Chapter 26 – Samuel
The silence in the penthouse is no longer peaceful; it’s suffocating.
I pace the length of the living room, the polished floor cold beneath my boots. Every few seconds, I look at the wall clock, then at the heavy mahogany door, waiting for the sound of her key in the lock.
She should’ve been home an hour ago. She knows the rules. She knows that I need to know her location, and more than that, she knows I can’t breathe when she’s out there in the city, vulnerable, while I’m trapped here waiting.
I pull my phone out again, my thumb hovering over her contact. Ashley. I hit the button. My pulse thunders in my ears as I listen to the hollow, rhythmic ringing.
Pick up. Just pick up.
It goes to voicemail. Again.
I drop my hand, feeling a sharp, jagged spike of anxiety in my chest that I can’t hide. I’ve never been a man of fear, but this—the not knowing—it’s breaking me. My mind is already spiraling through every worst-case scenario, every dark alley, every shadow where someone might be watching her.
“Daddy?”
I spin around. Ethan is standing at the edge of the hallway, clutching his favorite stuffed toy. He looks small in the vast, dim room, his eyes wide and searching.
“Where’s Mommy?” he asks. “She promised she’d read to me tonight.”
The question hits me harder than a bullet.
I don’t want him to see this—the way my hand is shaking, the way I can’t seem to stand still.
I force a smile, though it feels like a mask made of lead, and I walk over to kneel in front of him.
I place my hands on his shoulders, grounding myself in the physical reality of my son.
“Mommy got a little held up with work, bud,” I say, my voice sounding strained, even to my own ears. I reach out, brushing a stray hair from his forehead. “She’s just finishing up a project. She’ll be home very soon. I promise.”
Ethan nods, his expression trusting, and leans his head against my chest. I hold him for a second longer than I should, closing my eyes, praying for the sound of the front door opening.
Please, Ashley. Don’t do this to me.
He pulls away and heads back toward his room, and the second he’s gone, my composure shatters. I pull my phone out one more time, my fingers moving with frantic, desperate speed.
I dial her number again.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
“Damn it, Ashley,” I growl, pacing back to the window to stare out at the city lights. I don’t care about anything else right now. I just want to hear her voice. I want to know she’s safe.
I stare at the blank screen, my grip tightening until my knuckles turn white.
The city looks the same as it did this morning—vast, indifferent, and cruel.
And for the first time in my life, I feel the terrifying, absolute helplessness of being a man who has everything to lose, and no way to reach the person who holds it all.
It’s 6:30 p.m. The air in the suite has grown frigid, though the heater is humming perfectly. I can’t sit still anymore. My phone has become an extension of my hand, each unanswered call burning into my palm like a brand.
I dial Maya. She’s the only one who might know if there was a last-minute shift in Ashley’s schedule.
“Maya.” I don’t bother with a greeting. “Where’s my wife? She was supposed to be home an hour ago.”
“Samuel? I thought she was with you,” Maya’s voice is confused, bordering on panicked. “She left the office around 4:30 after meeting a contact—someone she used to work with. She said it was a professional catch-up. They left together.”
My blood turns to ice. “A contact? Who?”
“She didn’t say, but she seemed…relaxed. She said she’d be back in about an hour.”
I disconnect without saying goodbye. Relaxed. Ashley doesn’t move through this city “relaxed” anymore. Not after everything. The knot of dread in my gut tightens into a searing, agonizing coil. She wouldn’t be careless. She wouldn’t just disappear.
“Kaplan.” I’m already rattling instructions as soon as he takes my call, the sound echoing through the suite, cutting through the silence of the penthouse like a gunshot.
I wait thirty minutes until Ethan’s nanny arrives before I storm impatiently out of the house.
By the time I arrive at Kang Logistics, my men are already waiting for me, weapons drawn and ready. I’m no longer a worried husband; I’m a man fueled by the primal, terrifying instinct to reclaim what’s mine.
When we hit the office building, we don’t check in with the front desk. We move with the silent, lethal efficiency of a tactical unit. I shove past the night-shift security team, my hand resting on the holster at my hip, until I’m in the server room.
“Get the feed for the parking level,” I command, my voice a low, dangerous vibration. “Garage level four. 4:15 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.”
The technician’s fingers fly across the keyboard. The grainy, grayscale footage flickers onto the large monitor.
There.
My heart stops. Ashley is walking—smiling, talking—toward a sleek sedan.
She’s with a man. I lean in, my breath hitching as I zoom in on his face.
I don’t recognize him, but I recognize the way he moves—the calculated ease, the way he positions himself to obscure her from the surrounding cameras. It’s deliberate. He has obvious intent.
Then, I see her posture change. The way she slows down. The way she tries to lean on a pillar, her knees giving out.
My hands grip the edge of the console, my knuckles white, my jaw locked so tight I feel like my teeth might shatter. I watch her fall. I watch him catch her—not with concern, but with the chilling, practiced efficiency of a predator grabbing his prize.
“Rewind,” I growl.
We watch it again. And again.
On the third replay, the realization hits me with such violent precision that I have to brace myself against the desk to stay upright. The way he smiles at her—the arrogance of it—it’s the same dark, suffocating energy that was in those texts.
The stalker.
He didn’t just watch her. He didn’t just follow her. He walked right up to her, looked her in the eye, and took her out of my world.
Of course, he’s a friend. Someone she used to know. They usually are. How didn’t I think of that?
A red haze descends over my vision, a roar of pure, unadulterated rage drowning out the sound of the equipment cooling fans. I look at the man on the screen, and for the first time in years, I don’t feel like a man. I feel like a weapon that has finally been pointed at its target.
“Find him,” I whisper, my voice thick with a promise of carnage. “Find out who he is, where he’s taking her, and then I want his head.”
I turn to my right-hand man. “Kaplan, run facial recognition through every database—local, private, even the back-alley scrapers. I want a name for that face immediately,” I command, pacing the narrow space behind the monitors.
“Ben, put the word out. Every street contact, every snitch, every landlord from here to the harbor. If he’s holding her in this city, I want to know which floor, which room, and how many locks are on the door.”
My phone is a hive of activity. I’m bypassing protocols, burning favors I’ve hoarded for a decade, and arming my men with hardware that shouldn’t legally exist in the city.
“The car.” I point to the screen, my finger tracing the sedan’s path on the exit ramp.
“It’s a black sedan, custom tint, plates likely swapped.
But he didn’t just drive out of the city.
He’s arrogant. He wants me to know he has her.
He’s taking her to a place that matters to him, a place where he thinks he’s safe. ”
I lean over the desk, my shadow cast long and jagged across the map of the city we’ve pulled up on the wall. “He thinks he’s the hunter? Good. Let him. He’s distracted by the prize, which means he’s careless.”
The door to the server room swings open, and Maya stands there, her face ashen. Her hands are trembling, and for a moment, the weight of the situation seems to crush the breath right out of her.
“Samuel,” she whispers, her voice breaking.
“I’m so, so sorry. I…I should have checked in when she didn’t come back to the office after lunch.
I had such a massive load of work piled up, and I just assumed—I thought that when she didn’t come back, she’d gone straight home to the penthouse.
I thought she was already safe with you. ”
She looks at the monitors, then at the tactical gear strapped to my chest, and a sob escapes her. “I failed her. I wasn’t paying attention.”
I stop pacing. I turn to face her, my movements slow and deliberate. The raw, jagged rage that is consuming me doesn’t belong to her. She is a civilian caught in the wake of a monster, and I cannot afford to lose focus by letting blame take root.
I walk over to her and place a firm, heavy hand on her shoulder, forcing her to look up at me.
“Stop,” I command, my voice steady, stripped of the frantic edge it had earlier. “This isn’t on you, Maya. Ashley didn’t walk into this because you weren’t watching. She walked into it because she trusted the wrong person. She was betrayed by someone who played on her trust.”
I let my hand drop, my gaze shifting back toward the map of the city, my eyes turning into shards of cold, unyielding flint.
“She’s my wife,” I continue, my voice dropping to a low, lethal hum that vibrates through the room. “The man who took her made the fatal mistake of thinking he could possess what is mine. He thinks he’s hidden her, but he’s forgotten that I own the shadows he’s hiding in.”
“Please, find her, Samuel,” she begs. “Please.”
“I’ll find her,” I say, and it isn’t a promise—it’s a fact. “I’ll tear this city apart, block by block, until I have her back in my arms. Go home, Maya. And pray to whatever god you believe in that you aren’t the one who has to watch what happens when I finally catch him.”