Caleb Hayes stared at the divorce papers lying on the dining table. For several seconds, he didn't move. The rain outside had been falling since dawn, tapping against the enormous windows of the Lincoln mansion like impatient fingers.Today marked the end of two long years. Seven hundred and thirty days. That was how long Caleb had been married to Lora Lincoln, and today their contract was officially over.He had imagined this day countless times, sometimes picturing Lora finally looking at him differently, sometimes picturing her father admitting that Caleb had been the reason Lincoln Enterprises survived. He had never imagined this: her sitting across from him, already bored, waiting for a signature.The house smelled the way it always did, expensive candles burning somewhere out of sight, coffee going cold on the sideboard because nobody in this family drank it fast enough to matter. Caleb picked up the papers. DIVORCE AGREEMENT. Husband: Caleb Hayes. Wife: Lora Lincoln. Two years

Caleb ran until his lungs burned, not stopping when his shoes slipped on the wet pavement or when his shoulder struck the wall of a narrow alley, the impact jarring straight through his teeth. He had negotiated hostile takeovers, faced down board members twice his age, survived two years of Lincoln family dinners designed to humiliate him. Nothing had prepared him for the particular terror of a stranger's gun. The footsteps behind him were getting louder, boots slapping wet concrete, a voice barking orders he couldn't quite make out. "He's in the alley! Don't let him get away!"Two men blocked the entrance. One raised a gun but didn't fire. "Don't make this difficult.""Who sent you?""Come with us.""You just shot at me.""We weren't trying to kill you.""That's supposed to make me feel better?"He turned and found a metal fence, eight feet high, and no choice. He grabbed the top as the man fired, the bullet striking the fence instead of him, and dropped hard on the other side. Pain

Three months passed. Caleb spent them learning, waking before dawn in the modest apartment he still refused to leave for something grander, poring over financial statements until the numbers stopped looking like numbers and started looking like a map. Marcus taught him to read a balance sheet like a surgeon reads an X-ray, how to find the fracture before it became a break. Valeria taught him how boardrooms really worked, who held real power and who only performed it. Toby taught him how information moved through the world when nobody thought they were being watched. He didn't sleep much. He didn't need to. Sleep had always felt like something other people could afford.While he learned, Lincoln Enterprises bled. Without Caleb quietly managing its logistics, shipping routes collapsed within weeks, suppliers walked, and by the third month the stock had lost nearly half its value. The board forced a vote, stripped Richard of control, and opened the door to outside investment. That was th

The photograph stayed on the screen. Lora, bruised, wrists bound, fear in her eyes in a way Caleb had never once seen on her, not even the day he'd left with three boxes in the rain. Caleb studied the gray wall, the metal chair, the narrow window, the pipe running along the ceiling, cataloguing every detail like it might save her life, because it might."Can you identify the location?" he asked Toby."I'm trying.""Try faster.""Do you want me to work faster or correctly?""Correctly."Marcus wasn't amused. "We need to think carefully.""Thinking carefully is what got Lora kidnapped," Caleb said. "But they made three mistakes. They proved she's alive, which means the photo is recent. They gave me a deadline, which means they're under pressure. And they showed me her face, which means they want me to come for her." He turned to the window. "That's what we're going to find out."The first call came twenty minutes later. A distorted voice, counting down the hours in a tone that tried too

The helicopter cut low over the industrial district, and Caleb watched the warehouses scroll past beneath him, dark rectangles broken by the occasional square of yellow light, one of them holding Lora. Valeria sat across from him, checking the magazine on a pistol she'd insisted he wear even though he had no intention of using it. Marcus had argued against this for twenty minutes before finally giving up, because there had never really been a version of tonight where Caleb didn't come himself."Toby, talk to me," Caleb said into the headset."Building four. Heat signatures show six inside, maybe seven. One's tied to a chair. That's her.""Guards?""Four moving, two stationary. Small operation. Whoever's running this isn't the same people who hit Marcus's office. Not enough men."That should have been comforting. It wasn't. Small operations meant someone confident enough not to need more than four men to hold one woman, and confidence like that came from somewhere. Caleb thought of the