**Chapter Nineteen**

**Adrian's POV**

I stood at the window of my study, one hand braced against the frame, watching Sam cross the courtyard below. Head down, arms folded tight against the evening chill, moving fast enough that I could tell she was bothered by something, without needing to ask who.

Behind me, the study door creaked open.

Theo stepped in, a set of keys held out in one hand.

"Jet's ready for takeoff by dusk."

"Good. Give these to Rosa. She runs the properties while I'm gone."

"Sure, boss." A pause. "I think it's that time of the year again."

I finally turned. "You say that every year like it surprises you."

"It surprises me every year that you still go."

"It's not a matter of wanting to." I crossed to the desk “You know that better than anyone."

Yes.

The one week I get to sit in the same room as my whole family, all at once, without a body between us.

Family.

Honor.

Loyalty.

Three words carved into the foundation of everything I was raised to be. As the only son, second child, I'd inherited the mantle young, the weight of running the most feared family in the country, decades of iron rule sitting on my shoulders before I'd even finished growing into them. Now the throne was mine, and every year I sat back down on it in front of the people who'd built it.

"You're coming."

"Yes, boss." He hesitated at the door. "And Mrs. Samantha? Rosa informed that she refused to travel."

Of course she will. But she has no choice.

My phone lit up on the desk the second Theo left, buzzing once, then again. I looked at the screen, and let it ring until the third time before I picked it up, some old instinct in me still bracing before I answered anything with that name attached to it.

"Mother."

"It's been a while, Adrian." Her voice came through low, unhurried, each word placed with the kind of care that made me wait for the next one instead of rushing past it. Command sat in her the same way it sat in me, except hers came wrapped in silk where mine came wrapped in something a great deal harder.

"I've been occupied," I said, even, respectful, the way I always was with her.

"I imagine you have. I miss you. Everyone here does. And I do mean everyone."

"I'll be there soon."

"You said that last season too." She said letting the fact sit there without needing to push it.

"This time I mean it."

"Good." Something in her tone warmed, just slightly, the way sun moves across a room without ever announcing itself. "It's about time I found you a Donna, don't you think? You're not getting any younger, Adrian."

"Mother."

"I know exactly what you're about to say. That you're not interested. I hope, someday, you are. Soon, preferably."

I ran my fingers through my hair, my frustration climbing faster than I wanted it to, but none of it reached my voice. "I'll visit soon."

"See that you do. By then I'll have a queen waiting for you. I need a grandson. An heir. I won't watch this family end simply because my son refuses to settle on one woman. Find a decent girl. Marry her properly. Get her pregnant. Then go back to your whores, if you must."

"What?"

"Why the shock, Adrian? What's crossed your mind just now?"

I said nothing for a second longer than I meant to. Through the window, the garden path where Sam had stood sat empty now, and I found myself looking at it anyway.

"Nothing," I said finally. "I need to work. I'll call you before I land."

"I'll be waiting."

The line went dead, and I set the phone down and stood a moment, hands sliding into my pockets, whatever ease the evening had bought me draining straight back out.

Whores.

I kept women for exactly one purpose, and I never shared them, never let them linger past what they were there for. I preferred them quiet, obedient, easy to forget the moment they left the room. It had never once occurred to me to think twice about a single one of them.

But Sam.

She came to mind without my permission, the way she always did now, the defiance in her when she'd shoved me back the night before, the fire in her voice telling me I'd never claim her, not really, not completely. Nothing about her was quiet. Nothing about her was easy to forget. That was exactly the problem, and exactly why she was the one thing in this life I actually wanted to claim, the only war I hadn't finished winning yet.

—————

I woke before sunrise, the way I always did, my body doesn't forget training even when the mind wants a few more hours of peace.

Cold water first.

Then forty minutes on the bag in the east wing until my knuckles ached and my head cleared. By the time I made it back to the study, Theo already had the morning laid out across my desk — manifests, a list of men to move for the trip, a folder on the partner flown in the night before.

"Docks are clear Thursday," He said, sliding the paper toward me. "Same arrangement as always. Two checkpoints paid through next month."

"And the partner?"

"Wants a sit-down before we leave. Says it can't wait."

"Noon," I said. "I want him gone before the family's even landed. No need for two conversations under one roof." I scanned the manifest out of habit more than need. "Anything from the docks worth my time before I sign off?"

"Nothing that can't—"

The door slammed open before he finished. Rosa stood in the frame, breath ragged, a guard behind her shoulder, both wearing the look of people who already knew whatever came next wouldn't be welcomed.

"Boss." The guard didn't wait to be asked. "Mrs. Samantha's not in the estate. Anywhere."

I set the folder down slowly. "What?"

Rosa stepped forward, hands twisting together. "Forgive me, sir. She left before any of us were properly awake. One of the staff found her uniform gone from the laundry, she must have worn it out past the gate. The guards didn't look twice at her. She drove herself out. Gate log shows the Salvatore estate."

I thought of her that evening, crossing the courtyard alone, moving like she was avoiding something. I hadn't been wrong. I'd simply guessed a wrong reason. That was exactly why she wasn't like the others, the ones who folded the second I raised an eyebrow, who never once tested a rule because testing had simply never crossed their minds.

Sam broke rules the way other people breathed. She'd been doing it since the first night I pulled her half-drowned out of that river, still finding ways to fight me with water still sitting in her lungs.

It should have made me furious, but some small, unwanted part of me was amazed by it instead.

"Find her," I said, quiet, final. "Shut the city down. Every road, every driver who might've moved her, every camera between here and the Salvatore gates. I want an answer within the hour."

"Yes, boss," Theo said, already reaching for his phone.

I stayed in the study while the calls went out, working through a few of my own just to keep my hands busy, the driver assigned to her yesterday, who swore he'd never left the car, that she'd never once crossed his line of sight. I didn't raise my voice at him either. The shake in his own voice told me he already understood exactly what he'd owe me if this ended badly.

The hour passed with nothing. I stood at the window through most of it, watching the courtyard like it might hand me an answer if I looked at it long enough. Theo kept working the computers at the other end of the room, passing along whatever came through, none of it the thing I actually wanted to hear.

By afternoon, one of my men finally pulled a thread worth following, a Salvatore member.

Rachel Salvatore. Bianca's sister.

—————

I sat in the car within minutes, Theo beside me, three more vehicles falling into formation behind us as we cut through the city faster than any law technically allowed

A lot of thoughts ran through every version of me.

Sam confronting the girl. Or she doing something reckless enough to draw the kind of attention that had already tried to kill her once, on a bridge, in a river.

The building came into view as the sun dropped low behind it, the street too quiet for the hour.

No pedestrians.

No cars idling where they should have been.

The kind of quiet that sits just before something breaks it open.

I was out of the car before it had fully stopped, Theo half a step behind me, both of us already reaching for our weapons as we crossed the last stretch of pavement toward the entrance.

Then I heard it.

A crack, sharp and close, splitting the air from somewhere inside.

A sharp gunshot.