All Chapters of OWNED IN THE DARK: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

MATHEW My left hand was clamped onto the steering wheel with enough force to turn my knuckles a ghostly white, while my right shoulder throbbed a steady, agonizing rhythm beneath my leather jacket. The stitches had held, barely, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the cold, calculation running through my mind.Beside me in the passenger seat, Ciara was a statue of quiet defiance. Her designer corporate suit from Horizon Holdings was wrinkled, a stark contrast to the immaculate veneer she had worn just hours ago before Mary’s call shattered her day. Her camera bag was wedged between her feet, her fingers wrapped tightly around the strap. In the back seat, Adam was secured in his car seat, clutching the small toy racing car I had retrieved from her office desk before we cleared out the building. He was quiet, too quiet for a child his age, his dark eyes watching the city lights blur past the armored glass. He had inherited my ability to sense when the air was heavy with impe

MATHEW The concrete walls of the mansion's subterranean garage were cold, smelling of motor oil, high-octane fuel, and the bitter winter chill that clung to the tires of the armored SUVs. After the pure, unadulterated chaos of Mary giving birth right on the executive velvet sofa at Horizon Holdings, the silence down here should have been a relief. Dmitri’s secret service detail was still hovering around the upper levels of the tower, and the Russian president himself was probably still speaking Russian baby-talk to his newborn daughter, but I had needed an escape. I needed to check the fuel lines, check the perimeter ammunition counts, and check the armor plating on the transport trucks. I needed to be a soldier again, if only for an hour.Instead, I walked right into a completely different kind of operational hazard.I had been heading toward the back of the secondary SUV to retrieve a crate of tracking sensors Louis was supposed to have cataloged. My heavy combat boots made almost

MATHEWThe flat-screen monitor in the mansion’s subterranean command center didn’t just show a live broadcast; it showed a betrayal of ownership.I had been standing there, my six-foot-four frame rigid, my left hand clamped onto the edge of the metal desk so hard the steel groaned beneath my weight. My right shoulder was a distant, secondary ache. All the pain from the docks, the torn stitches, and the cracked ribs vanished, overridden by a blinding, suffocating rush of the red mist that swallowed my vision whole.I watched the screen as the broadcast ended. I watched James Harvour reach across the space between the chairs, lock his fingers into the back of Ciara’s hair, and drag her into his chest. I watched him slam his mouth onto hers, claiming her in front of millions, branding her as his property on live television while she froze under the studio lights.A roar tore from my chest, low and guttural, shaking the very concrete of the bunker. I didn't say a word to Louis or Mary. I

MATHEWThe smoke from the Cuban cigar I hadn't lit curled lazily between my fingers, a single thread of gray against the sterile, minimalist backdrop of my penthouse living room. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, Manhattan looked like a motherboard of neon and concrete, millions of oblivious lives pulsing below while my own world sat on a razor's edge.The three days of isolation with Ciara had quieted the red mist, but it hadn’t erased the reality waiting outside the heavy mahogany door. My ribs still throbbed a steady, agonizing rhythm under my black shirt, a reminder that the stitches from the docks were held by a thread but the physical ache was nothing compared to the sudden, jarring spike of adrenaline that had hit my system when the lobby desk buzzed ten minutes ago.“Mr. Mathew? There’s a Detective Collins here from the NYPD. He says it’s urgent.”Now, the man himself sat across from me in a low-slung leather armchair, his trench coat slung over the back, revealing a faded n

MATHEW I stood in the mouth of a narrow, trash-strewn alleyway three blocks away from the Brooklyn docks, the collar of my leather jacket turned up against the freezing downpour. My left shoulder was still a tight knot of fire from where father’s suicide runner had dug his blade into the muscle earlier that week, but the ache had subsided into a dull, predictable thud. It was the kind of pain you could compartment, lock away behind a steel door in your mind, and ignore until the job was finished.Tonight wasn't an empire-shattering shadow coup. It was a cleanup operation.Louis had tracked a small pocket of Alexander’s loyalists—low-level street enforcers who hadn't received the memo that the Diamond syndicate had changed hands—to a defunct auto-body shop at the end of the block. They were trying to move three crates of unmarked automatic receivers out of the city before my new perimeter guards completely sealed the borders."Mathew," Louis’s voice crackled through my earpiece, low a