LOGINAlexander’s pov I called Detective Marlowe the same morning Marcus confirmed the property lead.He was an old contact, someone I'd helped years ago during a case involving fraud that had nothing to do with any of this, the kind of favour that built a particular quiet loyalty between two men who understood the value of discretion. I'd sat across from him in a diner once, years back, and helped him piece together a paper trail that saved his career when a superior tried to pin someone else's mistakes on him. He'd never forgotten it. Neither had I."I need this handled carefully," I told him, standing in my study with the address Marcus had provided spread across the desk in front of me. "My wife is being held somewhere on this property. I don't know how many people are involved, but I know at least one of them is armed, and I know she's already been hurt.""You're certain about the location?""As certain as I can be without eyes on it directly."Marlowe was quiet for a moment. "I'll pu
Lily’s pov I'd lost count of the injections somewhere around the third or fourth day.Time had stopped meaning much of anything in that house, light and dark bleeding together into a single, endless stretch of pain and the brief, merciful gaps between doses when my mind was clear enough to understand exactly how much danger I was still in. I'd started seeing things that weren't there. Shapes moving at the edges of the room that dissolved the moment I turned to look at them directly. Voices, sometimes, layered beneath Lara's real one, whispering things I couldn't quite make out. Once, in the worst of it, I could have sworn I heard Alexander's voice calling my name from somewhere just beyond the front door, and I'd screamed his name back so loudly my throat had ached for hours afterward, only to realise, once the fog cleared slightly, that no one had come at all.I understood, in the small, lucid moments between the worst of it, that whatever they kept putting into my blood was beginni
Alexander's POV I'd spent most of the previous night turning over a single, persistent theory that refused to let me sleep. Someone had erased the hospital record. Someone had disabled a camera for exactly the window that mattered, forged a letter convincing enough to fool a man who knew Lily's handwriting better than almost anyone alive. None of that pointed toward some improvised, opportunistic scheme. It pointed toward resources. Money, and the particular kind of leverage that made institutions quietly forget things they were legally required to remember. I decided, somewhere around three in the morning, that if someone had paid to make Lenox Hill deny ever admitting her, then I intended to find out exactly who'd taken that money, and how much it would cost me to reverse the arrangement. --- The head of the hospital's office occupied a corner suite on the top floor, all glass and pale wood, the particular sterile prestige of a man who'd clearly forgotten what it felt like to be
Lily’s pov My wrists had gone raw hours ago, the rope biting deep enough that every small movement sent fresh fire through skin already rubbed thin.I'd stopped fighting the restraints sometime in the night, my strength finally giving out somewhere between exhaustion and the particular hopelessness of understanding, with total clarity, that no amount of struggling would loosen a knot tied by men who clearly knew exactly what they were doing. I'd cried until there was nothing left to cry with, my throat raw, my eyes swollen, the isolated house holding my grief with the same indifferent silence it had held everything else since Katherine first locked that door.I'd spent the long hours in between trying to keep my mind occupied with anything other than the fear, running through every memory of Alexander I had, cataloguing them carefully, as though holding onto them tightly enough might somehow bring him closer. The way he'd looked at me across that rooftop restaurant. The particular ge
Alexander’s pov Marcus called just after nine the next morning, his voice carrying the particular careful neutrality of someone delivering news he knew wouldn't satisfy."Nothing concrete yet," he said. "I've traced her movements up through the day she left the apartment. After that, the trail goes cold. No credit card activity, no phone pings, nothing on any camera footage in the areas we'd expect her to pass through.""That's not possible." I paced the length of my office, phone pressed hard against my ear. "A person doesn't simply vanish without leaving something behind.""Someone who knew what they were doing could manage it," Marcus said, and the particular grim certainty in his voice did nothing to settle the growing dread sitting in my chest. "Which tells us something in itself. This isn't a woman who ran off on impulse, Mr. Sterling. This has the marks of something planned."I stopped pacing."I want you watching Lara specifically," I said. "And James Wood, if you can locate
Alexander’s pov My mind wouldn't stay still.I'd tried, genuinely tried, to follow Grandma Rose's instructions and rest at the house for a second full day, propped up in that borrowed study with a cast on my arm and a mind that refused to cooperate with anything resembling calm. Every hour I spent sitting idle only left more room for the same unanswerable questions to circle endlessly, where Lily had gone, who had constructed that fake hospital text with such precision, why the photograph Anna produced had felt wrong the moment I'd first looked at it despite offering no obvious tell as to how.I'd lasted until nearly noon before the walls started closing in properly, every unanswered question circling louder and louder until sitting still felt like its own particular form of torture."You shouldn't be going anywhere," Grandma Rose had said, arms crossed in the doorway, watching me struggle one-handed into my jacket with obvious disapproval."I need to check something at the office. I







