Page 36 of His Stolen Bride

The estate starts sealing itself in pieces. Doors that should stay open lock. Staff corridors close. The sound of boots multiplies, and voices drop low enough that orders feel like they’re sliding under the skin rather than sitting in the air.

Alina looks around, and her eyes track all of it.

We keep moving, and I steer her through the east cut which is narrower and covered by three separate camera angles. A guard at the intersection lifts his chin, then shifts to let us pass, and his hand stays near his holster without touching it.

He’s ready, which he should be, considering someone fired inside my perimeter. That means one of my own failed, and that means I have to decide whether the failure was stupidity or betrayal.

Stupidity gets corrected.

Betrayal gets removed.

I get her to her suite and open the door to lead her inside. Two guards step inside behind us, and two more appear in the hallway. Alina stops near the bed. She doesn’t sit, doesn’t pace, and she doesn’t ask a single question yet. Her hands are clenched, and her gaze fixes on the wall as if she’s trying to hold still long enough to stop shaking.

“You stay here,” I tell her.

Her eyes cut to mine. “Like I ever go anywhere.”

“If I had my full way with you,” I reply curtly, “I wouldn’t even let you go to the bathroom alone today. But you’re you, and there’s only so much of you I can cage.” I watch the anger flicker in her face and get swallowed by fear. My heart does this odd, ugly thing where it urges me to pull her into my arms and hold her to me. I push it down.

She opens her mouth, then closes it. I take two steps back, then pause. “Water,” I tell the guard nearest the side table. “Now.”

The guard moves. I don’t tell Alina she’s safe, because I’m not reckless enough to say it and I’m not arrogant enough to believe it.

I leave the room after the guard returns. Enzo meets me at the junction with a second tablet and a third man trailing behind him. The third man is one of my internal watch commanders. His face is tight in the way men get when they know their performance is about to be evaluated by consequences. “Control room,” I say.

We move.

The control room is sealed and staffed, and when I step in, every screen is already live. Camera feeds stack into a grid, and the estate turns into a map of moving parts. Guards shift positions in real time. Doors register access. A service cart pauses at a corner, then gets redirected by a man who doesn’t look at the cart so much as he looks at the corridor behind it.

I stand behind the screens, and I point. “Rewind to the corridor where she was hit,” I say, and my voice stays calm. Panic has never helped me solve anything. A technician scrubs back, and the footage jumps, then smooths.

Alina appears at the edge of frame, and she’s walking with a guard two steps behind her, and her posture is controlled in the way it’s been since she arrived, like she refuses to let anyone see her bend. She turns her head a fraction, then stops, then the impact hits the perimeter wall behind her, and her whole body jerks.

The camera doesn’t catch the bullet, but it catches the dust and it catches the flinch.

I watch it once, then I watch it again, and I mark the angle.

“Where’s the camera coverage on the opposite side?” I ask.

The commander answers too fast. “That camera went down for maintenance this morning.”

My eyes move to him. “Maintenance by whom?”

He looks at the technician, then back at me. “House staff, Boss. It’s logged.”

“Show me the log,” I say.

The technician brings it up, and I read names and time stamps and approval codes. The approval code is mine, but it shouldn’t be. I didn’t authorize maintenance on that camera. Enzo watches me without speaking. I point at the code on the screen. “Who used my authorization?” My voice takes on a cold, hard edge.

The commander swallows. “It could have been a duplicated token, Boss.”

“It could be a corpse walking,” I reply. I don’t raise my voice. “But I want the real answer.”

Enzo steps closer. “We can isolate who accessed the system,” he says, tone lethally soft.

“Do it,” I tell him.

I turn to the technician. “Pull every access within the last forty-eight hours,” I say. “I want user IDs, device IDs, and physical locations tied to access points.”