Chapter 26
Gideon
James groaned again, arm flopping off the couch like he meant to drown himself in the carpet.
Scar nudged his boot with one toe.
“Look at him. Our sweet little tragedy queen.”
James didn’t move. “I’ll tragedy-queen you straight into a wall, Jeremy.”
Hades barked a laugh. “He lives.”
Gung Lu paced behind the bar, muttering in Mandarin, hands slicing the air like he was calculating exactly how many bodies he’d need to bury before sunrise.
Jafar leaned a hip against the counter, swirling the melting ice in his glass.
“He warned us. You all remember that, right? He said if that girl ever got herself involved in something shady, he’d burn the whole town down.”
Scar snorted. “This wasn’t burning the town down. This was him lighting a scented candle named ‘Righteous Fury’ and shoving it up someone’s—”
James threw a pillow at him with sniper accuracy.
The room devolved again—shouting, bickering, overlapping insults.
Noise.
Deflection.
All of it to avoid the real reason they were here.
I said nothing. Stayed planted against the wall, arms crossed, jaw locked so tight a headache throbbed behind my eyes.
I shouldn’t be here.
Belle should’ve texted by now. Or called. Or something.
Every minute I stood in this room, she drifted farther from my reach.
Hades caught my expression. Straightened. “Jones,” he said, low enough for only the room to hear, “you look like you’re about to kill someone.”
James snorted into the throw pillow. “Welcome to the club. Membership has snacks.”
I ignored them all. “How bad was it?”
Hook dragged himself upright, eyes red, hair a disaster. “Bad enough. Her ex-best friend’s daddy thought he could ‘broker a deal’ with some creeps who run their little events.”
Scar whistled. “Classy.”
James pinned me with a look—clearer than before, sharper. “You wanna know the part that pissed me off?”
My chest tightened. “Not particularly.”
He pushed on anyway. “She didn’t even know. They didn’t tell her. They just signed her up like she was property so they could auction off her virginity. Her virginity.”
The air shifted.
Hades stepped back.
Scar’s grin vanished.
Jafar set his glass down with a soft click.
James pointed vaguely at me, eyes narrowing. “That look right there? That’s why we dragged your ass in here before you left. You break a man’s nose, you get an arrest. You break a man’s spine—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Jafar murmured.
James slumped again. “Whatever. I’m done. If she wants to throw her life into a furnace, I’ll just be the idiot cheering from the sidelines.”
Gung Lu muttered something that sounded suspiciously like liar.
But I wasn’t listening anymore.
Belle’s face flashed in my mind.
Her flinch this morning.
Her silence.
The men in the car.
My pulse hammered.
I checked my phone for the fourth time in five minutes.
Nothing from Belle.
That should've been fine. She was at the bookstore. Safe. Busy. Except my gut twisted anyway.
"Gideon."
I looked up. Hades stood too close, eyes sharp despite the chaos swirling around us.
"You good?"
"Fine."
"Liar." He tilted his head toward James, who'd started humming something off-key and vaguely threatening. "You've been checking your phone like it owes you money."
I pocketed it. "Just making sure everything's under control."
"With Hook? Nothing's ever under control." Hades crossed his arms. "But you're not worried about him. You're worried about her."
I didn't answer.
Hades knew. They all knew. The entire team had watched me spiral since Belle moved in. Watched me get quieter. Sharper. More territorial than I'd ever been on the ice.
Jafar spoke from across the room, voice smooth and knowing. "How is your little arrangement going, by the way?"
My jaw tightened. "Not your concern."
"Defensive." Scar smirked, leaning against the doorframe. "That's new."
"Fuck off, Scar."
He laughed. "Oh, he's gone gone. Look at him."
Gang Lu grunted from his corner. "Leave him alone."
"Why?" Scar's grin widened. "This is fascinating. Gideon Jones, the man who treats women like revolving doors, suddenly can't go five minutes without checking if his little bookworm is breathing."
"She has a name," I said quietly.
The room stilled. Even James lifted his head off the pillow, bloodshot eyes focusing with surprising clarity.
"Did you just—" Scar started.
"Her name is Belle." My voice cut through the space like a blade. "Use it."
Silence.
Then Hades whistled low. "Well, shit."
James sat up slowly, swaying slightly. "You're in love with her."
"I'm not—"
"You are." He pointed at me with the bottle. "I know what that looks like. You're drowning, brother."
My phone buzzed.
I pulled it out so fast I nearly dropped it.
Not Belle. Just a notification. Meaningless.
But the relief I'd felt for half a second—followed by the crushing disappointment—told me everything I'd been trying to deny.
James was right.
I was drowning.
My phone rang.
Belle's name flashed across the screen.
I answered before the second ring. "Belle."
"Gideon, don't come—"
A man's voice cut through. Rough. Smug. Wrong.
"Since your little whore of a girlfriend can't figure the fuck out how to fucking follow orders—"
Ice flooded my veins. My hand crushed the phone so hard the case cracked. "Who the fuck are you?"
Laughter. Dark. Confident. The kind that came from men who thought they held all the cards.
"I'm about to break your girlfriend's pretty fingers so she can't grab your dick anymore if you don't—"
"Where are you?"
The question came out dead calm. Lethal.
Behind me, the room had gone silent. Every man watching. Waiting.
"The bookstore." He paused, letting it sink in. "But you better hurry. My colleague wants to know what she tastes like."
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone.
One second.
Two.
Then I moved.
Chair scraped. Keys already in my hand. Coat forgotten.
Hades stepped into my path. "Gideon—"
I shoved past him.
"Wait, what the hell—" Scar started.
"Move."
James stumbled upright, swaying. "What happened?"
I didn't answer. Didn't slow.
Gang Lu appeared at the door, blocking it with that silent, immovable presence of his.
Our eyes met.
He saw it. Whatever lived behind my calm exterior—the thing I kept leashed, buried, controlled—was clawing its way out. He stepped aside without a word.
I hit the hallway at a sprint.
Behind me, chaos erupted. Voices shouting. Footsteps thundering.
Jafar: "Who was on the phone?"
Hades: "Someone at Belle's store—"
Scar: "Oh, fuck."
James, louder than the rest: "Go! Go, go, GO!"
I didn't hear anything after that.
The world narrowed to three things: Belle's voice, terrified and cut off. The drive to the bookstore. The men who'd just made the worst mistake of their pathetic lives.
My hands shook on the steering wheel—not from fear. From rage. Pure, distilled, homicidal rage.
I'd told her to stay with me. To let me protect her. And she'd gone, anyway. Stubborn. Reckless.
If they touched her…
If they hurt her…
I'd kill them.
Slowly.
The tires screamed as I peeled out of the parking garage.
Behind me, engines roared to life.
The pack was coming.
But I'd get there first.
The tires hadn't even stopped screaming before I was out of the car.
The black sedan was gone. Empty curb. Oil stain where it had been parked for hours.
That should've calmed me.
It didn't.
My pulse hammered harder. Wrong. Everything about this felt wrong.
I crossed the street in three strides. The bookstore door hung open. Not wide—just cracked. Like someone had shoved through it and never bothered closing it behind them.
A display of romance novels lay toppled across the threshold. Bright covers scattered like broken wings across the hardwood. Pages bent. Spines cracked.
Belle would never leave books like that.
Ice poured down my spine.
I pushed the door wider.
The bell above it didn't ring. Someone had torn it down. It lay in pieces near the counter.
A shelf sagged halfway off the wall, books spilling from it in a cascade of chaos. The neat order Belle maintained religiously—destroyed.
My breath came shallow. Too fast.
I stepped over the scattered novels, glass crunching under my boots.
"Belle?"
My voice came out low. Deadly.
Silence answered.
Not the comfortable quiet of an empty store.
The hollow, violated quiet of something taken.
I moved deeper inside. Past Fiction. Past the counter where she'd smiled at customers yesterday. Past the aisle where I'd kissed her for the first time.
The display case where I'd—
A splash of red on the floor stopped me cold.
Not paint.
Blood.
Not much. Just a few drops. But enough.
Enough to shatter the last thread of control I'd been clinging to.
"Belle!" Louder this time. Desperate.
Nothing.
I spun, scanning every corner. Every shadow. Every goddamn inch of this place.
The back room door stood open.
I bolted toward it. Empty.
Her coat hung on the hook. Her bag sat beside the desk, phone inside it, screen dark.
She was gone.
They'd taken her. And I hadn't been here.
Something inside me broke. Not the rage—that was still building, coiling tighter with every breath. The part of me that believed I could keep her safe. The part that thought control meant protection. The part that hadn't realized how badly I'd already lost her the moment I let her out of my sight.
I stood in the ruins of her bookstore, blood on the floor and silence ringing in my ears, and understood with perfect, terrible clarity: I would burn the entire world down to get her back.
And it still might not be enough.
The crash came from behind me. Not imagined. Not a trick of adrenaline.
Real.
Then—a scream.
Belle's.
My vision went white.
I didn't run. I charged. Straight through Fiction, past the counter, sending a display crashing to the floor. Books exploded across my path. I didn't slow.
The back room door hung crooked on its hinges.
And there…
Belle.