for that little —"
I don't let him finish.
My boot connects with the back of his knees. He drops. Before his guards can react, I fire twice — left shoulder, right shoulder. Controlled. Deliberate. The sound cracks through the woods like the forest itself splitting open.
Mikhael screams. Blood blooms through his tactical jacket. His men surge forward, weapons raised, triggers half-pulled — but they freeze. Because killing me means direct war with the Laurent family, and the Pakhan cannot afford that. Not yet. Not publicly.
I stand over the Pakhan's right hand, gun still raised, his blood spreading across the dead leaves at my feet.
This is the first time in my life I've drawn blood with my own hands.
I feel nothing about it. Absolutely nothing. And that absence of feeling is more terrifying than the act itself.
"Return my advisor."
Rosie's scream cuts through the trees. "Brother!"
I don't turn. My eyes don't leave Mikhael's face.
Twenty vehicles materialize from both directions on the road. Doors swing open in unison. Familiar faces — Laurent combat operatives, body armor, heavy weapons — emerge with the precision of men who've drilled this scenario a thousand times. Dry leaves crunch under their synchronized boots.
Killian vaults from the lead vehicle, pistol drawn, and drops five of Mikhael's guards with shots to their legs before his feet fully touch the ground. Fast. Surgical. Not killing — disabling. The work of a man whose family manufactures the weapons he's firing.
"Did our Aurélien finally decide to let the violence out?" he calls, but his grin dies the instant he sees my face.
He reaches my side in three strides, shoving wounded guards aside like furniture. Rosie is crying silently behind me. Angel stands frozen — staring at the blood on the ground with the expression of someone watching a prophecy fulfill itself.
"What happened?" Killian's voice drops.
"They took her." My voice cracks on the second word. Tears sting my eyes — not from pain. From the sheer, overwhelming volume of destructive thought screaming through my skull with nowhere to go.
Killian doesn't need more. He steps forward, positioning himself between me and Mikhael. "If Beatrice isn't returned within two hours, without a single mark on her —"
"We didn't take her." Mikhael groans from the ground, clutching his ruined shoulders.
My vision goes red. I lunge. "DON'T LIE TO ME —"
Rosie grabs my arm. Both hands. All her weight. "Brother. Please. I'm scared."
That word — scared — should stop me. It always has before. But all I can think is how scared Beatrice must have been. How her small body trembled when I held her in the car. How her voice broke when she said she didn't trust me. How I swore I'd protect her, and then walked away without locking the door.
"Then who took her?" The words come out quiet. Quiet in the way that makes Killian's hand move to his weapon instinctively.
Mikhael spits blood. "I don't know and I don't care. I don't have time to chase after some accountant."
I step close enough to smell the iron on him. "You'd better pray she's unharmed. Because five of your warehouses — the ones in Queens, the ones you think we don't know about — will be ash before sunrise."
Mikhael's eyes widen. "You can't just —"
I'm already walking away.
The car. Her seat. Still empty. The gun I gave her sits on the leather exactly where she left it.
She didn't take it. She didn't need it. Because someone else came for her.
I call her phone. Dead. I call again. Dead. I call a third time knowing it's dead, because the alternative is standing still, and standing still means accepting what I've done.
"Deploy Alpha 21 and Beta X2-7. Immediately." My voice is something I don't recognize. "I want Beatrice located and in front of me within six hours."
Angel's eyes widen. "Boss — deploying both teams strips security from the main family residence and all primary members —"
"I don't care."
"Sir, the Chairman —"
"I SAID I DON'T CARE."
I tower over her. Every vein in my neck is visible. My hands won't stop shaking. Angel flinches — not from the volume but from what's behind it. Because for the first time, the woman who has worked beside me since childhood is looking at me and seeing my father.
Killian grabs my shoulder. "Adrien. Breathe. We'll find her —"
"I CAN'T CALM DOWN." I shove his hand off. My voice comes out raw, shredded, nothing like the controlled instrument I've spent my life perfecting. "I WANT HER NEXT TO ME."
The woods go silent. Even the wind seems to pull back.
Killian stares at me. Rosie stares at me. Angel stares at me.
They've never seen this man before. Neither have I.
"Six hours, Angel." I meet her eyes. Mine are wet and I don't hide it. "If you can't find Beatrice, be ready to face consequences you won't recover from."
I get in the car. Slam the door. Hit the accelerator so hard the tires tear through mud and leaves. The road is rough — the car shakes, rattles, jolts — and I don't care. My eyes scan the trees on both sides like a man possessed, searching for something he already knows isn't there.
Minutes bleed into hours.
I'm on back-to-back calls with headquarters. The security chief informs me that the Chairman is furious about the deployment order. Ludwig Dominik Laurent does not tolerate his household security being compromised for any reason.
I don't care. I don't care about his anger or his protocol or his legacy right now. The only thing that exists in my universe is a 5'3" woman with brown curls and eyes that carry fire, and I cannot find her.
My hands grip the steering wheel so tight my knuckles have gone white and my fingers have lost feeling. Beatrice's face from this morning floats behind my eyes — the softness in her expression after my apology, the way her breath caught when I touched her ear, how her shoulders finally dropped like she was deciding to trust me again.
I slam my palm against the steering wheel. The crack of impact barely registers.
What if something happened to her? The thought surfaces and I can't push it back down. It loops. Repeats. Multiplies. Each iteration worse than the last.
What if she's hurt?
What if she's afraid?
What if she called my name and I wasn't there?
I can't survive that. The realization arrives without permission, without logic, without any of the frameworks I've spent my life building. If something happens to Beatrice Kenz, I will not remain sane. That isn't dramatic. It's diagnostic.
My phone rings.
I answer. "Speak."
Angel's voice carries a tremor I've never heard from her. "Boss. We've located Beatrice."
Air floods my lungs like a resurrection. My chest heaves. I pull the car over because my vision is blurring and my hands won't hold steady.
"Where?"
A pause. The pause lasts one second too long.
"She's with Theodore Schweitzer."
My thoughts stop. The traffic outside my window disappears. The city dissolves. Everything narrows to a single point of white-hot, crystalline focus.
Angel continues. "We recovered a CCTV clip from his mansion gate on the Upper East Side. He's deployed his best security squads around the perimeter since arriving. Every other camera in the vicinity has been destroyed." A pause. "I'm sending you the footage."
My phone vibrates. I open the video.
Twenty seconds.
Theodore stepping out of a car. Beatrice in his arms. His coat — wrapped around her small frame. Her face buried in his neck. Her legs around his waist. Her body curled into him like he is the only safe thing left in her world.
She went willingly.
Thousands of needles press into my chest simultaneously. My jaw locks so hard I taste blood from the inside of my cheek.
Then Theodore pauses. Mid-stride. He turns his head — slowly, deliberately — and his eyes find the exact camera.
The corner of his mouth curves into a smirk. Arrogant. Dangerous. A message composed in a single expression and addressed specifically to me.
I have her. She chose me. And I'm letting you watch.
He carries her inside. The footage ends.
I stare at the frozen frame. My breathing has turned to something shallow and ragged. My hands are shaking so violently the phone nearly drops.
He left this clip on purpose. Destroyed every other camera. Kept this one. For me.
My arm cocks back and I hurl the phone into the backseat with enough force to crack the screen against the window. My foot drives into the dashboard — once, twice — hard enough to split the casing. Pain shoots through my shin. I don't feel it.
I press my forehead against the steering wheel. Close my eyes. The image is branded into the inside of my eyelids — her face in his neck, her body wrapped around his, his smirk at the camera.
"Theodore Schweitzer."
His name leaves my mouth like venom drawn from a wound.
"I will end you. She is mine. And nobody — nobody — takes what is mine."
The steering wheel groans under my grip. Rain begins hitting the windshield. One drop. Then a hundred. Then a thousand.
And I sit alone in a car that still smells like her perfume — vanilla and cherry blossom, fading with every breath I take — knowing that somewhere across this city, she's wrapped in another man's coat, safe in another man's house, choosing the warmth of someone who showed up when I didn't.
Something dangerous makes me feel still and reckless- I don't care if Theodore took her away from me today...
My little Terrorist is mine alone... And I don't care if I have to fucking force her... She has to be mine... Because of the first time in my life, I have ever gotten blood in my hand and stepped away from my family.. There is no going back.