Part 2: For a moment, the world went silent.

Clara lay on the kitchen floor in a white blouse stained with blood, her body twisted like she had fallen while trying to crawl away. One cheek was swollen. Bruises circled her throat in dark fingerprints. Blood had dried at the corner of her mouth. Her hair, usually so controlled, spread across the tile in dark waves.

Something inside Adrian went cold.

Not angry.

Not yet.

Cold.

The kind of cold that came before a man stopped being human.

“Call Dr. Levin,” he said.

Marcus was already moving. “On it.”

Adrian crossed the room and dropped to one knee beside her. He touched two fingers to her neck.

A pulse.

Weak.

But there.

His lungs worked again.

“Clara.” His voice came out rougher than he expected. “Open your eyes.”

She did not move.

He slid one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees. She made the smallest sound when he lifted her, a broken whimper that scraped against something buried deep in his chest.

His jaw tightened.

“I’ve got you,” he said, though she could not hear him. “You’re safe now.”

Safe.

The word almost mocked him.

Adrian Vale had built his life out of danger. He owned men who owned judges. He moved money through restaurants, docks, construction firms, and charities named after dead saints. He had enemies in three states and allies who would sell their mothers for the right price.

But as he carried Clara out of that ruined apartment, her head resting against his chest, he understood one thing with terrifying clarity…
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