27. Mason
27
MASON
T he engine hums beneath my fingers as I slow the car to a stop in front of the school. Shelby’s school. The one she’s thrown herself into, pouring her time and energy into something good. Something that matters.
She’s different now—stronger. There’s a light in her I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see; a light which had been extinguished by David Eddy and was only now re-emerging after his exit from this world. But she’s found something here, something that makes her feel like she’s taking control of her life again. And I get to witness it every day.
Shelby tugs at the strap of her bag, glancing at me with a small smile. “You know, you don’t have to drop me off every morning like I’m a kid going to school.”
I smirk, resting my arm on the steering wheel. “I know.”
She rolls her eyes. “Then why do you?”
“Because I want to,” I tell her simply. “Because I like knowing you get here safe. And we get to spend the drive over dirty talking—makes my morning.”
Her expression softens, and she shakes her head. “You’re impossible.”
“And you love it.”
She hesitates, fingers toying with the hem of her coat, like she’s weighing something unspoken. Then, before I can process it, she leans in, pressing a quick, featherlight kiss to my cheek.
It’s nothing. And it’s everything.
The warmth barely registers before it’s gone, but it stops me cold. My pulse stutters, my jaw locks, and for one disorienting second, I forget how to fucking breathe. It’s so simple, so unguarded—so normal . We’ve never done this before. Kisses have always been stolen in the heat of something darker, something desperate. But this? This is soft . It’s uncalculated. Domestic in a way that feels more intimate than anything we’ve ever done.
She pulls back just as fast, her cheeks flushing a deep, unmistakable pink. “See you later.”
And before I can say a word, she’s slipping out of the car, the door shutting behind her with a quiet thud.
I watch her go—the way her shoulders straighten, the way she moves with a confidence that’s only just starting to feel like second nature to her again. She doesn’t look back, but she knows I’m still watching.
The security detail stationed outside takes their cue, stepping into position to escort her inside. They’re discreet, but they’re there, just like they are every afternoon when they pick her up and bring her home. My orders. My non-negotiable.
I grip the steering wheel, exhaling slowly as the tightness in my chest eases.
This is my routine now. Dropping her off in the morning, knowing she’s doing something that matters. Coming home to her in the evening, knowing she’s there, that she’s safe. That she’s still choosing this—choosing us—every single day.
And maybe I never thought I’d have this. Not a life like this. Not something steady. Something worth coming home to. But Shelby is all of that. And for the first time in my life, I know exactly what I’m fighting to keep.
Five days. We have five days of peace. Five days where the illusion of normalcy settles over us like a fragile veil—where I pretend that Shelby is just another woman going to work, not a woman tethered to a man like me.
Five days before my phone rings and shatters it all.
I don’t recognize the number.
I almost don’t answer.
But the second I do, my blood turns to ice.
“Mason.”
Clay.
His voice is taut, threaded with quiet menace, each syllable tightening around my throat like a noose. He doesn’t waste words—just sharp edges and brutal truths. And the moment his next ones land, my stomach plummets.
“They have Shelby.”
The words don’t register at first. They hit my brain in slow motion, like a delayed reaction to a car crash. But the second they do, I’m already moving. My chair clatters back, my pulse a brutal drum in my ears.
Jayson must see it—see the raw, unfiltered panic bleeding through my movements—because he doesn’t wait for orders. He’s already bringing the car around before I even get to the door.
I slam my phone against my ear. “What the fuck do you mean, they have Shelby?”
Clay’s voice is clipped, urgent. Rushed. It sounds wrong.
“I just got a call. Shelby’s been taken.”
The words don’t register at first. They hit my ears, but my brain refuses to process them. Taken? How? How the fuck could they get to her when my security detail was right there, waiting outside the school gates, ready to pick her up?
A roar of panic slams into my chest, but my body is already moving—sluggish and uncoordinated, like I’m wading through thick, suffocating tar. The world tilts, spinning in violent, chaotic waves as a cold, insidious fear claws its way up my spine.
People don’t just get taken. This isn’t about leverage. This is about blood.
Someone has murder on their mind.
“I’ll call you back,” I hiss into the phone, barely recognizing my own voice—low, deadly, shaking with barely restrained fury. My fingers move on autopilot as I punch in another number, calling the detail assigned to Shelby. My chest tightens with every ring, every unbearable second they don’t pick up.
Pick up. Pick the fuck up.
Finally—“Boss.”
“Tell me you have her.”
Silence.
And then: “We went to pick her up, but—” a sharp inhale, like the guy knows he’s about to step on a goddamn landmine—“the fire alarms went off an hour ago. The school was evacuated. In the chaos... Shelby went missing.”
The world blacks out for a moment. A rush of white noise crashes over me, drowning out everything else.
They lost her.
They fucking lost her.
I grip the phone so hard it creaks under my fingers, my rage curling around my bones, turning my blood to fire.
Whoever took her?
They don’t fucking know what they’ve just started.
I stab my finger against the screen, dialing Clay back. He has answers. I need them. Now.
The phone barely rings before he picks up.
“Talk,” I snap, pacing like a caged animal, my muscles coiled so tight they might snap. Who took her? Why? Where the fuck is she? The questions pile up in my skull, a frantic, raging storm, but only one thing matters—getting Shelby back. “What do they want?”
A pause. Then?—
“A hard drive.”
I freeze mid-step.
“What hard drive?”
Clay exhales sharply. “The one with enough dirt on some of the country’s most senior politicians to start a goddamn war.”
My vision narrows. My world narrows.
I thought if Shelby was ever in danger, it’d be because of me. Because of the blood on my hands. Because of the world I live in, the enemies I’ve made.
But this isn’t about me.
Shelby isn’t being used to get to me. She’s being used to get to her own brother.
A deep, molten rage licks through my veins. “Who called you?”
“Blocked number,” Clay grinds out. “But they gave me a time and place. Told me if I hand over the drive, they’ll let her go.”
Bullshit.
They won’t let her go.
The second they have that hard drive, she’s dead.
I inhale slowly through my nose, forcing the fire inside me into something sharper. Something controlled.
“Where?”
“The old cement factory on Clemens.”
Of course.
Where else would a high-stakes exchange go down but the rotting carcass of an abandoned factory? Once the beating heart of the city’s biggest cement supplier—until the owner himself wound up wearing cement shoes.
Fitting.
A graveyard for industry turned into a playground for criminals.
I don’t have time to process the irony.
My pulse hammers as I press the phone harder against my ear. Every second wasted is a second Shelby is at their mercy.
“Send me the location,” I snap. My voice is razor-sharp, slicing through the tension in my chest. “And stay put. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t do a fucking thing until I say so.”
No heroics. No mistakes. No dead bodies I don’t get to put in the ground myself.
I end the call before I can hear a reply, my fingers already dialing the next number. I need men. I need firepower. I need to be there five minutes ago.
I’ll tear that fucking factory apart brick by brick if I have to.
I call in every favor, pull every string, rip apart every contact I have until the entire underworld knows that Shelby Monroe has been taken—and that I will kill every single person who had a hand in it unless she is returned in one piece.
I pull up the tracker on my phone—the one embedded in the bracelet I gave her.
Offline.
Fuck.
I wouldn’t expect anything less from the kind of bastards willing to take a woman hostage. The first thing they’d do is strip her of anything that could be traced.