Chapter 43
After hours of poring over intel, rounding up runners to man the ports, hacking into the city’s CCTV, and—at the same time—working on a way to get Lily out without tipping Antonio off that we’re onto him, I should be ready to crash by the time I step into my old flat.
Instead, there’s a restless energy under my skin. A low, insistent warning I can’t shake.
Every second Lily is in Lyon, alone, is a second too long.
Cora and Owen think waiting until morning is our best move. Send Liam and Aidan first thing, let them get Lily quietly to a safe house before Antonio realises the net is tightening.
It’s clean, logical, smart.
And it doesn’t sit right with me at all.
Dropping my keys, I have my phone in hand, before I can talk myself out of it.
After our night in that hotel, I’ve made an effort not to obsessively check the cameras in Lily’s flat, but like all addicts, I find myself needing a hit.
In the morning, I’ll call her. Explain things and bring her home.
But for now, I need to see her with my own eyes, reassure myself she's okay. That she’s safe.
Glass of vodka in hand, I pull up the feed. Her living room is in darkness, as is the kitchen. Typical for this time of night, but something in the quiet scratches at me. There’s an eerie stillness that feels off.
Heart in my throat, I click to the bedroom.
Empty.
A faint pressure builds behind my ribs, the kind that whispers you’re missing something.
She should be in bed right now.
I replay the footage again.
Then again.
She’s not there. Not in the doorway, kicking off her shoes. Not in the kitchen making late-night tea. Not crawling into bed with her hair a mess and her oversized T-shirt slipping off one shoulder. There’s no sign of her at all.
Just a cold silence.
My pulse ticks faster, hard enough I feel it in my throat. I flick backwards in the timeline, jaw tightening as the footage rewinds in a fast blur—her bed, her desk, her kitchen—until finally, she appears on screen, rushing out her front door.
Hours ago.
Too many hours ago.
I sit there waiting for her to return.
She doesn’t.
The recording keeps going. Minutes stretch to hours and still there’s nothing. Just that same hollow stillness swallowing the rooms she should be filling.
The pressure in my chest turns into something sharp.
Something lethal.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I coax the empty feed. “Where the hell are you?”
I check the time. She’s been gone too long. It’s past reasonable, past normal, past every threshold of explainability.
Her phone goes straight to voicemail when I call. By the fifth time, it feels like the dial tone is a blade. A cold, jagged sound that cuts into me over and over as the robotic voice informs me to leave a voicemail. As if a fucking voicemail will do her any good.
My vision blurs at the edges, not with panic, but with the kind of dread that feels ancient. Familiar. The kind I haven’t felt since the first time I realised losing her would ruin me.
I try every rational thought I can reach:
Maybe her battery died.
Maybe she stayed out with friends.
Maybe she fell asleep at someone else’s place.
Maybe, maybe—
But all of them collapse under the same brutal truth:
Lily didn’t come home.
I slam onto the edge of the sofa, elbows braced on my knees, staring at the flat as if it could tell me where she is.
But it’s empty and silent. Every blank corner screams her absence.
My chest folds in on itself, sharp and relentless, and I don’t even realise I’ve whispered her name until it leaves me like a prayer I’ve never learned.
“Lily… where are you?”
The echoing silence shatters something inside me, a jagged, irreparable fracture cutting through every nerve, leaving fire in its wake.
My hands curl into fists so tight my nails bite into my palms. The room tilts and my heart hammers, echoing in my teeth, ricocheting off the walls, filling the hollow spaces she left behind.
I’ve seen this before, from the sidelines—when Angus took Cora—and Owen was forced to watch helplessly while she was taken from right under his nose. How did he breathe? How did he think clearly? I can’t even see straight as a tsunami of rage crashes through me, blurring the edges of my vision.
Urgency bites at my heels, screaming at me to get the fuck up and find Lily.
I need to get to her before she vanishes without a trace.
Before Helen’s story gets repeated. Every cell in my body rebels against the mere idea of waiting, of hesitation.
Every nerve screams. My breath is stolen in ragged gasps, my vision flickers, and the world tilts violently, as if it too knows something vital has been ripped away.
I snatch my phone, hands trembling so violently I nearly drop it. Owen. Jonathan. Anyone. I need her. I need to know she’s alive. I need to get to her. And if I have to tear the city apart with my own two hands to do it, then so be it.
Because no one touches a single hair on Lily’s head without paying for it.
My fingers fumble over the screen as I ring Owen. The line clicks, and his voice comes through, confusion laced with worry bleeding down the line.
“Matt?”
“She’s gone,” I blurt. The words tearing out of me before I can think. “Lily’s missing.”
For what feels like forever, he says nothing, a loaded silence hanging between us. For all his teasing about me falling for my stepsister, I doubt he ever imagined he’d see the day I out right admit I’m still caught up in her web.
“How do you know?” he asks hesitantly.
“I—” I swallow hard, my chest tight. “I’ve had cameras in her flat. Even when I thought… even when I thought she’d betrayed us. I couldn’t stay away. I had to make sure she was safe. And now…” My voice cracks. “We’re too late. The flat’s empty.”
“You had cameras in her flat?” He drags each word out slowly, disbelief coating his words.
“Yes,” I admit, shame and urgency coiling tight in my stomach. “I needed to know she was okay. Even when I thought she was involved in this shit, I couldn’t—”
“Matt,” he interrupts gently but firmly, “you did what you had to. But now, focus. Tell me everything you know. Where is she?”
I swallow hard. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling. Can you start looking into the street cameras near her place? I’m heading up to Jonathan. I’m sick and tired of playing by the rules, if Salvatore thinks he can take Lily, then it’s all-out war. Fuck playing it careful.”
There’s a beat of silence. Not hesitation—calculation.
“Matt,” Owen says slowly, “you can’t go straight to war on a guess. We don’t know if it's Salvatore.”
“It’s him,” I snap, too fast, too raw. “You said it yourself. They were always planning on selling her. Who the fuck else even has a reason—”
“Anyone,” Owen cuts in, voice steady as a scalpel.
“We’ve been hunting this trafficking ring for years.
Everyone knows Lily is Benedict’s daughter.
There’s bound to be more than one man with a God complex out there, pissed off that we’re trying to stop their operation.
But listen—listen to me, Matt—if you walk into Jonathan’s penthouse and start throwing accusations without proof, you’ll start a war we can’t contain. ”
My throat burns and I clench my fists until bone grinds against bone.
“I’m not sitting on my hands while she’s out there.” It comes out hoarse, like the words have been ripped from my soul. “Alone.”
“I’m not asking you to sit on your hands,” Owen says, tone softer now, but only by a fraction. “I’ll pull the street cam feeds. I’ll loop Cora in. We’ll get eyes on anything out of the ordinary. But you need to keep your head. Lily needs you to keep your head.”
I drag a shaky breath down my throat, forcing it past the tightness. “I can’t—Christ, Owen, I can’t lose her.”
“That’s why you’re going to Jonathan,” he replies. “And that’s why you’re walking in there with facts, not rage. Tell him what you know. Let him do what he does best. But Matt… this means the inner circle will be looped in. You know that, right?”
I do. And even as dread settles heavy in my chest, something else pulses beneath it—relief. Because this is bigger than pride, bigger than secrets. Lily needs everyone.
All of them.
The inner circle.
Da and Uncle Bren—the Butcher Brothers, men who earned that name the hard way, whose reputations alone have ended fights before they began.
Seamus, Owen’s father, quiet and lethal, the kind of man who never raises his voice because he’s never had to.
Jack—Abigail’s dad—calculating, merciless when it counts.
Declan, who’s learned more about power and blood than most men will ever know.
Men who’ve run this city for decades.
Men who terrify half the country without ever needing to announce themselves.
Helen—who once bit a man’s dick clean off to survive a trafficking ring that thought it owned her.
And at the head of it all stands Jonathan—the kind of man who would burn this entire organisation to the ground just for the chance to get his hands on anyone who hurt Helen… if she didn’t beat him to it.
Logan and Abbie will no doubt find out what’s happening before the sun rises.
And when they do, there won’t be a corner of this city left untouched because no one is more loyal than that girl, and no one is more relentless in his pursuit of peace than Logan.
Because whoever took Lily didn’t just take a girl.
They woke a fucking dynasty.
Owen means it as a warning, but all I can think is, good. The more people who know, the more eyes searching, the better.
And if they learn she’s mine in the process?
Better still.
“Fine,” I spit out. “Call me the second you get anything.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
But I’m already ending the call, already heading for the door. I can’t stand in this flat any longer. I can’t breathe, not when I know all too well that every second spent lingering is a second where unimaginable horrors could be happening to her.