Chapter 1 - Seven Hundred and Thirty
The stench inside the abandoned steel warehouse on the southern bank of the Chicago River was a compound of wet rust, ancient grease, and stagnating river water. Roman Duca stepped through the unlatched side portal without breaking a single dried twig on the gravel path outside. He was six feet three inches of dark wool, tailor-fitted Kevlar, and absolute silence. His leather-glove-clad left hand held a tactical beam that sliced cleanly through the absolute, suffocating darkness inside.
He had expected a cage.
He had spent twenty-three months operating on the assumption that if Amelia Carter was still alive, she was bound by rusted iron chains in some deep, subterranean basement owned by a rival cartel, rotting away into a broken ghost. Roman was thirty-two years old, the undisputed sovereign king of the Duca Syndicate—a criminal leviathan that controlled every commercial dock, illegal transaction, and high-level political bribe from Milwaukee to Cairo, Illinois. He was a man who operated on absolute control, clinical ruthlessness, and cold, mathematical precision.
Yet as his flash beam swept across the cracked concrete expanse of the warehouse floor, his breath caught in his throat.
There were no chains. There were no pile of rotting rags.
On the far western concrete pillar, scratched deep into the gray lime with what appeared to be a ground-down iron spike, was a calendar. It was divided into neat, rectangular blocks, filled with razor-straight vertical lines.
Seven hundred and thirty marks.
One for every single day she had been missing.
Two years.
Below the pillar, her living quarters were laid out with terrifying, military precision. A stained cotton cot had its blanket pulled so taut over the frame that a coin would have bounced off the wool. A row of empty, washed glass water bottles sat aligned against the skirting board, graded perfectly from tallest to shortest. A stack of dry newspaper clippings—all detailing corporate bankruptcies and criminal court trials from two years prior—lay flat beneath three rounded river stones. Beside them, four lead pencils, shaved down to stubby points with a sharp stone, rested in a flawless parallel line.
It was not the shelter of a broken victim. It was the tactical forward operating base of an untamed soldier waiting out a siege.
“Stop.”
The voice came from the shadow behind a rusted forklift twenty feet away. It was low, scraped raw by cold air and months of silence, yet entirely destitute of panic.
Roman stopped instantly. He did not lower his flashlight, but he shifted the beam slightly off-center so the blinding glare would not burn her eyes, illuminating the concrete floor between them instead.
The light caught her.
Amelia Carter was twenty-six years old, but the girl Roman remembered from the high-society charity galas of Gold Coast had been burned away. She was dangerously thin, her high cheekbones prominent under pale, dust-smudged skin. She wore a oversized dark gray work jacket pulled tight over a faded black thermal shirt. Her dark hair was sheared short, cut roughly near her jawline with a blade. Her sleeves were pulled back slightly, revealing wrists scarred with thick, pale white ring marks—evidence of heavy zip-ties that had healed long ago.
In her hands, she held a two-foot section of heavy rusted iron water pipe. Her knuckles were white, her feet set in a solid, balanced combat stance. She looked fully prepared to drive the iron through his jaw.
Roman had spent seven hundred and thirty days searching every continent for her.
She showed no relief. Her dark gray eyes locked onto his face with cold, sharp recognition.
“Roman Duca.”
“Amelia.”
Her grip on the pipe tightened, the rust flaking off under the intense pressure of her fingers.
“How did you find me?” she asked flatly.
“A man named Garrett Bell,” Roman replied, his baritone voice dropping into a steady, low hum that did not vibrate the tense air.
“Garrett is dead,” she stated.
“He died forty minutes ago,” Roman confirmed calmly. “In an alley three miles north of here. It took my men fifteen minutes to make him speak.”
Amelia’s face barely moved. No flicker of satisfaction, no shock, no tremor of fear. She absorbed the death of her former captor as a simple, cold variable.
Then, she asked the question that proved to Roman her mind remained as terrifyingly sharp as the day she vanished from her father’s penthouse.
“Why are you alone?”
Roman Duca never traveled alone. He was the head of a syndicate at war. He lived surrounded by armored SUVs, tactical squads, and men who held automatic rifles and executed orders without hesitation. For Roman to step into an unsecured, blind location without an advance team was an unthinkable breach of his own protocol.
He slowly turned his hands palm-up, keeping them visible in the dim light.
“Because someone inside my organization helped keep you hidden,” Roman said softly.
Amelia lowered the iron pipe an inch, her head tilting slightly as her eyes narrowed.
“You have a traitor.”
“Yes.”
“You know who?”
“No.”
She stared at him, her sharp mind immediately tracing the logistics of his response. “So anyone you brought here tonight could have reported that you found me. They would have alerted whoever paid Garrett to keep me here.”
“Yes.”
Outside, the heavy autumn downpour struck the corrugated tin roof of the warehouse with a deafening, rhythmic roar. Cold wind whistled through the broken glass panes near the ceiling, driving a fine mist of freezing rain over them.
Amelia turned her gaze slowly toward the concrete pillar, looking at the seven hundred and thirty black marks carved into the stone.
Her voice dropped, losing its razor edge, revealing a hollow, aching depth that made Roman’s chest tighten.
“I waited two years for someone to find me.”
For the first time since he had stepped through the portal, her absolute composure cracked. A faint tremor ran through her jaw, her fingers twitching against the cold rust of the pipe.
“Two years,” she repeated, her voice barely louder than the falling rain.
She looked directly back into his eyes.
“And you’re the one who came.”
Roman took one slow, deliberate step forward, the soles of his boots crunching softly on the fine gravel.
Amelia did not retreat. She stood her ground, her eyes searching his face for the truth beneath the cold, powerful legend of Roman Duca.
Then, she asked the question he had avoided answering even to his own soul for twenty-four months.
“Why?”
Before Roman could open his mouth to answer, the high-pitched growl of a modified V8 engine echoed from the rain-slicked alley outside the warehouse.
Dual halogen headlights swept dramatically across the high, frosted windows of the warehouse floor, casting long, frantic shadows across the concrete.
Amelia’s pipe snapped back up in an instant, her body dropping back into her combat stance without a second of hesitation.
May you like
Roman’s right hand moved with fluid, terrifying speed, drawing a matte-black Sig Sauer 9mm from his shoulder holster, his thumb flicking the safety off with a soft click.
Neither of them needed to ask the obvious question. Garrett Bell had not died before making a second phone call.
