Chapter 54
LUCIAN
Nadia’s phone keeps ringing into nothing, and the silence on the other end is deafening. It feels like someone reached into my chest and ripped out a lung.
I try again. And again. Nothing.
My pulse spikes. The room tilts. The world outside my car window keeps going - cars, people, daylight - all of it indifferent to the fact that mine just stopped.
This is what they don’t tell you about getting out of prison: life moved on without you. You get spat back into a world that doesn’t resemble the one you left.
I’m a fish flopping on concrete - the systems, the tech, the speed of everything - I’m not built for any of it anymore. So I do the only thing I can. I call Mason Ironside.
He answers on the first ring. “Jude?”
“Nadia Reed is missing.”
My voice breaks on the last word.
There’s a beat. Not of doubt - of processing.
“Where are you?” Mason asks.
A few minutes later, they appear out of nowhere.
Scar, Mason, Brando, Lucky, Rafi, Kanyan, Jayson - all of them moving with that lethal purpose that means something is about to burn.
Jayson claps a heavy hand on my back. “We’ll find her.”
Scar’s eyes are sharp glass. “Talk to me.”
“She didn’t show for her shift,” I stammer, furious at how I sound. “She was supposed to be at the hospital. She never made it to her shift. No one’s heard from her.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” Scar asks.
“This morning,” I say. “Fourteen hours ago.”
The number tastes like sharp and acidic on my tongue. Fourteen hours - long enough for anything to happen, long enough for a life to be dismantled. Nadia’s life. My life.
They don’t know the full extent of what’s happening between us.
They know our past, know the old scorch marks between Nadia and me, know I took out Michael without a second thought to keep her safe.
But as for now - this thing that’s been building, this quiet, relentless gravity between us - they’re in the dark.
Or they were.
My panic has lit the room like a flare.
Scar’s jaw tightens. A small twitch. Barely there - except I know exactly what it means.
He knows. He knows, without a single word exchanged, that I’ve crossed a line.
That I’ve let something personal bleed into something tactical.
That I’ve compromised the operation by letting a woman - this woman - into the part of me meant to stay locked down.
He knows I’ve let my dick sidestep reason. He knows I’ve let my heart get involved in a situation where hearts are liabilities. But more than that - he knows I’m not just worried.
I’m feral. I’m unravelling. I’m seconds away from tearing the city apart with my bare hands. And I’m the most dangerous weapon they have right now - even if only to myself.
Mason shoots me a look - sharp, assessing, the kind you use on a bomb to determine how close it is to detonating.
“What aren’t you telling us?” he asks quietly.
Everything. Nothing. All of it.
I meet Scar’s eyes, and something raw slips through me, a soundless snarl of possession, fear, and the kind of rage that comes from loving someone you never had any intention of letting go.
“She’s mine,” I say, voice low, dangerous.
Scar doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t judge. He just nods once - slow, deliberate - because he understands something ugly and true: this isn’t just an operation anymore. This is war. And if anyone hurts Nadia… if anyone touches her… I’ll make the whole damn city quake.
Kanyan steps forward, calm and coiled, silence snapping under his presence. “Pull the hospital cameras. See if she actually made it here.”
“She didn’t clock in for her shift,” I say, the words thick with the fog in my head.
“Doesn’t mean she didn’t come,” Kanyan replies, steady as a metronome. “We cover every angle. Until we map her exact movements, we won’t know what happened or where. Somebody get the street cams by her building. Now.”
Men start moving in perfect symmetry. It’s like everyone automatically knows what to do and what their role is without having to be asked. Phones come up like lightning. Contacts are dialed, doors opened, credentials flashed. I don’t ask how they get it. I don’t want to know. I only want her back.
We walk down the hospital corridor to the security room, where a wall of monitors watches everything.
The screens show every corner of the hospital—waiting rooms, elevators, hallways, the automatic doors opening and closing.
The footage is grainy and black-and-white, full of small, quiet details.
We lean forward and study it, looking for the one moment that will tell us what happened.
Rafi talks quietly with the security officer, and a moment later the main entrance fills the screen - the place Nadia would’ve walked through if she showed up for her shift.
“Alright,” Rafi says, eyes locked on the footage. “We’re looking for her coming in around her usual start time. If she made it inside but didn’t clock in - which is always the first thing she does - then whatever happened to her must’ve happened within minutes.”
Rafi, Brando, and I lean in toward the screen, every second stretching tight as we wait for her to appear. The clock ticks forward, minutes sliding past one by one - until finally, at 6:03, she walks through the automatic doors.
Head down. Bag over one shoulder. Completely alone.
She looks so small against the cold, sterile backdrop of the hospital that my chest squeezes. For a moment, she’s just pixels - just a shadow - but then the reality of it slams into me.
She made it here. She walked in. So how the hell does no one know where she is?
“She didn’t clock in,” Brando says, voice flat. He thumbs through on-screen logs on a tablet he’s holding. “No sign she spoke to anyone. Nothing on record.”
The security officer’s finger taps the screen like a metronome. “She goes down that corridor - there.” He traces a black line of pixels. “But there’s a gap in the feed. A lag. Like someone blinked the camera.”
My jaw tightens until the muscle ticks. “Tampered,” I say.
Simple. Final.
Brando folds his arms, eyes cold. “Seen going in, not seen leaving. Either she’s still inside - somewhere they can hide her - or she left by an invisible route.”
“Check every exit,” Rafi snaps. “All of them.”
“Try the emergency exits first,” Brando suggests.
The security officer brings up a split view of every emergency exit, filling the wall with feeds from all the back doors and side corridors.
The room is quiet except for the low hum of the monitors as the footage rolls.
Those exits hardly ever get used, so the screens stay mostly still - just empty hallways and closed doors.
Then Rafi leans forward. “Wait. Freeze that.” He taps the screen. “Back it up.”
There’s a man in a doctor’s coat on the screen. At first, he looks like any other staff member - until he moves. Too fast. Too tense. Too wrong for the setting.
He’s pushing something that definitely isn’t hospital equipment - a big, dark suitcase. It looks out of place against the bland hospital walls, almost obscene as he wheels it toward a car waiting in the staff lot. We can only see his back at first, shoulders tight, posture stiff.
Then he hauls the suitcase up, shoving it into the trunk. And when he turns - his face hits the camera dead-on.
Kanyan lets out a low, disgusted whistle. “That’s not luggage. He’s moving something… or someone.”
My vision tunnels.
“Kellerman.”
The name tears out of me like shrapnel as something inside me blows wide open.
Not a small fracture. Not a careful break. A blast that makes air rush from lungs and vision go white-hot at the edges.
A sound escapes me - primitive, animal - a roar that tears through the concrete calm of the room. It’s a threat. A promise. The sound of a man who’s been robbed of something he’s already lost once before.
Rafi’s hand lands on my shoulder, hard enough to bruise. “We’ll get her.”
I can barely feel him. My feet pace; my fists clench and unclench with useless muscle memory. My head is a furnace. The image of that suitcase rotates behind my eyes until it becomes damn near holy - an altar of everything I will burn down to pry her back.
He moved her like cargo.
He touched her.
He put her - my Nadia - into a case as if she were nothing but an object to be boxed and moved.
My vision tunnels red. I taste iron and vengeance. Mason’s voice cuts through as he walks into the room, calm but edged. “Jude.”
I barely register it. The world narrows to the drum of my heart, to the hot, sharp blood-rattle of anger. I want to tear him apart with my bare hands. I want to rip the teeth out of the city and find her.
“He has her,” I snarl, teeth bared. “Kellerman has her.”
Mason’s eyes harden. “Then lets go get her.”