39. Chapter 30
Z asha
The room feels like a tomb as I pace in front of the main screen. On the loop, Mara walks out of JFK, head down, body hunched against the world. She looks smaller. Tired. Like something’s been drained from her, but she’s still forcing herself to stand.
Beside her walks a little boy. His hand is wrapped tightly around hers, but it’s not the helpless cling of a child. It’s… protective. Like he’s anchoring her. My stomach turns, and I can’t say why. Or maybe I can. I just don’t want to.
Lev’s voice cuts through the silence. “We followed the vehicle that took her through street feed, but three miles south of the airport, they ditched the damn car in a dead zone.”
He’s seated at the war table, feet up, but there’s nothing relaxed in his posture. His eyes are sharp and focused.
“No CCTV,” he continues. “No traffic cams. No drones. No trace. Just… gone. Whoever ordered this stint knows the area well.”
Viktor stands by the far window, arms crossed. He hasn’t said a word since I stormed in. But I know he’s listening. Calculating. His silence says more than most men’s speeches.
I stop pacing and watch the footage again.
“They couldn’t have just disappeared,” I mutter. “Not like this.”
“We’ve tapped every feed in that grid,” Lev says. “ Even leaned on airline ground staff. But we found nothing. No chatter. No trail.”
I slam my fist into the edge of the table. The steel groans. Pain blossoms through my knuckles, but I welcome it.
“This wasn’t random,” Viktor clears his throat. “This was surgical. And whoever did it knows exactly how we operate.”
Something cold rushes down my spine as the CCTV footage freezes on a single frame. It’s Mara’s son looking up at her, his features half-lit. Yet even through the grain, I see it.
The shape of his mouth. The lines around his eyes. The set of his little jaw.
“I must be fucking seeing things.”
I blink, but the resemblance doesn’t go away. That face... There’s something of me in it. I tell myself.
“I’ll be damned,” Lev mutters suddenly, tone lower now, more careful. “Zee, that boy is a miniature version of you.”
I go still. “You think?”
Lev shrugs slowly, eyes narrowing at the screen. “The kid. The way he carries himself. That chin. The scowl. Could be your clone.”
Viktor crosses his arms. “It’s not just the face. It’s the way he moves. Protective. Controlled. Too aware for his age.”
Their voices sound muffled and distant. I move closer to the screen. The boy is frozen mid-stride, slightly ahead of her, even though his hand is in hers.
A rush of blood pounds in my ears. I try to speak, but the words get stuck in my throat. My jaw flexes and then locks. I study the boy again—the angle of his cheekbones, the way his lips press together, and even the shape of his ears look familiar.
It’s impossible.
It should be impossible.
Unless…
I back away from the screen, dragging a hand down my face. But the image is burned into me now.
That kid cannot be mine, because she wouldn’t…
But the thing is—she would. If she thought it was safer, or that I didn’t deserve to know.
I ball my fists again. My voice comes out like gravel. “Get me everything. Every frame. Every second of audio. I want facial recon, shadow analysis, heat mapping. I want to know what brand of gum the fucking driver chewed.”
Anton, who has joined us, doesn’t argue. He stands, grabs his tablet, and starts tapping.
Viktor watches me closely now, and I don’t look away because the truth is screaming in my chest. And if that boy is mine?
Someone just made this personal.
The room is thick with the kind of silence that means nobody’s breathing.
I’m still standing near the main screen, the boy’s face frozen in time before me. Viktor hasn’t moved from his position near the window. Lev’s back at the table, eyes glued to his phone like he’s willing it to spit out coordinates.
Then Viktor’s burner buzzes.
He pulls it from his coat and answers with a clipped edge, putting it on speaker as he crosses to the table.
“You have something?”
Thiago’s voice comes through, sounding strained and rough around the edges. But it’s still alert and calculating.
“I just got off the phone with Mara,” he says.
Every head in the room snaps toward the speaker. For the first time since this began, Lev lowers his phone. Viktor straightens. My hands curl into fists without meaning to.
“She says she’s safe. So is my grandson,” Thiago continues. “They’ve been… with Cristóbal Ruiz. These past twenty-four hours.”
The words hit like a gut punch.
“They’ve been what?” I mutter, stepping closer to the table.
Thiago’s voice doesn’t waver. “Apparently, they got married.”
I stop breathing.
Every noise—the hum of the monitors, the tick of the clock—ceases to exist. There’s only that sentence echoing in my skull, ringing louder with every second that ticks by.
Mara. Married. To Cristóbal.
“Say that again?”
“She married him. Privately. Says they’ve been in a long-standing relationship. That he’s been visiting her in Spain. That she wanted to protect herself and the boy before re-entering the public eye. Whatever that means.”
My jaw tightens so hard it clicks. I can feel Viktor watching me. Lev mutters something under his breath that sounds like “bullshit.”
Viktor mutes the call and exhales through his nose. It’s the kind of sound he makes when someone just lied to his face and he’s weighing which kneecap to break first.
My voice cuts through the air like a blade. “And you believe that?”
There’s a pause before Thiago answers. And that pause says more than anything.
“No,” he says finally, his voice lower now. “I know my daughter. That wasn’t her voice. She said all the right things—but none of it sounded like her.”
I close my eyes. Let the fury soak through my spine. My gut already knew it. This just confirms it.
“There’s something off,” Thiago continues. “She was trying too hard. Like someone was holding a script in front of her.”
Of course they were.
Cristóbal.
That bastard didn’t just take her. He dressed it up like a fairy tale. He’s parading her like she’s his willing queen while hiding the leash around her neck.
“You think she’s lying?” Viktor asks.
“I think she’s surviving,” Thiago says. “And I need you to figure out what she didn’t say.”
I turn around and lock eyes with Viktor. He nods once. No words needed.
Anton moves to the comms hub, already pulling up decryption software. “We’ll scrub the call for audio layering,” he says. “Voice stress analysis. Static. Background noise. Anything out of place.”
Viktor lowers the phone. “Get it done.”
I take a breath that feels like swallowing glass.
Cristóbal has her. And he’s spinning a story to turn her father into a mouthpiece, making Mara lie to protect herself and the boy.
I step back to the table, stare at the screen again—at Mara’s blurred image frozen mid-stride, at the boy whose face is too damn familiar.
No. This isn’t about rescuing her anymore. This is about ending the man who took her.
And if Cristóbal thinks he didn’t just start a war by stealing what is mine? Then he hasn’t met me yet.