9. CHAPTER 8
Orion
Elias had insisted on dinner tonight. It was his last night in Paris before returning to New York for work. I couldn’t say no, regardless of my mood to not socialize.
Most of the night was about optics anyway. With Marcus and Adrien there, nothing less was expected.
Four men with too much wealth and too much reach, seated at a discreet table with a view of the river, chatting shit while buying out a restaurant.
It was the kind of dinner that reminded Paris of our reputation—functional heirs who are still in control and still very much inaccessible.
Marcus had done most of the talking, as usual. Thankfully, Zane wasn’t here to escalate whatever Marcus had going on. It would have been a longer night.
Adrien had laughed too loudly. Elias had critiqued the wine like he’d built the vineyard himself. I’d contributed what I always contributed: my presence, the usual restraint, and the illusion that I wasn’t carrying a weight in my chest.
Julian had returned to London, so there were no eyes to psychoanalyse me.
And thank fuck, no one brought up the runaway bride.
When I got home, I showered, changed, and let myself drift. Not into sleep… sleep was too generous a word. It was more like a brief surrender to darkness.
I'd just started to fall when my phone rang. I reached for it without opening my eyes.
“Orion,” Severin said. No greeting. His voice was flat. “They’ve found her.”
Adrenaline burned the fog to ash, and the haze vanished instantly.
I sat up in the dark room. Paris glittered beyond the window, its lights spilling into the room. My body felt heavy, slow to follow my mind, but my pulse had already recalibrated.
“Where?” I asked, my voice rough with exhaustion.
I reached for the laptop on the nightstand, and opened it with one hand while I kept the phone to my ear with the other.
“Still in Corsica. They never made it out,” Severin replied. “Debo’s men are moving in now. Fernández's security is approaching. You’ll want to see this.”
I signed in and entered the encrypted pathway. The Stratum window opened. Then I crossed the hall to my office and waited for the live video to come into view.
The lights came on as I entered the room and sat behind my desk.
My laptop screen split into four quadrants—drone angles, ground cams, timestamps ticking in relentless red at the top of each frame.
21:12 – Debo’s men moving in.
21:30 – Fernández security approaching from alternate route.
21:34 – Yves and Subject L.F. still inside rental. Lights on.
In the first quadrant, I watched the path to the little house fill with dark figures. It looked almost abstract from above, black shapes against rocks, moving in coordinated lines.
In the second, a closer shot. One of Debo’s men lifting a hand, signaling, as they broke formation.
The third showed the front of the house. The door was still closed.
The fourth switched abruptly to a shaky ground-level feed, one of Severin’s external assets with eyes on the ground just incase.
I leaned forward, my forearms braced on the desk.
“Play,” I said, though there was no one in the room to hear me.
They hit the door first. Hard. It splintered on the second blow.
The sound didn’t fully come through the filters, but I still recognized it. Violent entry had a distinct rhythm. I’d heard it often enough through security briefings and surveillance footage that I felt the impact even through the distorted audio.
Yves came out first in a pair of black joggers, no shirt. He looked smaller without the fantasy of romance shielding him.
He charged at one of the men, untrained and all impulse. He landed a punch; it did nothing. The guard’s return hit folded him in half.
He went down, but they didn’t give him time to get back up.
Their fists and boots met his ribs, his sides and his jaw simultaneously. Five heavy men going at him, all at once. It was efficient, brutal work.
I watched his head snap to the side, blood spraying across the wall.
He’d chosen to step into a fight he wasn’t built for. A world he knew nothing about and should have been wary of. He needed to live with the consequences.
It was the next part I cared about.
She appeared in the doorway a second later wearing a T-shirt that didn’t belong to her, bare-legged with her hair loose over her shoulders. The visual stirred something in me I didn't allow myself to process, fury maybe, but I stayed still and watched.
She launched herself at the nearest man, clawing at him, her voice breaking on a scream the equipment barely picked up but my body registered anyway.
“Stop,” I said under my breath, mostly to myself. “He’s not worth it.”
They dragged her back easily, and my jaw ticked twice.
She fought like someone who had never been taught how to make pain count—kicking, scratching, biting, and raw screams. Anger without any real aim.
“Hold her,” someone shouted offscreen.
Two men pinned her arms. She struggled, twisting to free herself, with tears in her eyes. Yves shouted something slurred; someone silenced him with another kick.
I swallowed an urge to shout a command at the screen.
For a moment, she broke free, and ran toward him.
They caught her around the waist and hauled her off her feet. She thrashed, heel slamming into one man’s shin. He winced, but didn’t retaliate.
Good. They knew better.
I tightened my grip on the arm of the leather chair as I watched them try to restrain her. The leather creaked in protest.
“Careful,” I whispered to men who couldn’t hear me. “She bruises, you answer to me.”
In the top-right quadrant, one of Debo’s men stepped between her and the worst of the violence. He barked an order; the attacks slowed, then stopped. Yves laid on the ground, heaving, his face and shirt all bloodied.
21:44 – Extraction in progress. Yves.D left behind.
Two guards carried him to the side of the frame and dropped him by the wall, leaving him there like trash they’d set aside for collection.
She saw that, and she seemed to break. She screamed again, her voice breaking apart with it, and this time it wasn’t just fear. It sounded more like grief.
I hated it.
And no, it wasn’t because she was grieving for him, but because it meant she still hadn’t understood the reality of her situation.
This wasn’t love. It was delusion. And now it was over. There was no reason to continue to dwell in it.
Her brother, Blaise came into frame and slung her over his shoulder when he saw she wouldn’t walk on her own. She pounded at his back until her fists must have ached. He held firm, adjusting his grip once when she nearly wriggled free.
In another quadrant, the SUVs waited with engines running, rear doors all open. Her other brother, Laurent tossing a burnt out cigarette like it pissed him off, as he got into one of the driver’s seats.
21:49 – Subject L.F. secured in vehicle.
21:52 – All Fernández personnel off-site.
21:58 – The Fernández twins heading to a secure location.
I let the footage run until all four frames showed only empty rocks and the imprint of tyres.
Then I rewound.
Watched her appear in the doorway.
Watched her run.
Watched her fail. Again and again… and again.
I didn’t know how long I sat there, making myself see it in a loop. Long enough for Severin’s name to flash on my phone.
I answered without looking away from the screen.
“She’s on her way back,” he said.
“I know.” I replied.
“We need to find out where he brothers are taking her first.”
“My men are on the trail. I’ll let you know once we have confirmation.”
I paused the loop at where she was trying to reach for him.
“How is he?”
“He’s alive,” Severin said. “Broken, but still breathing.”
“Good,” I said. “He’s better alive than dead. If he dies, he becomes something she can revere. Alive, he’s just another mistake.”
There was a pause on the line.
“You want us to clean this up?” he asked. “Locals might talk. Someone always has a camera. Blogs. Social media accounts. Police reports.”
“Yes,” I said. “All of it.”
“How far?”
“As far as it goes,” I said. “Witnesses need to be paid or pressured. All footage scrubbed. Every story buried. If anyone insists on remembering, remind them why they shouldn’t.”
“Consider it erased,” he assured me.
“One more thing,” I added. “No one touches her again. Not a guard, not a brother, not a servant. If anyone lays a hand on her, you take something from them they can't grow back.”
“Understood.”
He hung up.
I hit the play button. On the screen, the last frame of the playback settled on her face caught between motions, her hair falling on her face from struggling, tears in her eyes, voice strained with whatever she’d been shouting.
She was terrified, grieving, angry… and soon, she’d be mine.
I closed the laptop.
It was time to make sure that when Demola Fernández came crawling back to my table with his apology and his daughter, the new contract waiting for them would leave no ambiguity.
She had run once. There wouldn’t be a second time.