CHAPTER 37 ROMAN #2
She’s been taken.
I know it in my soul. The thought settles like a blade sliding into place. I release myself from Victor’s touch slowly and straighten to my full height.
“Atlas. Track her phone. Track her car. I don’t care how. Ping towers, traffic cams, farm CCTV. I want a location,” my voice comes out cold even to my own ears.
Atlas just nods once before he starts moving.
“Victor. Riggs. Felix. You take the north end of the village and the outer roads. Every lay-by. Every ditch. Every abandoned unit. If you see tyre marks that look fresh, you call me.”
No one argues. No one hesitates. We move. The room shifts from domestic noise to operational silence in seconds. The girls get ushered into different rooms, but I pay them no attention. My girl is somewhere and I need to bring her home.
I see Felix grab his keys, but I catch his arm before he can step past me. For a moment it’s just us. My friend, her twin. His face is pale, but his eyes are steady.
“You good?” I ask quietly.
“I could ask you the same.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I murmur. “Worry about the son of a bitch who has her.”
Something dangerous passes between us in that second, that shared brotherhood and shared rage for someone we love deeply. Felix nods once before he pulls free.
I’m in my car before the front door finishes closing behind me. The engine roars to life and I’m already moving. Quinn said she was meeting at the café. It’s the last normal point in her timeline.
Stealing a breath, I pull out of the drive and head towards the café. Every bend feels hostile now. Every passing car is a potential threat. The sun has completely dipped beneath the horizon, dragging the last streaks of light with it. The sky is bruised purple, fading to black.
Streetlights flicker on one by one like witnesses refusing to speak as I scan everything. Lay-bys. Hedges. Field entrances. Dark shapes that could be nothing, or everything.
My phone buzzes in the passenger seat and for half a second my heart leaps, stupid and hopeful, but it’s not Fae.
It’s the vicar.
Fuck.
The wedding.
I pull over briefly and type out a message cancelling before I’m moving again.
The village roads stretch endlessly in front of me.
Familiar streets feel foreign. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks.
Every minute that passes tightens something around my ribs.
Did she fight? Of course she did. Did she scream?
The thought makes my grip on the steering wheel turn white.
My mind runs through faces that could have done this like targets in a line-up.
If she is hurt, I—
My phone rings. I answer before it finishes vibrating.
“Tell me,” I bark.
“I hacked into the tracker registered with her car company,” he says, voice clipped like he’s already moving. “They log live data through their security system. I’ve got her last ping.”
“Where?” Every muscle in my body locks.
“Old Mill Road. Marks Tey. Last hit was forty minutes ago. Exact coordinates are coming through now,” Atlas continues. “There’s an old structure tagged nearby. It looks like a barn.”
“Tell the others,” I say quietly. “We will meet there.”
I hang up before he replies. The engine growls as I slam the car into gear and turn hard, tyres spitting against the road as I make my way to her location. Begging, praying to a god I don’t believe in that I’m not too late.
The streetlights disappear the further out I get. The sky has fully bruised into night, deep and heavy above me. Trees close in on either side of the road, their branches clawing toward each other like they’re trying to seal the path shut. My headlights cut through the dark in narrow beams.
Gravel spits under my tyres when I turn onto the road. My stomach drops. The road narrows immediately. No houses. No passing cars. Just fields, silence, and the low hum of my engine slicing through it.
Why the fuck was she here?
Old Mill is the kind of place people drive past in daylight and never think about twice, but it becomes something else entirely once the sun goes down.
She drove down this road. Alone. Probably angry and heartbroken, definitely distracted. The thought hits me like a fist and I scream into the quiet of my car.
The barn rises from the dark exactly where Atlas said it would.
It’s abandoned and splintering at the edges.
The wood is warped and sagging as if it’s been holding its breath for years.
The metal roof is streaked with rust, eaten through in places.
There are no other cars in sight, which means hers was moved.
I grit my teeth as the panic rises. The open land stretches too far in every direction.
As I stop and turn my car off, I hear engines approach behind me.
One by one, the others arrive in staggered formation.
Taking another breath, I grab my torch as we step out almost in sync.
The air is colder here. Damp. It clings to my skin and carries the smell of earth and rot.
But it’s too still. Too silent, the kind that presses against your ears.
My pulse slows to an almost sluggish beat as I hyper-focus on the scene in front of me.
I hear the cock of a gun behind me; I don’t need to turn to know one of the guys is covering my six. Atlas flanks my left as Victor and Riggs sweep wide. I realise then that Felix is the one behind me, staying close.
The barn doors hang crooked, mud laid thick around the entrance like a rug.
I jolt at what’s in front of me. I feel Felix more than see him bend down beside me to inspect the tyre tracks.
They’re fresh, cutting deep through older ones.
I move closer, scanning the ground for a clue.
To the left, the earth is churned. Not from rain but a struggle.
Boot prints overlapping each other as drag marks pull away.
My vision tunnels as I crouch over it slowly.
Something metallic catches the light just beneath the mud. I reach down and pull it free. It’s a silver chain that I quickly clean… her bracelet.
Fear, cold and absolute, floods my veins so fast it almost makes me dizzy. My hand tightens around the broken metal until it bites into my palm.
She was here. She fought.
My chest constricts as fear floods my veins.
The kind that doesn’t scream but hollows.
An image of her struggling flashes so violently it nearly drops me to my knees.
I blink hard, trying to force myself back into focus.
Beside me, Felix makes a sound. It’s broken and raw and I turn my head slowly to see he’s staring at my hand. At the bracelet.
Felix’s face has drained of colour, his eyes locked on the snapped chain like if he looks long enough it will undo itself.
“That’s hers?” He breathes, but it isn’t really a question.
Something inside me fractures at the way his voice trembles. They might joke about the twin bond, but I see it. The silent understanding they’ve always had, the way they seek each other out for comfort.
“It is,” I say evenly, even though my insides feel like they’re being flayed open.
Felix swallows hard. His jaw works, but nothing comes out. I’ve seen him angry. I’ve seen him violent but I have never seen him look like this.
My fear mutates instantly into something far more dangerous. Whoever touched her, whoever dragged her across this ground like she was something to be discarded, they didn’t just take the woman I love. They took Felix’s other half. And that makes this personal in a way that transcends logic.
I rise slowly, scanning the barn doors. The wood is splintered near the handle. Fresh scuff marks line the lower panels.
“She fought,” Felix mutters, staring at the drag marks. His voice cracks halfway through the sentence.
“Of course she did,” I reply, but my voice is empty.
There’s a sharp metallic taste in my mouth and I realise I must have been biting my cheek. The pain in my chest is too much to mask it. My fingers curl tighter around the broken bracelet until the chain cuts into my skin as my eyes flick over everything in front of me.
A shiver racks through my body like we’re being watched. I want to turn and run toward it.
But I don’t.
Let them watch.
Let them feel safe.
Because the fear that is trying to suffocate me right now…
It’s about to become theirs.