LOGIN****~~ Hazel's POV ~~The day of the Delacroix event arrived like a storm on the horizon.I woke up at 5am with my heart already racing. In twelve hours, I would walk into the most important social gathering of the year. In twelve hours, everyone in the city would see me. Judge me. Decide what I meant.I spent the morning trying to stay calm.I showered. I did my nails and hair with the help of the stylist Carrie had called in earlier. I ordered tea that I barely touched. I walked around my room in the emerald dress, taking it off, putting it back on, making sure it still fit perfectly.By 5pm, I was ready and it was still three hours until we needed to leave.I stood in front of the mirror and barely recognized myself.The emerald dress clung to me in all the right places. The gold threading caught the light when I moved. My hair was pulled up in an elegant style that Carrie's team had arranged. My makeup was subtle but it made my eyes look darker, more dangerous.I looked like some
~~ Hazel's POV ~~ ~~ Flashback - Four Days Before the kidnapping ~~ The call came in the morning. My father's voice on the phone was cold in a way I had never heard before. "I need you to come to the house," he said. "Today. Alone. We need to talk." I knew something was wrong. I told Kai I was going. He didn't like it but he let me go with his security detail waiting outside. I went alone into the mansion where I had grown up. Where my mother had died. Where I had wasted three years trying to be enough for a man who would never see me. My father was waiting in his study. He looked older than I remembered. Tired. Like the weight of his empire was finally showing on his face. "Sit," he said. I sat. "Your stepmother and I have been discussing your situation," he said without preamble. "Your involvement with Kai Valentino. Your refusal to listen to reason. Your abandonment of this family." I said nothing. "The Valentino family is not aligned with our interests," he continued
~~ Kai's POV ~~ The call came in at 9:47am. Reed appeared at my office door without knocking. "We found something," he said simply. I was already standing before he finished the sentence. The tech team had traced the hack to a specific device. A phone that had been used to access Hazel's location data repeatedly over the past ten days. They had also found the calls made to Sullivan. Three calls. All from the same phone. All made between 6pm and midnight. But the phone wasn't registered to anyone we knew. It was registered to a burner account under a fake name. Ghost Tek Solutions. "Who is that?" I asked, looking at the data spread across the screen. "We don't know yet," the tech lead said. "The phone belongs to a professional. Someone who knows how to cover their tracks. The account was created specifically for this job and then abandoned. Whoever this is, they're experienced." "Trace the money," I said. "Someone paid for this tracking. Someone hired this person. Follow the
~~ Hazel's POV ~~I'm scared.The words came out before I could stop them, before I could think about what they meant or how vulnerable they made me sound. Before I wrapped my arms around him.My entire body was shaking and I didn't care anymore about rules or boundaries or protecting myself. I just needed to feel safe and the only place that felt safe was against Kai's chest.For a moment he went completely rigid.I felt his body tense underneath my touch like he wasn't sure what to do with me. Like no one had ever come to him asking for comfort before.Then his arms came around me.His hands moved to my back and he pulled me closer, holding me steady against him."I've got you," he said quietly into my hair. "You're safe."But I wasn't thinking about safety anymore. I was thinking about the fact that someone had been tracking me. Someone wanted to hurt me. Someone I probably knew was working against me and I had no idea who.I was thinking about the fact that being with Kai had made
I took Hazel upstairs to her room and left her in the care of one of the house staff to help her clean up and rest.Then I went to the basement.The three injured Sullivan men we had captured were secured in separate rooms. Professional interrogation spaces that had been used for this purpose many times before.Reed was waiting for me with detailed files on each man."The first one," Reed said, gesturing toward the door on the left, "is Marcus Chen. Low-level operative. Probably was just following orders. The second is James Walsh. Mid-level, more dangerous. He would know more. The third is Davis Moreno. High-level strategist. He'll know everything.""Which one broke first?" I asked."Moreno," Reed said. "He's the talkative type. I think he can negotiate his way out."I nodded and pushed open the door to where Moreno was being held.He was sitting in a metal chair in the middle of the room, his hands tied tightly behind him. There was blood on his shirt from the confrontation on the r
~~ Kai's POV ~~I was in my office when Reed came in with the file, I have been drowning myself in work since the last five hours. Since I left Hazel’s room. I couldn’t afford to sit ideal and sulk all day for getting rejected yet again. I needed a distraction. He didn't knock. That meant it was important.I looked up from the contracts I had been reviewing and watched him close the door carefully behind him."The lawyer," Reed said quietly, placing a manila folder on my desk. "The one in the photograph with Hazel's mother."I opened the file and started reading through the pages. Names. Dates. Transactions. Connections.The lawyer's name was David Graham. He had been working in some of the mafia legal circles for over twenty years. Connected to every major family in the city, but there was something else woven through his history. There wasn't much information on the files, just some names, addresses and a few financial transactions from eight years ago."How much do we know?" I as







