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I know something’s wrong the moment I step through the doors.

It’s not the silence—my house is often quiet, the kind of quiet that keeps men on edge. It’s not even the lack of staff in the halls. No, what gets me is the tension in the air, thick and humming, like gunpowder waiting for a spark.

I see it on Boris’s face the second he comes around the corner. He stiffens. Eyes shift. Not in fear—no one here fears me like that anymore—but in guilt.

Guilt always means one thing. Something happened when I was gone.

“Where is she?” I ask, cold, measured.

Boris doesn’t answer right away. That’s his first mistake.

I grab him by the collar and slam him back against the wall hard enough to make the artwork rattle on the opposite side of the hallway. “ Where the fuck is she? ”

“I don’t know, I’ve been with you the whole time. The guards, they say she snuck out again—”

My blood freezes over. I don’t hear the rest.

I storm down the hallway, boots echoing off marble, heart thundering louder than my steps. Her door is closed. Locked from the outside like always. But when I shove it open, the room is empty.

Bed untouched. Blankets cold. No trace of her.

I turn, the fury in my chest splintering outward like shrapnel.

“Pull the cameras,” I bark.

Two of my men scramble. Within seconds the screens in my office flicker to life. I watch it unfold in reverse—the too-quiet hallway, the carefully timed shift change, the west-wing service door she never should’ve known about.

Then I see her.

A dark blur in the hallway, slipping barefoot past the guards like a wraith.

And then… him. The bastard. The one who called himself her father.

He’s waiting for her near the bridge There’s a flash of his profile—grizzled, lean, jittery like a man who’s spent too many years running and not enough sleeping. He says something. Leans in.

I see her hesitate, then nod and go with him.

My jaw clenches so hard I feel something crack.

I watch her walk into a trap.

My woman.

The woman who’s mine in every way that matters. Who I’ve fought for. Bled for. Marked with my ring, my hands, my protection. And she walked out on me like none of it mattered.

She thought she was being clever. Thought she was being careful .

She was wrong.

I grab the edge of the desk and flip it in one clean motion. The wood crashes against the bookshelf, shattering the silence like thunder. Boris flinches in the doorway.

Boris is the only one who steps closer.

“Cameras from the bridge?” I ask, voice low.

“Already checking,” he replies. “We’ve got word. She’s not with the father anymore. She’s been taken.”

My nostrils flare. “By who?”

“Don’t know yet, but they moved fast. Had it ready. Must’ve been watching him. Watching her .”

The rage in my chest hardens into something colder.

They touched what’s mine. They dared…

“She thought it was her choice,” I murmur, my voice a whisper that makes the men around me go still. “She thought she was chasing answers.”

“She got played,” Boris says flatly.

“No,” I snap. “ I got played.”

I pace the room once, trying to leash the animal inside me. My thoughts won’t stop spiraling. I see her face when I left. That smug little act she was putting on. The way she sat there like she didn’t care. And I let her. I let her think she had power.

I should’ve never left her alone, I should’ve chained her to my fucking bed.

Now she’s gone. Taken. My Elise.

“I want names,” I growl. “I want the van. The route. I want to know which one of my men looked the other way.”

“They’ll talk,” Boris assures me. “Or they’ll bleed until they do.”

I nod once. Someone’s going to pay for this.

Whoever took her thinks they’re dealing with the Kolya Sharov who plays politics. Who sits at meetings. Who negotiates.

They don’t know what I become when someone touches what’s mine.

I’m coming for her, and I’ll bring hell down on every one of them.

Before I can do anything else, my phone rings.

I snatch it off the desk without looking, the sharp buzz slicing through the tense silence in the room like a blade. The screen flashes a name I trust— Andrei . My cousin. One of the few people I’d pick up for right now.

“What?” I snap, pacing the length of the room. My palm is still slick with fury. My breath, shallow.

“You’re losing your edge, brat ,” Andrei says, voice calm, clipped. “You let them take her right out from under you.”

“Say that again and I’ll drive to Moscow just to rip your tongue out.”

A pause. Then, quieter—more serious—“I’m calling because I’ve got news.”

I stop moving. Every man in the room freezes with me.

Andrei doesn’t waste time. “One of my boys, embedded deep. He just sent me word—minutes ago. They’ve got a girl.”

My grip tightens on the phone. “Where.”

“She was brought in blindfolded, but he saw her through the bars. Kept hidden in the basement of an old hotel near the industrial quarter. Burned-out place. No signage. They’re calling her leverage. Insurance.”

“Is she alive?”

“She was, a few hours ago. Scared. Shaken. Not hurt, from what he could see. But they’re not planning to keep her breathing for long.”

My blood turns to ice.

“They know she’s yours, Kolya,” Andrei continues. “That’s the only reason she’s not dead yet.”

I close my eyes. My jaw pulses as I drag in a breath so deep it burns. “How many men?”

“Six inside. Two on the roof. More nearby, I’m sure. Could be a trap.”

“It always is.”

Andrei pauses again. “They want you rattled.”

“They’re going to get me armed .”

His voice lowers. “They took your woman, Kolya.”

“I know what they did.”

Another pause, but softer this time. “You’re going to kill every last one of them, aren’t you?”

I don’t answer. I don’t need to. He already knows.

I end the call and turn toward the others.

Boris meets my eyes first. “Where is she?”

“They’ve got her in a burned-out hotel near the docks. Industrial side.”

“How many bodies should we prepare to bury?”

“A dozen. More. All of them.”

He nods, mouth tightening.

My mind is already running. Maps. Angles. Entry points. This isn’t going to be some surgical rescue. I’m not here to send a message.

I’m here to erase them. Brick by fucking brick.

“She trusted you,” Boris mutters.

“I never asked her to.”

“No,” he says, voice flat. “You still let her think she was safe.”

That lands somewhere deep. I feel it thud inside me, a hit from the inside out. He’s right.

I let her walk around that mansion thinking she had some control, some illusion of power. I gave her space. I gave her leash.

Someone else yanked it.

Now they think they’ve won. Now they think they have the upper hand.

They don’t know what they’ve done.

They took something that was mine . Not a business asset. Not a soldier.

Something that belongs to me .

My obsession. My fire. My fucking fiancée. Now, I am going to make them beg for death.

I start toward the door.

“Gear up,” I say, voice like frost. “We leave in thirty.”

“Thirty?” Boris raises a brow.

“I want them to feel safe,” I murmur. “Just long enough to scream.”

He grins, sharp and eager, then turns to the others.

As I walk down the corridor, past men who fall into step behind me, past walls she used to lean against, I feel it settle in my bones.

***

The drive across the city is long, but not long enough to calm the inferno inside me. Boris sits beside me in the front seat, armed to the teeth and silent. Behind us, three more vehicles follow, all loaded with men who know exactly what kind of job this is. We’re not there to negotiate. We’re not there to retrieve.

We’re going to cleanse .

The city flickers past in streaks of orange and black. Streetlamps and shadows. Neon signs and alleyways that stink of piss and lost chances. Every building feels like it’s watching me, every turn a countdown to war. I’ve driven these streets for years. I’ve built an empire on them. Painted them with the blood of rivals.

Tonight, it feels different.

“She fought them, you know,” Boris says, voice low as he checks the magazine of his sidearm. “I’d bet everything I have on that.”

“She always fights.”

“Maybe that’s what scares you about her.”

I glance at him. His grin is thin, humorless. “You think I’m scared of her?”

“I think you’ve never cared about something that can say no.”

That sits in the air for a moment, heavier than I like.

I look back out the window. “When I find her,” I murmur, “they’ll die slow.”

“Good,” he says, cocking his gun. “If you don’t make them scream, I will.”

We pull off the main road, tires crunching against broken gravel. The buildings here are old, falling apart. Everything reeks of rust and old ambition. The kind of place where forgotten things go to rot. It fits.

The hotel is still blocks away, but we stop early. I want to move in on foot. I want to feel it before I strike.

I step out of the car, cold air biting my face. The street is silent, too quiet for a district that never really sleeps. That alone sets my teeth on edge.

“They’re expecting something,” Boris mutters, falling in beside me. “They don’t know when ; we can use that to our advantage .”

“They’ll know soon.”

We move like shadows—four men spread across both sides of the street, eyes sharp, steps soft. A plan is forming in the back of my mind, precise and bloody. But beneath it, something else hums.

Where is she now?

Is she tied to a chair? Drugged? Alone?

The thought makes my fists clench. I want to hear her voice. Even if she’s screaming at me, even if she’s calling me a monster—I want to hear her. Because silence means she’s broken.

I can’t stomach the idea of her breaking before I get to her.

The hotel comes into view—gray concrete, cracked windows, graffiti scrawled across the front in symbols I don’t bother translating. Two doors. One back alley. Fire escape half collapsed. My mind maps it instinctively.

Boris lifts his phone, texts something to the surveillance crew we left a block away. No movement on the roof. Good.

We don’t rush in. Not yet.

We circle around, just out of view. We need to find out who we’re dealing with. Who gave the order. Who thought they could use her against me.

“Elise,” I whisper under my breath, gaze fixed on the lifeless building.

I’m coming.