32. Zane
ZANE
Roman doesn’t call. He appears.
I’m at my desk at eleven at night, the building mostly empty below me, when my office door opens without the knock that has preceded every entrance for eight years. I look up, and whatever is on his face stops every other thought in my head before he says a single word.
“The Zurich facility,” he says. “Perimeter breach forty minutes ago. Lena is gone.”
I’m on my feet before I register standing.
“The detail,” I say. “The doubled security.”
“Two men down. Not killed, but out of commission, professional work, fast. Whoever did this knew the rotation schedule, knew the blind spot in the east corridor we flagged for upgrade, and hadn’t finished upgrading yet.
” Roman’s voice stays level, the way it always does, but I can hear something underneath it, the closest thing to genuine alarm I’ve heard from him in eight years.
“Priya is unharmed. She was in the adjoining room. She called it in within minutes.”
I stand at my desk with my hands flat against the surface.
“Who?” I ask.
“We don’t know yet. The method has Marchetti fingerprints, but it’s too clean for the contacts we’ve been tracking. This was a dedicated team.”
“Get me everything. Every camera, every contact, every thread you can pull in the next hour.”
“Already moving.”
He leaves. I stand alone in my office with the city dark and indifferent through the window, and I do something I haven’t done in this room in longer than I can remember.
I put both hands against the desk, and I lean into it, head down, and I let myself feel, for exactly as long as it takes to draw three full breaths, the complete and total weight of having failed at the one thing I told her I would never let happen.
Then I straighten. I pick up my phone.
I call Celine.
She’s in my office within four minutes, still in the clothes she was wearing when I called, hair loose, her face already pale in a way that tells me Priya must have reached her independently, the same minute I did or sooner.
“Tell me everything,” she says. No anger in her voice. No trace of the five days of distance between us. Just a woman who needs facts in the order I have them.
I give them to her. The breach, the two men down, Priya safe, Lena taken by a team too disciplined to be the low-level contacts we’ve been tracking.
I watch her absorb every piece of it, standing very straight, the same composure she’s worn through every crisis in this book of a life she didn’t choose, except this time there’s no controlled distance behind it.
This time it’s just fear, focused on something useful because the alternative is unbearable.
“What do we do?” she asks.
“We build an extraction plan. I need every asset I have working on this within the hour.”
“I want to be in the room.”
I look at her. Every previous crisis, I’ve managed her exposure to the operational details, told her what she needed to know after decisions were already made, the pattern that cost us everything between us over the past month.
“You’re in the room,” I say.
Something shifts in her face. Not relief exactly. Recognition, maybe, that something has actually changed.
Roman runs the operation from my office for the next three hours, maps spread across the table, contacts called in from three time zones, the full machinery of an organization built specifically for moments like this one finally turning at full speed.
Celine sits at the edge of the table, not decorative, not silent, asking sharp questions about the facility layout, about Priya’s statement, about the timeline that doesn’t quite add up between the breach and the first ransom contact we expect but haven’t received yet.
By two in the morning, we have a plan. A team in place by dawn, a location triangulated from the last verified signal off Priya’s phone before the breach, a narrow window where the extraction has the best odds of being clean.
Roman leaves to finalize logistics. The office empties out around us, the maps still spread across the table, the city outside doing nothing, indifferent as always to whatever is happening in any single room above it.
Celine sits very still in the chair across from my desk.
“She’s going to be okay,” I say.
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” I admit. “I don’t.”
She looks at me, and something in her face cracks, the composure she’s held since the moment she walked into this office finally giving way to something rawer underneath it. I cross the room before I’ve fully decided to.
I don’t say anything else. There isn’t anything else to say that would make this better, and I have learned, slowly and at considerable cost, that sometimes the only honest thing is silence held close enough to mean something.
She comes into my arms like something in her has simply given out, and I hold her in the middle of my office with the maps still spread across the table and dawn still hours away, and neither of us says a word about the five days, about the file, about anything except the fact that her sister is somewhere in the dark right now and there’s nothing either of us can do but wait for the sun.
We don’t go to separate rooms.
I don’t ask her to come with me.
We walk down the corridor together in silence and step into my bedroom. The space is dim, lit only by the faint glow of the city and the first weak traces of gray beginning to push against the night sky outside the window. Neither of us turns on a light. There’s no need for it.
I close the door behind us. Celine stands near the foot of the bed, looking small in the oversized sweater she must have pulled on when I called her earlier. I cross to her slowly and reach for the hem. She lifts her arms without hesitation and lets me draw them over her head.
Underneath, she’s wearing a thin tank top. I peel that away too, careful with the fabric, then slide her pants down her legs. She steps out of them and kicks them aside. My hands move over her bare skin, not with hunger but with the need to feel that she’s solid and real and here with me.
She reaches for my shirt next, her fingers steady as she works the remaining buttons open. She pushes it off my shoulders and down my arms, then rests her palms flat against my chest for a moment, as if checking my heartbeat.
I unfasten my pants and let them drop. We stand there together, skin to skin, breathing in the quiet dark.
I guide her onto the bed. The sheets are cool against our bodies as we settle in the center.
I pull her close, chest to chest, and wrap my arms around her.
For a long minute, we simply hold each other.
Her face is pressed into my neck. I feel the slight tremor in her breathing and stroke one hand slowly down her back.
“I’m right here,” I whisper against her hair. “I’ve got you.”
She makes a small sound and presses closer. My hand continues its slow path along her spine, then over the curve of her hip. I kiss her forehead, then her temple, then the corner of her mouth.
When she tilts her head up, I kiss her properly, gentle and unhurried. There’s no rush in it. Just the quiet need to feel connected, to remind ourselves that we are both still here, while Lena is somewhere we cannot reach.
I roll her gently onto her back and move over her, supporting my weight on my forearms. I kiss down the side of her neck, slow and deliberate, tasting the salt of her skin. My mouth moves lower, brushing over her collarbone and then to her breasts.
I take one nipple between my lips, sucking softly, circling it with my tongue until she sighs and arches beneath me. My hand cups the other breast, thumb brushing tenderly across the peak.
“Zane,” she breathes, her fingers threading through my hair.
I continue downward, kissing along her stomach, taking my time. When I settle between her thighs, I look up at her face. Her eyes are dark and vulnerable in the low light. I press a soft kiss to the inside of her thigh, then another higher up, before I finally taste her.
She lets out a quiet, shaky moan. I lick her slowly, reverently, exploring every fold with my tongue. Two of my fingers slide inside her, moving in gentle rhythm as I focus on her clit with steady, patient strokes.
Her hips lift toward my mouth, and her breathing grows uneven. I stay with her, listening to every small sound she makes, feeling every tremble in her legs. I don’t rush her. I want her to feel cared for, anchored, safe in this one small thing when everything else feels uncertain.
Her hips begin to move in small, helpless circles against my mouth. I keep the rhythm steady, savoring every quiet gasp and broken sigh she gives me.
When her thighs start trembling around my head, I slide a third finger inside her and curl it gently, pressing against that spot that always makes her lose control.
“Zane… please,” she whispers, her voice raw with emotion. “I need you closer.”
I give her one last slow lick before I move up her body. She reaches for me immediately, pulling me down until our chests are pressed together. I settle between her thighs and line myself up. The head of my cock nudges against her entrance, hot and slick from my mouth.
I look into her eyes in the faint gray light. “I’m here,” I say softly. “Right here with you.”
She nods, her fingers digging into my shoulders. I push inside her slowly, inch by inch, until I’m buried to the hilt.
We both let out long, shaky breaths at the feeling. I stay there, not moving, just feeling her around me, letting her feel my weight and warmth. Her legs wrap around my waist, holding me close.
I start to move, deep and unhurried rolls of my hips. There’s nothing frantic about this. It’s slow, deliberate, every thrust meant to remind her that I am solid and present. She meets each movement, her hands sliding over my back, clutching at me like she’s afraid I might disappear.
“You’re not alone in this,” I murmur against her temple, my voice low and rough. “Not for one second.”
A soft sob escapes her. I kiss it away, then kiss her deeper, swallowing every quiet sound she makes as I move inside her.
The pleasure builds gradually, thick and heavy between us.
I keep one arm braced beside her head while the other hand cradles the back of her neck, keeping her face close to mine so I can watch every flicker of emotion cross her features.
Her breathing grows faster, more ragged. “Don’t stop,” she whispers against my mouth. “Please don’t stop.”
“I won’t,” I promise, thrusting a little deeper, a little firmer. “I’ve got you, Celine. Let go.”
She comes with a quiet, broken cry, her walls pulsing tightly around me as her whole body trembles beneath mine.
The feeling of her falling apart while holding on to me so desperately undoes the last of my control.
I bury my face in her neck and follow her over the edge, coming deep inside her with a low, guttural groan.
I keep moving through it, slow and gentle, drawing every last wave of pleasure from both of us until we’re both spent and breathing hard.
Afterward, I stay inside her, collapsed over her body, but careful not to crush her.
I roll us slowly onto our sides so we’re facing each other, still connected.
I pull the sheets over us and tuck her against my chest, one arm wrapped securely around her back while my other hand strokes slowly through her hair.
The gray light outside the window is slowly turning softer, the first hint of morning creeping in. Neither of us speaks for a long time. I just hold her, feeling the steady beat of her heart against mine, breathing in the scent of her skin and the faint trace of her shampoo.
She presses her face deeper into my chest and lets out a long, shaky breath. I tighten my arms around her, resting my chin on top of her head.
“We’re going to get her back,” I say quietly into her hair. “And when we do, I’m never letting anything like this happen again.”
She doesn’t answer with words. She just nods against me and holds on tighter.
We lie there together as the light outside slowly strengthens, two people wide awake in the early morning, finding whatever comfort we can in each other while we wait for the phone to ring and the day to demand everything we have left to give.
The window shows the first hint of gray pushing against the dark.
“If anything happens to her,” she says quietly.
“It won’t.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“No,” I say again, because I have learned that lying to her, even gently, even to protect her from fear, costs more than the fear itself. “I can’t promise that. I can promise that every single asset I have is moving toward getting her back, and that I’m not going to stop until she’s safe.”
She’s quiet for a long moment.
“Okay,” she says.
We lie there together as the gray light strengthens into something closer to morning, neither of us sleeping, both of us listening for the phone that will tell us whether the plan we built in the dark is enough.
At five fifty-one, Roman knocks.
“Team is in position,” he says through the door. “We move in twenty minutes.”
I feel Celine go rigid against me.
“Then we move,” I say, and I get up, and the day that follows is going to ask more of both of us than any day that’s come before it.