Page 51 of The Bratva Stalker and His Pregnant Bride

Please, Ashley. Don’t do this to me.

He pulls away and heads back toward his room, and the second he’s gone, my composure shatters. I pull my phone out one more time, my fingers moving with frantic, desperate speed.

I dial her number again.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

“Damn it, Ashley,” I growl, pacing back to the window to stare out at the city lights. I don’t care about anything else right now. I just want to hear her voice. I want to know she’s safe.

I stare at the blank screen, my grip tightening until my knuckles turn white. The city looks the same as it did this morning—vast, indifferent, and cruel. And for the first time in my life, I feel the terrifying, absolute helplessness of being a man who has everything to lose, and no way to reach the person who holds it all.

It’s 6:30 p.m. The air in the suite has grown frigid, though the heater is humming perfectly. I can’t sit still anymore. My phone has become an extension of my hand, each unanswered call burning into my palm like a brand.

I dial Maya. She’s the only one who might know if there was a last-minute shift in Ashley’s schedule.

“Maya.” I don’t bother with a greeting. “Where’s my wife? She was supposed to be home an hour ago.”

“Samuel? I thought she was with you,” Maya’s voice is confused, bordering on panicked. “She left the office around 4:30 after meeting a contact—someone she used to work with. She said it was a professional catch-up. They left together.”

My blood turns to ice. “A contact? Who?”

“She didn’t say, but she seemed…relaxed. She said she’d be back in about an hour.”

I disconnect without saying goodbye. Relaxed. Ashley doesn’t move through this city “relaxed” anymore. Not after everything. The knot of dread in my gut tightens into a searing, agonizing coil. She wouldn’t be careless. She wouldn’t just disappear.

“Kaplan.” I’m already rattling instructions as soon as he takes my call, the sound echoing through the suite, cutting through the silence of the penthouse like a gunshot.

I wait thirty minutes until Ethan’s nanny arrives before I storm impatiently out of the house.

By the time I arrive at Kang Logistics, my men are already waiting for me, weapons drawn and ready. I’m no longer a worried husband; I’m a man fueled by the primal, terrifying instinct to reclaim what’s mine.

When we hit the office building, we don’t check in with the front desk. We move with the silent, lethal efficiency of a tactical unit. I shove past the night-shift security team, my hand resting on the holster at my hip, until I’m in the server room.

“Get the feed for the parking level,” I command, my voice a low, dangerous vibration. “Garage level four. 4:15 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.”

The technician’s fingers fly across the keyboard. The grainy, grayscale footage flickers onto the large monitor.

There.

My heart stops. Ashley is walking—smiling, talking—toward a sleek sedan. She’s with a man. I lean in, my breath hitching as I zoom in on his face. I don’t recognize him, but I recognize the way he moves—the calculated ease, the way he positions himself to obscure her from the surrounding cameras. It’s deliberate. He has obvious intent.

Then, I see her posture change. The way she slows down. The way she tries to lean on a pillar, her knees giving out.

My hands grip the edge of the console, my knuckles white, my jaw locked so tight I feel like my teeth might shatter. I watch her fall. I watch him catch her—not with concern, but with the chilling, practiced efficiency of a predator grabbing his prize.

“Rewind,” I growl.

We watch it again. And again.

On the third replay, the realization hits me with such violent precision that I have to brace myself against the desk to stay upright. The way he smiles at her—the arrogance of it—it’s the same dark, suffocating energy that was in those texts.

The stalker.

He didn’t just watch her. He didn’t just follow her. He walked right up to her, looked her in the eye, and took her out of my world.