Chapter 18
LUKA
Iwake with a start.
My hand moves across the sheets automatically, seeking the warmth of Cindy's body, but finds only empty space.
I check the time. It’s just after nine.
“Fuck.”
I didn’t mean to fall asleep. But after being up all night worrying about her and then having her in my arms…
I throw off the blankets and pull on a pair of sweats. I can’t explain it, but I know she’s gone. I can feel her absence.
I head downstairs, hoping to find her in the kitchen making Leo breakfast or stealing a few minutes alone with her coffee before the day's chaos begins. But the feeling, low in my gut, won't settle. It’s a primitive alarm system that's kept me alive.
Leo sits at the kitchen island, working his way through a bowl of cereal while watching some show about talking animals on his tablet.
"Morning, kiddo," I say, ruffling his hair as I pass. "Where's Cindy?"
"Dunno." He doesn't look up from his screen. "Viktor said she went out early."
Viktor. My head of security wouldn't let Cindy leave the compound without clearance, not after yesterday's lockdown order. I find him in the security office, monitoring feeds from his wall of screens, a cup of coffee growing cold at his elbow.
"Where's Cindy?" I ask without preamble.
He glances up from the monitors, his scarred face impassive. "Went with Grigori about an hour ago. Something about needing to pick up medicine."
Medicine.
The word sits wrong in my mouth, though I can't immediately put my finger on why. "What kind of medicine?"
"Didn't say. Women's stuff, maybe?" Viktor shrugs, his attention already drifting back to the screens. "Grigori's got her. She's fine."
I want to press for more details, but my phone buzzes with an incoming text. The number belongs to Tony, one of my perimeter security guys.
He’s good at what he does. Former Italian mob enforcer. When his organization was dismantled by the FBI, I brought him on. He’s easily one of my top five.
I check the text. THE GARAGE.
I'm moving before the message fully registers. Tony meets me at the entrance, his usually composed expression tight with concern.
"Boss, you need to see this."
The urgency in Tony's voice has me following without question. He leads me to the Mustang, already pulling on latex gloves—never leave prints, even in your own garage. He crouches beside the rear wheel well, his movements precise and professional.
"Don't touch it directly," he warns, producing a pair of needle-nose pliers. "Could be rigged."
My blood turns to ice. A fucking bomb? In my garage? Where Leo plays?
Tony extracts the device with surgical precision, holding it up to the overhead light. Relief and rage war in my chest when I see what it is.
"GPS tracker," he says, turning it to show me the manufacturer's mark. "Military grade. Korean tech—the kind that costs five grand a pop and requires government connections to acquire."
I take the device with my gloved hand, feeling its weight. Sophisticated. Expensive. Professional. This isn't some amateur job with commercial equipment. Someone with resources wants to know everywhere my family goes.
"How long?" The question comes out deadly quiet.
Tony's jaw tightens. "Based on the battery model, it could be anywhere from three days to two weeks. I'll need Dimitri to run diagnostics for an exact timeline."
“How long has it been there?”
Tony shrugs. “I don’t know. I did a security sweep last week. Never expected to find anything on the car.”
The implication hangs in the air.
Cindy.
He’s not saying it, but he’s thinking it. I know he is because I am. She had my car all night.
"You think—" I start, but the words feel like poison in my throat. After last night's confessions and promises, the idea that she might have planted surveillance equipment on my own car feels impossible.
But in my line of work, impossible things happen every day.
"I don't know what to think, boss," Tony admits. "But the timing..."
I take the tracker from his hands, turning it over to examine the construction. Professional grade, definitely. The kind of equipment that requires serious resources and technical knowledge to deploy.
Just like the tracker that had been in her necklace.
“Do another sweep,” I order. “I want every inch of every fucking car gone over.”
My phone is in my hands before I consciously decide to make the call. Grigori picks up on the second ring.
"Boss?"
"Where's Cindy?"
"Pharmacy on Fifth Street. Like I told Viktor, she needed—"
"Go find her. Now. Bring her home."
There's a pause on the other end of the line. "Boss, is everything—"
"Now, Grigori."
I hang up and immediately dial Dimitri, my hacker.
He answers. “Boss?”
"I need you to analyze something," I say without preamble. "GPS tracker. I'm sending someone up with it."
"What am I looking for?"
"How long it's been active. Who manufactured it? Any identifying signatures that might tell us who planted it." I pause, hating the next question I have to ask. "And find out when it was planted.”
The silence on the other end stretches too long. Dimitri's smart enough to understand the implications of what I'm asking.
"I'll do my best," he says finally.
"This happens now. Nothing else matters. Do you understand?"
“Yes, sir.”
My phone rings. Grigori.
"Boss, we have a problem."
The words hit me like ice water. "What kind of problem?"
"She's not here. The pharmacy clerk says he hasn’t seen her. No sign of her anywhere on the street."
Gone.
The word echoes in my head.
Cindy is gone, along with any certainty I had about her loyalty. Do I really know her intentions? The woman who promised she wasn't going anywhere was gone.
“Find her!" I order, though even as I say it, I know it's probably futile. If she's run, if this was all an elaborate setup, she could be anywhere by now.
"Boss—"
"Find her, Grigori. You fucked up.”
I don’t have to make threats. He knows he fucked up and what it will cost him.
I storm back into the security room. “I want Cindy found!”
Viktor looks confused. “Sir?”
“Now!”
He’s pulling out his phone and making calls.
A cold certainty settles in my chest. This isn't random. The tracker, her disappearance, the carefully orchestrated timing.
Someone is playing a longer game than I realized. And somehow, they've turned the one person I trusted completely into either a willing participant or a pawn.
The thought of Leo stops me cold. If Cindy has betrayed us, if this whole thing has been an elaborate setup, then my son is in danger.
I walk back to the kitchen, finding Leo exactly where I left him, still absorbed in his cartoons and cereal. He looks so innocent. I don’t want to scare him. I don’t want to tell him that the woman he’s been calling Mommy for the last couple of months has betrayed him.
Then I remember the tracker on my car. Are there trackers on the other vehicles? The ones Leo is driven in? Was there already a plan in motion to take him?
I need to keep him safe.
The safe room is hidden behind a false wall in the basement.
It’s only accessible through a biometric scanner keyed to my and Leo’s palm prints.
Inside, it's equipped with everything needed for an extended siege: food, water, communications equipment, weapons, and enough air filtration to survive a chemical attack.
I had it outfitted to feel like a living room, complete with copies of Leo’s favorite toys.
I've never had to use it. Never wanted to.
“You with me,” I order Tony, who has just come back in.
“Everything is clear,” he says.
“Good. You’re with my son. Do you understand what that means?”
He nods. “Yes, sir.”
Normally, I would have Viktor watch Leo, but I need him guarding the estate.
“Leo, you’re going to hang out with Tony in our special room,” I tell him.
He seems intrigued. “Okay. Is Cindy coming, too?”
The question hits me like a physical blow. “Not right now.”
I lead him and Tony to the room and make sure Tony understands just how damn serious I am about keeping my son safe.
Back upstairs, I gather my remaining men in the main room. Their faces are grim as I outline the situation. I can see the same questions in their eyes that are eating at me.
"I want her found," I tell them. "Alive. Unharmed. Anyone who hurts her answers to me personally."
My phone rings. Charles Tremaine.
My stomach drops.
This can’t be a coincidence.
“Tremaine.”
"Luka. We need to talk."
"Where is she, Charles?"
"Who?”
“Don’t play games with me. Where the fuck is she?”
There's a long pause. "Cindy's missing?"
"You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
“You think I'd use that girl against you? You took her!"
“Where. Is. She.”
"It wasn't me. I haven't seen her since you walked her out of here.”
I believe him, which narrows my list of suspects but doesn't eliminate the problem. "If not you, then who?"
"I don't know. But Luka?" His voice takes on a desperate edge. "If someone's taken her, if they're using her to get to you, let me help. I'll give you anything."
The offer catches me off guard. He actually sounds worried.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because she's a good girl. I never did right by her. Because I'm the reason she's in your world in the first place. And because..." He takes a shaky breath. "Because if something happens to her because of choices I made, I'll never forgive myself."
Seems a little late to develop a conscience.
"Take me instead. My life for hers. It should have been that way from the beginning. I’m a coward."
The offer is genuine, born from guilt and whatever paternal instincts Charles has left. But it's also useless. I don’t know if Cindy has left on her own or if she’s been taken. Charles calling me feels wrong.
"I'll find her," I tell him, and hang up.
No one takes what's mine.
And whether she knows it or not, whether she wants it or not, Cindy belongs to me now.
I'm going to get her back.
And God help whoever stands in my way.