7. CHAPTER 6
Orion
I hadn’t left the estate in forty-eight hours. My home office had become a command center—Stratum briefs on one screen, business on another, legal drafts on a third.
I’d worked remotely, taken a few international calls, and signed off on everything that required my attention that day, but every spare second, my eyes drifted back to the unfolding hunt.
The Fernández twins were getting close with their men. Debo had another group that rerouted towards Marseille last minute, and were closing in too.
It had been three days since she left home, and they had changed locations twice.
Currently, they were in a new rental, more secluded, fewer people. They'd moved to the cobblestones of Corsica. Stratum had its men in the small villages camouflaging as natives.
She looked more relaxed in the recent clips Severin had sent me. Her hair in a low bun as usual, wearing a sundress, and a look of hopefulness etched on her face. I could tell from her smile.
Maybe somewhere in her head, surviving three days meant they’d outrun what was coming. How naive.
I watched a few more clips before I shut it down totally. I needed air… or a distraction.
Julian and Elias were already waiting by the time I arrived at the tennis court. We played most Wednesday evenings, when Julian was around. His base was London, but growing up in Paris left him rooted here.
Today we met at midday. The weather was warmer. It was a good day to be outside.
Racquet raised, feet planted firmly on the ground, I watched as the ball cut through the clear blue Parisian sky toward me. I met it with a hard, precise swing, driving it aggressively across the net.
Julian lifted his racquet at the last second, catching it with an ease that would have irritated me if I cared enough to be irritated by anything that wasn’t currently on my laptop.
“Jesus, Kade,” he called, sending it back with a lazy spin. “Did the girl say no already, or are you just punishing the ball for existing?”
I returned it, harder.
“She hasn’t said anything,” I grunted.
Elias snorted from the sideline as he checked something on his phone, sunglasses pushed up in his hair. We’d always dragged him out here under the guise of fresh air, but his idea of physical exertion was working on servers.
“That’s not better,” he quipped. “That’s worse.”
Julian served, the ball cutting through the air with a vicious whistle. I stepped into it, let the impact jolt up my arm, and drove it down the line just past his reach.
“Fifteen-love,” I announced.
He narrowed his eyes, but he was smiling.
“The aggression is entertaining,” he smirked. “But you’re not fooling anyone. You’ve been off since the yacht.”
I don’t know which unnerved me more, watching her boring routine non-stop for weeks or her running away with her lover, thinking she could escape me.
Both, probably.
Elias finally looked up from his screen. “Correlation between post-orgy behaviour and general mood is statistically—”
“Do not start,” Julian groaned. “Last time you brought up regression analysis, things didn’t end well.”
Fucking Elias. Always nerding his way through everything.
I rolled my shoulder, loosening the muscle. “Are we playing or are we here to listen to you whine?”
Julian walked to the baseline, spinning the racquet in his hand.
“You tell me,” he retorted “You're the one hitting the ball like you've got a grudge against it.”
He tossed it up, served again. I moved to meet it, my body remembering what my mind refused to focus on.
The rhythm of each movement grounded me. Move. Swing. Recover. Repeat. All reliable motions. The only things that had felt solid in the last forty-eight hours.
My phone buzzed in the pocket of my jacket on the sideline. Once. Twice.
I didn’t need to see the screen to know it was Severin.
The rally was fast and brutal, both of us pushing the other back. Julian had the kind of predatory grace that made him dangerous in any arena. Today, he was more amused than hungry, which was the only reason I kept winning rallies.
“You know,” he said between shots, “if my fiancée ran off with someone else, I wouldn’t take it out on innocent sports equipment.”
I stepped into the return and drove it down the line.
“You’ve never had one.”
He laughed, breathless. “Don’t plan on it.”
Elias, lounging near the baseline as if this was all an elaborate inconvenience, laughed like he was having the time of his life.
The ball skimmed the net. I cut it clean and sent it spinning just out of Julian’s reach.
“Thirty-love.”
Julian barked a laugh and dropped his racquet. “You’re exhausting,” he pointed at me, while catching his breath as he walked toward the net. “Break. I need water, and to figure out what crawled up your arse and died there.”
We moved off the court. A member of the club appeared immediately with towels and bottles. Julian flashed a smile that had probably started wars in lesser families.
Elias took a long drink and glanced at me over the rim of the bottle.
“So no plans to retrieve her yet?”
“Who said?” I asked.
Julian accepted a towel from the attendant. “Your devil of a cousin.”
“I heard someone call my name.”
Severin’s voice cut in behind us, perfectly composed as ever. He stepped onto the court, dressed in black tailored trousers and a slate-grey linen shirt.
Severin, Elias, Julian, and I owned the controlling shares of Stratum. No surprises that these two already knew what was happening. Nothing stayed private among board members who had built a global surveillance empire together.
We all invested when Severin brought up the idea.
Elias because he liked to put his money where the tech was, separating himself from the rotting wealth and infighting of the Riche dynasty.
Julian because intelligence suited him. He collected information the way other men collected art, obsessively, expensively, and with violent intent.
His cold war with his brother, Atlas Okoye required eyes everywhere, and Stratum gave him reach across continents.
I invested because when you grew up around men like Henrik Kade and competition like Cassian Vassier, you learned early that whoever controlled information won. Oil gave you leverage. Data gave you godhood.
Severin ran the whole operation like a phantom. We just sat on the board and pretended we were civilised.
“What’s the situation?” I asked, taking the towel the attendant handed me.
Severin’s gaze moved over Julian and Elias, then back to me. Whatever he said here would be heard by all three. That was fine. Between us, there were very few surprises.
“Debo’s network has a lead,” he said. “They’ve narrowed her and the boyfriend to a coastal radius outside Marseille. Our assets on ground confirm they might be making a move soon out of Corsica. No direct Fernández contact yet. I’ve also got eyes on the twins. They’re mostly…noisy.”
Typical. Blaise and Laurent Fernández are always rambling about something.
Julian studied my face, his sharp eyes never misses a thing. “She doesn’t want to marry you,” he said drily. “No surprise she ran.”
I wiped a line of sweat from my jaw with the towel.
“I don’t need her to want it,” I said, tossing the towel over my shoulder. “I need her to honour it.”
Julian’s mouth twitched before he huffed out a dark laugh. “And people call me the monster.”
Elias tilted his head like he was mentally rerouting codes. “She ran with the boyfriend,” he stated. “The Fernándezes are scrambling… and you’re calm.”
“Aggressive. In a…calm way.” Julian corrected, like Elias simply hadn’t phrased the diagnosis properly.
“Would you prefer I stage a tantrum?” I asked.
Julian grinned. “It might be entertaining.”
“I’ll pass.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced at the screen. It was from one of my assistants.
Fernández patriarch requesting direct call. You want to take it now or later?
I typed back one word.
Me: Later.
If Demola Fernández still wanted to pretend this was a minor illness instead of a runaway bride and a brewing scandal, he could wait. I’d let him stew until the taste of desperation was strong enough to smell through the phone.
Julian’s mouth curved like he could taste what I’d just refused.
“Still making them sweat?”
“They created the breach,” I said. “They can work to close it.”
Severin’s expression didn’t change, but I saw the faintest approval in the stillness of his posture.
Out loud, I uttered, “Serve, Elias.”
He glared like I’d spoken a foreign language. “I’m not playing.”
“You are now.”
Julian’s grin widened like I’d handed him a weapon. We dragged Elias onto the court despite his protests, and the next thirty minutes dissolved into shouts, vicious returns, insults, and Elias swearing that this was the last time he’d ever leave his office at our request.
I played hard. Harder than necessary. Kept my head in the rhythm. The ball went exactly where I wanted it to, unlike brides who ran with men who couldn’t afford to keep them well hidden.
Every swing was a refusal to think about the fact that I knew exactly what pair of shoes Léonie had worn to the train station—the comfy brown leather ones she favoured on casual days.
That I knew how many steps it took for her to cross the narrow kitchen in that rental.
That last night after he’d slept, she’d stood at the balcony, wrapped in a blanket, holding a mug with both hands, with a trace of sadness etched on her face.
A sadness I suddenly wanted to rid her of.
All details I didn’t need but kept anyway.
Men like me kept tabs on routes, assets, and vulnerabilities. I knew those too.
So why concern myself with her sadness?
When we finally left the court, sweat soaking into my shirt, we found Severin in the corridor. Phone pressed to his ear, speaking in a low voice.
He ended the call as we approached.
Julian slung a towel around his neck. “What’s the plan, Kade?”
I didn’t hesitate. “To put an end to it.”
He hummed in approval.