48hours

NATHANIEL's POV 

Forty-eight hours.

In the world of trauma, forty-eight hours is the difference between a rescue and a recovery. To the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, I was a grieving billionaire.

To the news outlets, the story of the "Sun King’s Nurse" was a viral sensation—a tragic tale of a gold-digger who met a dark end in a foreign land.

But to me, the world had ceased to exist.

I sat in the back of the mobile command unit parked at the edge of the Okutama Reservoir.

My eyes were bloodshot, fixed on the sonar screens as divers combed the silt-heavy depths. We had found the blood on the concrete pier.

My blood. Because she was mine, and they had spilled her like she was nothing.

"Sir," Miller said, his voice hesitant. "The Japanese authorities... they want to scale back the search.

The currents are too strong. If she went in there two days ago, the likelihood of finding a body is—"

"I don't want to hear about likelihoods!" I roared, slamming my fist onto the console. The H.I.S. interface on my lap flickered with the force of my rage. "She is in there.

Or she was. Find her. I don't care if you have to drain the entire reservoir."

I looked at the secondary screen. My investigators had finally broken the encryption on the Tokyo plant’s servers. My stomach twisted into a knot of pure, acidic hate.

"The plant," I whispered. "It was a ghost. A digital loop."

"Yes, sir," Miller confirmed. "The 'explosion' was a localized demolition of an empty storage unit. The rest was a masterclass in server spoofing. They never wanted the plant, Nathan.

They just wanted you out of California. They wanted her alone."

I gripped the armrests of my chair. Steven was still missing—likely dead or tucked away in a Vance safehouse.

My mind went straight to the only people capable of such a calculated, cruel diversion.

"Mark," I growled.

"Mark and Daniel. They knew I’d never leave her side unless the empire was at stake.

They played me. They played my ego, and she paid the price."

MARK's Pov

The penthouse in Bel-Air felt like a tomb. I stared at the television screen, where a grainy photo of Ava Bennett was being flashed next to a headline in Japanese and English: MISSING AMERICAN NURSE PRESUMED DEAD.

"I didn't order this," I said, my voice shaking as I turned to my father.

Daniel Vance sat by the fireplace, a glass of scotch in his hand. He looked unbothered, though his jaw was set tight.

Ryan was pacing the length of the rug, looking like he was about to vomit.

"We were supposed to use her as leverage!" Ryan choked out. "The plan was to hold her, negotiate the patents, and keep Nathan pinned in Tokyo.

We weren't supposed to... to kill her."

"I know the plan, Ryan," Daniel snapped. "But Nathan is a cornered animal.

Perhaps the extraction team panicked. Or perhaps she tried to run."

"She didn't run," I muttered, a strange, hollow ache in my chest.

I wanted Ava back. I wanted to break her myself, to show her that I was the one who owned her, not my crippled cousin.

"If she’s dead, Nathan has nothing left to lose. We’ve turned a businessman into a martyr with a god complex."

"It doesn't matter," Daniel said, rising to his feet. "Dead or alive, she’s out of the way. We file the incapacity papers tomorrow morning.

Nathan is thousands of miles away, searching for a corpse. By the time he returns, King Corp will be ours."

AVA'S POV 

Pain.

It was a sharp, jagged rhythm that pulsed with every beat of my heart. My chest felt like it had been pierced by a hot iron, and my lungs burned with the phantom memory of black water.

I opened my eyes.

The ceiling above me wasn't the high-tech glass of a hotel or the concrete of a cellar. it was made of weathered wood, hung with dried herbs and tangled fishing nets.

"Steady, little bird," a gravelly voice said.

I tried to sit up, but a hand—calloused and smelling of salt and tobacco—pressed gently on my shoulder.

I looked over. An old man with a face like a map of the sea sat on a stool beside the bed. He was cleaning a wound on my chest with a stinging clear liquid.

"You... you saved me?" I whispered, my voice barely a thread.

"The lake gave you up," he said in broken English, gesturing toward the window where the sun was setting over a small, hidden cove far from the main reservoir.

"The current brought you to my nets. You have a hole in you, but the cold water... it slowed the bleeding. It kept the life inside."

I looked down at the bandages wrapped around my chest. I was alive. But as the memory of the woman in the mask came rushing back, I felt a surge of terror.

"No one can know," I rasped, grabbing the old man’s sleeve. "If they know I'm alive, they'll come back. They'll finish it."

The fisherman looked at me with wise, weary eyes. He saw the fear of a hunted animal. He didn't ask questions. He simply nodded and pulled a heavy wool blanket over me.

"For now, you are a ghost," he said. "The world thinks you are gone. Let them think it. Ghosts are harder to kill."

NATHANIEL'S POV 

Night fell over the reservoir again. The divers had come up empty.

I sat alone in the command van, staring at the last photo I had of her—taken on the jet to Tokyo. She was looking out the window, a small, hopeful smile on her face.

"I'm going to find them, Ava," I whispered to the empty air. "I'm going to find the men who took you, and I'm going to show them exactly what a monster looks like when he has nothing left to hold him back."

I reached for the H.I.S. prototype. It was time to stop searching for a body. It was time to start hunting for blood.