The Montgomery villa sat under a bruised sky, the last traces of daylight bleeding out beyond the rooftops of Ashford Hills. Inside, every lamp was burning, but the light did nothing to lift the weight pressing down on the house.Vivian sat on the edge of the living room sofa with her phone gripped so tight her knuckles had gone white. She had called Carden's number forty three times. Forty three times the line had rung out into nothing. Each unanswered call carved deeper into her chest until the silence on the other end felt like a living thing, something with teeth, gnawing at the parts of her she had only recently allowed to soften.Across the room, her grandfather paced. His walking staff struck the marble floor in sharp, uneven beats. He held his own phone pressed to his ear, and the expression on his face told Vivian everything she needed to know before he even spoke."Still no answer," the patriarch said, pulling the phone from his ear and staring at the screen. "I've tried the

Something snapped inside Vivian. It wasn't loud. It wasn't dramatic. It was the quiet kind of breaking, the kind that happens when a person has swallowed too much for too long and the body simply refuses to hold any more.She turned from the window and faced Eloise with eyes that had gone cold. Not angry. Not tearful. Cold in the way that made the room feel smaller, as if the walls had taken a step inward."You want to talk about cause and effect, Aunt Eloise?" Vivian's voice was low, controlled, each word placed with surgical care. "Fine. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about your son."Eloise stiffened. "Don't you dare bring John into this again.""John is the reason we're in this. All of this. Every single thing that has gone wrong in this family over the past month traces back to your son and the choices he made. Not Carden. Not my grandfather. Your son.""Vivian," her mother warned from the couch.Vivian didn't even glance at her. Her focus was locked on Eloise with the kind of p

The silence on the other end told her everything. She heard him swallow."No, ma'am.""Then do what I said. Get every man we have out there. Hire more if you need to. Pull from private security firms, I don't care what it costs. And Logan?""Yes?""If they find him, I want to know the second it happens. Not a minute later. Not after you've confirmed details or prepared a report. The second.""Understood."She ended the call and tossed the phone back onto the console. The streetlights of Ashford Hills streaked past her windows in long amber lines, and she pressed the accelerator harder, weaving between slower traffic with the kind of reckless precision that came from years of driving fast cars on straight roads.She wasn't thinking about safety. She wasn't thinking about the family she had just walked out on. She was thinking about the last time she saw Carden's face through the windshield of this same car, the way he had touched his lips after she kissed him, the slow grin that spread

Carden's boot pressed down on Lorenzo Stone's chest with the kind of steady, unhurried pressure that said he could increase it at any moment and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. The heel sat directly over the sternum, and beneath it, Lorenzo could feel his ribs bending inward, not breaking, not yet, but close enough that every breath came with a warning.Lorenzo's eyes burned upward at Carden. Pure, unfiltered hatred poured from them like heat from a furnace. His lips were pulled back, teeth bared, but he didn't move. He didn't dare. The slightest shift of Carden's weight would turn pressure into destruction, and they both knew it.Across the room, Sebastian had dragged a chair from behind the overturned table and was sitting in it with both legs stretched out in front of him, a pistol resting casually across his thigh. His left arm hung at an angle that suggested the pain had gone from sharp to numb, which was somehow worse. But the grin on his face was genuine."Comf

The moment Carden handed his gun to Sebastian and stepped out from behind their cover, Lorenzo's face split into a grin so wide it looked like something had torn across his face."Are you insane?" Lorenzo's voice carried across the chaos of the room, high and sharp with disbelief. He was still crouched behind the overturned table, his hands braced against the wood, but his posture had shifted from defensive to something closer to gleeful. "You're walking straight at me? You? A nobody live-in son-in-law who probably can't even afford his own apartment?"One of the guards still standing raised his weapon. Lorenzo threw up a hand to stop him."No, no. Let him come. I want to watch this." Lorenzo leaned forward, his eyes bright with something manic. "You think you're some kind of action hero? You think you can just stroll across an open room while my men put holes in you?"Carden kept walking. His pace didn't change. His shoulders were loose. His eyes were fixed on Lorenzo with the kind o