Disclaimer: The author's imagination and passion are the only sources of inspiration for this novel, which is a work of dedication. Parallels between these pages and the past or present may be apparent to some readers, but they are completely coincidental. You are free to interpret this art anyway you see fit, and it is meant for your enjoyment.
The transition from the cool, air-conditioned luxury of the mall to the stagnant heat of the Ramirez estate felt like a bad omen. Ysabella spent the next two days in a daze, the diamond butterfly charm hidden beneath her pillow like a talisman. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt the ghost of Zayden's thumb on her lip and the steady, terrifying weight of Mateo's protective silence.
Mateo was becoming a shadow. He rarely left his office, the blue light of his monitors reflecting in his eyes until they looked like cold glass. He knew the Triad was moving. He had seen the chatter on the dark web—contract encryptions that mentioned a "clumsy girl" and a "broken deal."
"Eat, Ysa," Mateo said, his voice strained as they sat at the massive dining table on the third night. The house felt too quiet, the air thick with the smell of floor wax and impending violence.
"I'm not hungry, Kuya. I feel... heavy," Ysabella whispered. She pushed a piece of grilled salmon around her plate. Her head was throbbing, a dull, rhythmic ache that seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat.
"It's the stress. Once I move the last of the offshore accounts, we're leaving for Batanes. I have a house there that doesn't exist on any map. Even Zayden Spencer won't find you."
Ysabella flinched at the name. She felt a sudden, sharp pang in her chest. The room started to tilt, the edges of her vision blurring into a soft, milky white. "I don't... I don't feel right."
"Ysa?" Mateo stood up, his chair scraping harshly against the marble.
Before he could reach her, the perimeter alarms of the estate screamed. It wasn't the rhythmic pulse of a test; it was the continuous, frantic wail of a breach.
"They're here," Mateo hissed, reaching into his waistband for his firearm. "Secure the room! Lockdown!"
The windows of the dining room shattered—not from bullets, but from specialized sonic charges. Four men in tactical gear, their faces obscured by matte-black masks with the crimson serpent of the Singaporean Triad embossed on the forehead, swung through the broken glass.
Mateo fired, his precision lethal, but the Triad wasn't here for a firefight. They were here for the leverage. One of the attackers tossed a small, metallic canister that hissed, releasing a thick, sweet-smelling purple gas.
"Don't breathe it in!" Mateo yelled, lunging for Ysabella.
But Ysabella was already failing. The heaviness in her limbs had turned into lead. Her heart felt like it was stuttering, skipping beats in a frantic, uneven rhythm. She tried to reach for the diamond butterfly charm she had moved to her pocket earlier that day, but her fingers felt like they belonged to someone else.
Click.
She managed to press the center of the butterfly just as a Triad operative swung a heavy baton toward Mateo's head.
"Ysa!" Mateo's voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.
She saw her brother go down, struggling against the gas and the sheer number of attackers. She tried to scream, to call out for the man who promised to come for her, but her throat constricted. The room spun violently. The floor rushed up to meet her, and then—blissful, terrifying darkness.
Five miles away, Zayden Spencer was in the middle of a high-stakes briefing with his captains when his phone emitted a sound like a dying star—a piercing, jagged frequency that only one device could trigger.
"She pressed it," he said, his voice a low, terrifying vibration that made the seasoned killers in the room step back. "Marcus, the coordinates. Now."
"The Ramirez estate, Boss. But the signal is moving. They're taking her toward the Port Area."
Zayden didn't wait for a plan. He grabbed a heavy-caliber rifle from the wall rack and headed for the helipad. "If she has so much as a scratch on her, I am going to burn every Triad warehouse from Manila to Singapore. Uubusin ko sila." (I will finish them all.)
The world returned to Ysabella in flashes of white light and the screeching of tires. She was in the back of a moving van, her hands zip-tied. Across from her, a man with a serpent tattoo on his throat watched her with cold, clinical eyes.
"She's reacting to the neurotoxin," the man said into a radio. "Heart rate is over 180. She's going into cardiac arrest."
"Keep her alive," a voice crackled back. "We need her for the exchange."
Ysabella couldn't feel her hands. She couldn't feel her feet. Her chest felt like it was being crushed by an invisible vice. She tried to think of her mother's garden, of the smell of coffee, of the way Zayden's blue eyes looked when he told her to stop biting her lip.
Zayden...
Suddenly, the roof of the van erupted. The metal peeled back like a tin can under the force of a hydraulic claw attached to a low-flying helicopter.
The Triad operative reached for his gun, but a single shot from above took his head off before he could even aim.
Zayden Spencer descended into the moving van like an avenging god. He didn't look at the dead men; he looked only at the pale, sweating girl slumped against the metal wall.
"Ysabella!" he roared, his American accent cracking with a rare, raw emotion.
He sliced through her zip-ties with a combat knife. When he touched her skin, he recoiled. She was burning hot, her skin clammy and gray. Her hazel eyes were rolled back, showing only the whites.
"Marcus! She's crashing!" Zayden shouted into his comms, his voice shaking. "Forget the warehouse! St. Luke's Medical Center! Clear the traffic! Kill anyone who slows us down!"
He gathered her small, limp body into his arms, tucking her head against his chest. He could feel the frantic, fluttering beat of her heart against his own. It was too fast. Way too fast.
"Don't you dare," Zayden whispered into her hair, his eyes burning with a mix of fury and a newfound, terrifying vulnerability. "Don't you dare leave me, little ghost. I haven't even collected my debt yet."
The Emergency Room at St. Luke's was plunged into chaos the moment Zayden Spencer burst through the doors, carrying a woman, and followed by six armed men in charcoal suits.
"Doctor! Now!" Zayden's voice boomed, silencing the entire waiting room.
A team of nurses rushed forward with a gurney. Zayden refused to let go of her hand until they reached the red line of the trauma bay.
"She was exposed to a purple gas—likely a modified neurotoxin," Zayden barked at the head doctor, his American accent sharp and authoritative. "Her heart rate was 180 ten minutes ago. She's unconscious. Save her, or I will buy this hospital and level it."
"Sir, you need to step back," a nurse tried to say, but one look from Marcus sent her scurrying.
Zayden stood behind the glass, his hands fisted at his sides, watching as they hooked Ysabella to a dozen monitors. The rhythmic beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor was the only thing keeping him from tearing the room apart.
Suddenly, the doors to the ER swung open again.
Mateo Ramirez stumbled in, his navy suit torn and covered in soot, a bandage wrapped hastily around his bleeding forehead. He looked like a man who had crawled through hell. His eyes found Zayden, and for a moment, the two men looked ready to finish the war right there in the hallway.
"Where is she?" Mateo rasped, his voice breaking.
Zayden pointed to the trauma bay without looking away from the glass. "They're stabilizing her. Your fortress was a joke, Ramirez."
Mateo slumped against the wall, the weight of his failure crushing him. "They used a gas. My sensors... they weren't calibrated for chemical signatures."
"They used her to get to me," Zayden said, his voice dropping to a deadly, quiet register. "They didn't want your money. They wanted to see if I'd burn the city down to get her back."
He turned to Mateo, his blue eyes cold and predatory.
"And they're about to find out that I will."
Inside the room, the monitor flatlined.
The long, continuous beeeeeeeeeep echoed through the hallway like a gunshot.
"She's in V-fib!" the doctor shouted. "Clear! Shock her!"
Zayden's heart stopped. He watched as Ysabella's body arched off the bed under the force of the defibrillator. He watched her long black hair fan out across the white pillow.
One shock. Nothing.
Two shocks. Nothing.
Mateo was on his knees, his face buried in his hands, whispering a frantic prayer in Tagalog. Zayden, however, didn't pray. He stepped up to the glass, his palm flat against the surface.
"Fight, Ysabella," he whispered, his voice a command that felt like it could pull a soul back from the abyss. "I am not done with you."
On the third shock, the monitor let out a single, tentative beep. Then another.
"We have a pulse," the doctor breathed, wiping sweat from his brow. "Sinus rhythm is returning. But she's in a coma. The toxin... we don't know the long-term damage to the brain."
Zayden exhaled, a ragged, broken sound. He turned to Mateo, who was looking at his sister through the glass with a mixture of horror and relief.
"She's staying here," Zayden announced, his tone leaving no room for argument. "My men will hold the floor. Your men can hold the lobby. If a single Triad member breathes within a block of this hospital, they die."
Mateo looked at Zayden. He saw the way the Mafia Boss's hand was shaking—just a fraction of an inch. He realized then that Zayden wasn't just protecting a "variable" anymore.
"I have the antidote formula," Mateo said suddenly, pulling a ruggedized thumb drive from his pocket. "I pulled it from the Triad's local server before I blew their comms tower. Give it to the doctors."
Zayden took the drive, his eyes meeting Mateo's. For the first time, there was a grim, mutual understanding between them. The war between the Spencers and the Ramirez families was on hold. There was a bigger monster to hunt.
"Go home, Ramirez. Get cleaned up," Zayden said, his voice low. "I'll stay with her."
"She's my sister, Spencer."
"And she's my reason for staying sane," Zayden countered.
Mateo looked at Ysabella, then at Zayden. He nodded once, a silent surrender. He knew that in this moment, Zayden Spencer was the only thing standing between Ysabella and the darkness.
As Mateo left, Zayden walked into the trauma bay. The doctors moved aside, sensing the aura of the man who had just saved their patient. Zayden sat in the small plastic chair beside the bed. He reached out and took Ysabella's hand. It was cold, but the pulse was there—thrumming beneath her skin like a promise.
He leaned in, his lips close to her ear.
"You're going to wake up, Ysabella," he whispered, his American accent softened by a desperate tenderness. "Because I still haven't taken you to that dinner. And I still haven't told you... that I'm never letting you go."
Outside, the first light of dawn began to break over Manila. But for Zayden Spencer, the sun wouldn't rise until she opened her eyes.