“We’ll need men.”
Another pause.Then: “Okay.”
I hung up.
The house felt colder the second the call ended.
I stepped back out onto the porch, scanning the street.It was too quiet, too still.Like the neighborhood had collectively agreed not to see anything.
And that told me something else.
This wasn’t a sloppy snatch.This was practiced.Calculated.The kind of operation that had been done before.
I walked down the path and stopped by her crushed plants, staring at the snapped stems.
Neve Trimboli had survived death more times than she should have.
Like a cat with nine lives.
Always slipping away when the world tried to finish her.
But someone had caught her this time.
And the thought of what that meant—what hands were on her, what eyes were on her, what they planned to do—lit something in me so savage I had to force myself to breathe through it.
I didn’t know where they’d taken her yet.But I would.And when I found them, there wouldn’t be negotiations.There wouldn’t be mercy.Because if anyone thought they could steal from me—stock, money, pride—they’d already learned how that ended.
But taking her?That was worse.That was personal.
And as I stood there, looking at the ruin left behind, one truth settled into my bones like a vow: I was going to find her.And I was going to bring hell with me.
A musclein my jaw ticked.
The old Volvo sat crooked against the curb, engine still ticking as it cooled.I stood in the middle of the street, staring at Neve’s house, at the broken plants, the cracked pot, the small gate sitting half-open like it was too afraid to close.
A slow, relentless fury crawled up my spine, setting every nerve alight as I stood there staring at the wreck of her life.
Someone had taken her.Someone had put their hands on her like she was something they could claim.
She wasn’t mine.I knew that.I didn’t own her, didn’t know her, didn’t even want her in the way men were supposed to want women—but the thought of anyone else touching her, breaking her, ending her, made something inside me twist into something ugly and possessive.
I hadn’t spared her life all those years ago just so someone else could erase her now.
I hadn’t watched her survive.Hadn’t watched her turn into something fierce and dangerous and unkillable… only to let her be extinguished by men who thought they could take whatever they wanted.
The idea of her dying like that—unseen, unmarked, swallowed by someone else’s cruelty—was unbearable.
Not because she was innocent.But because she wasn’t.Because she was fire.And fire wasn’t meant to be snuffed out quietly.And the more I stood there, the more that truth settled in my bones with a terrifying clarity: if Neve Trimboli was going to die, it would not be like this.And it would not be by anyone else’s hand.
I dragged a hand down my face and forced myself to breathe.I needed clarity before I tore the entire city apart looking for her.
Across the street, a woman stood on her front porch holding a shopping bag, staring at me like she’d been waiting for me to look her way.
I walked toward her.
She hesitated at first, then set the bag down.When I stopped behind her gate, she leaned closer.
“You’re looking for the girl?”she asked.