26

Louis’s POV

At 8:00 AM sharp, Sierra walked into my study. She wore dark jeans and a simple sweater, her hair pulled back. She looked like she meant business. She carried a notebook and a pen.

Marcus, standing by the screens, gave a slight, approving nod. My mother, who had insisted on attending—"This concerns the family's security, I am family"—sat in a wingback chair, a silent observer.

“Alright,” I began, gesturing to the main screen where Marcus had pulled up a file. “Elias Crowe. Forty years old. Former military intelligence, dishonorably discharged for unspecified ‘ethical breaches.’ Went private fifteen years ago. He’s a ghost. No fixed address, uses burn phones, operates through a network of cutouts. He wasn’t Victor’s employee. He was a contractor. High-end, discrete surveillance and… problem solving.”

“Problem solving,” Sierra repeated, her voice flat. “What does that mean?”

Marcus answered. “It means he makes problems go away. Sometimes through blackmail. Sometimes through intimidation. Rarely, through accidents. He’s never been charged. He’s careful.”

A photo of Crowe came on screen. It was grainy, taken from a distance. He was average height, average build, with a forgettable face. The most dangerous kind of man.

“His inquiries,” Marcus continued, bringing up a map with red dots. “In the past seventy-two hours, he or associates have made discreet inquiries here,” a dot flashed near Katie’s school, “here,” near the bakery, now closed, “and here.” A dot flashed near Jasmine’s apartment.

Sierra’s pen stilled on her notebook. “He knows about Jas?”

“He’s thorough,” Marcus said. “This is reconnaissance. He’s building a profile. Of you, of your patterns, of your vulnerabilities.”

“What does he want?” Sierra asked, looking directly at me.

“We don’t know yet,” I admitted. “Money is likely. Revenge for Victor, less so—they had no loyalty. But our very public victory, your very public debut… it might have made him see an opportunity. A wealthy, happy, *exposed* family is a target. He could be planning to sell our private data to tabloids. Or he could be setting up for a more direct approach. A kidnapping threat. Corporate espionage. The goal is to find out what he wants before he decides to ask for it.”

Sierra absorbed this, her face pale but composed. “So what’s our move?”

*Our move.* I loved her for that.

“We tighten the perimeter,” I said. “Katie’s security is already maximal. We add a rotating schedule for her routes. We install a more sophisticated system at Jasmine’s apartment. For you…” I met her gaze. “Your stylist appointments, any public outings, will have an upgraded detail. It will feel restrictive.”

“I don’t care about restrictive,” she said. “I care about effective. What else?”

Marcus took over. “We bait a trap. We feed a piece of false information into a channel we know he’s monitoring. A fake schedule for Sierra, for a future public appearance. We see if he takes the bait. If he does, we track him. We find his nest.”

“Use me as bait?” Sierra’s voice was steady.

“Controlled bait,” I interjected sharply. “In a location we control, with a team you’ll never see. Nothing happens to you. The goal is to trace him, not confront him.”

She looked at the map, at the red dots surrounding the spaces of her old life. She nodded slowly. “Do it.”

My mother spoke for the first time. “You are sure, my dear? It is not a small thing to offer yourself, even in a controlled way.”

Sierra looked at Nia. “He’s looking at my best friend’s home. He’s looking at my daughter’s school. He’s not getting any closer. We draw him out. On our terms.”

The meeting ended with a plan. The false itinerary—a “private charity dinner” at a high-end restaurant in three days—would be leaked. Our teams would saturate the area.

As Sierra and my mother left, Marcus lingered. “There’s one more thing, Louis. Crowe is good. He might see the bait for what it is. If he does, he could interpret it as a declaration of war from us. He could escalate.”

“Then we escalate faster,” I said, my voice cold. “Find him first.”

The day passed in a blur of logistics. Sierra surprised me by asking to review the security schematics for the restaurant. She pointed out a service entrance the plans had downplayed. “That’s a blind spot. If I were trying to get close, that’s where I’d look.” Marcus made a note, impressed.

She was a natural. This was the woman who had built a business from nothing, who had raised a child alone. She had a strategist’s mind, honed by survival.

That evening, as we sat down to a quiet dinner with Katie, the first contact came.

Not to me. To Sierra.

Her personal phone, the number only a handful of people had, buzzed with a text from an unknown number. She picked it up, her face curious, then froze.

“What is it?” I asked.

Silently, she turned the screen toward me.

It was a photograph. Taken today. It was me, leaving my downtown office building, my head down as I talked on the phone. The quality was professional, crisp. The text below read:

**A busy man. So many vulnerabilities. Let’s talk. Tomorrow. 3 PM. The botanical gardens, the orchid greenhouse. Come alone. Tell the king his queen is taking a walk.**

Rage, white-hot and blinding, erupted in my brain. He was contacting her directly. He was threatening me through her. He was calling her my queen, reducing our life to his twisted chess game.

“No,” I snarled. “Absolutely not.”

Sierra was still staring at the photo, her finger tracing the image of me on the screen. When she looked up, her eyes were not scared. They were furious.

“He’s in my phone,” she whispered, a terrible calm in her voice. “He has my private number. He’s watching you. He’s not just circling. He’s here.”

She stood up, her chair scraping back. “I’m going.”

“Sierra, no! It’s a trap! He could have a dozen men there!”

“And you’ll have a hundred,” she shot back, her voice low so Katie in the next room wouldn’t hear. “He wants to talk. He wants to see if he can scare me. So let him see me. Let him look into my eyes and understand that he is not dealing with a frightened girl. He’s dealing with you. And I *am* you now.”

Her words, her ferocity, stole my breath. She was right. Crowe had made it personal. He had crossed a line by reaching for her directly. Sending a team in her place would show fear. Sending her, wrapped in an invisible army, showed strength.

It was the hardest decision I had ever made.

I looked at Marcus, who had been silently monitoring the situation from his tablet. He gave a grim nod. “We can secure the greenhouse. It’s contained. We can have men as orchids.” A faint attempt at humor that fell flat.

I walked to Sierra, taking her face in my hands. “You wear a wire. You have a panic button. You do not step off the agreed path. You look at him, you listen, and you walk away. You do not negotiate. You are not there to make a deal. You are there to deliver a message.”

“What’s the message?” she asked, her gaze locked on mine.

“The message,” I said, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper, “is that he is already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

She swallowed, then nodded. “Okay.”

I held her tight, breathing in the scent of her hair, trying to imprint her feel on my soul. This was the cost of my world. This was the price of my love.

I was sending my heart into the serpent’s den.

And God help Elias Crowe if he so much as breathed on her wrong.