All Chapters of The Return Of Killian Dante : Chapter 21 - Chapter 28

The email from Elias Frank arrived at 7:52 a.m., exactly as promised. Killian read it twice before he let himself react to any of it.Three names. Three phone numbers, each attached to a call log time-stamped between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. — the same window Jack had supposedly spent asleep beside Cassandra. One number belonged to a private security contractor whose corporate filing listed "asset recovery and personal protection services" as its business, language vague enough to mean almost anything. The second belonged to a man named Victor Sarto, no public business listing at all, just a name that made Chen go very still when Killian read it aloud."You know him," Killian said."I know of him." Chen's voice had lost its usual warmth. "Sarto doesn't do intimidation. He does removal. If Jack Moore is calling a man like that at three in the morning, he's not planning to scare you off, Killian. He's planning to make sure there's no one left to scare."The third number had no name attached at

The Ashbourne Group lobby hadn't changed in two years — the same marble, the same oversized company crest hanging behind reception, the same hush that money bought when it wanted to feel important. What had changed was the way people looked at Killian when he walked through the doors this time.Nobody stopped him. A junior receptionist who couldn't have been older than twenty-two actually stood halfway up from her desk, phone already lifting to snap a photo before she caught herself and sat back down, cheeks flushing."Mr. Dante." Her voice cracked slightly on his name. "Is — is there someone I can call up for you?""Diane Ashbourne. Tell her it's urgent."She was already dialing before he'd finished the sentence.He rode the elevator up alone, the ten floors ticking past in silence, running Elias Frank's warning against the strange, careful text that had followed it. Someone inside this building — someone with access to Diane's private terminal, someone who understood exactly how to

The office fell silent except for the reporter's voice, still cycling through the same three facts dressed up in increasingly urgent language — missing, struggle, no suspect named. Elias hadn't moved from his chair, staring at the screen like it might correct itself if he waited long enough."If Jack's gone," Elias said finally, "then whoever took him already knows about Meridian Holdings. Which means my two days just became considerably less than that.""Or it has nothing to do with the money." Killian was already running through the list of people with a reason to want Jack Moore removed, and the list was longer than it should have been for a man who'd faked his own death to avoid exactly this kind of attention. "Sarto works for whoever pays him. If someone paid him more to take Jack instead of protect him—""Sarto wouldn't turn on a client mid-contract. It would end his business permanently. No one in that world would ever hire him again." Elias's jaw tightened. "Which means this w

The drive to the outskirts of the city took forty minutes, Chen navigating from memory alone, refusing to explain how he still knew every back road leading toward a prison neither of them was supposed to be able to find without official clearance."You're not actually planning to walk up to the front gate," Chen said, breaking the silence somewhere past the last cluster of streetlights. "Killian. Tell me that's not the plan.""It's not the plan." Killian watched the landscape thin out, trees replacing buildings, the road narrowing until it barely qualified as one. "The warden doesn't take unscheduled visitors. He'll know I'm coming before I'm close enough to see the walls. Which means the only way in is if he decides he wants to see me.""And you think he will.""I think a man who's been orchestrating my entire life since I walked through his gates isn't going to pass up the chance to finally have this conversation face to face." Killian's voice was steady, certain in a way that unset