Epilogue
Kol Petrov hadn’t sleptin days.Not properly.
The screens in front of him glowed softly in the darkened room, maps and financial trees layered over one another until the world reduced itself to patterns and numbers.Surveillance was usually clean.Detached.People became dots.Movements.Heat signatures.
Eliza Reed refused to become a dot.
He had her photo pulled up again, smaller than it should have been, like the system itself didn’t understand her importance.Blonde hair, caught mid-motion.Brown eyes that looked direct, unguarded.Not the kind of woman who faded into the background because she wanted to.
She was an accountant.
Kol leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face, then brought up the metadata again.Client lists.Shell companies.Transaction histories that looked ordinary until you stared too long and realized how carefully they avoided attention.
They hadn’t taken her just because she was beautiful.
They’d taken her because she was precise.
Because she understood money the way Kol understood sightlines—instinctively, completely.Because she would notice when numbers didn’t add up, and she would know exactly how to make them do so if someone forced her hand.
They hadn’t wanted her body.
They wanted her silence.Or her compliance.
Kol felt the familiar twist of guilt settle low in his gut.The same one that had lived there since the warehouse.Since being late.
“I’m coming,” he murmured to the empty room, the promise not meant for anyone who could hear it.
His fingers moved again, faster now.Ports.Transport manifests.Unregistered flights.Warehouses that didn’t exist on paper.A pattern began to form—faint, deliberate.
He followed it.
He always did.
And when he found her—because he would—he would make sure the world stopped hurting her.
He owed her that.
****
Eliza had stopped countingdays.
The cage was just big enough to kneel in.Just big enough to lie down if she curled tight and ignored the ache in her joints.The floor was cold concrete, damp in places where water dripped from somewhere above.
She was hungry.
That wasn’t the worst part.
