Chapter 3

The taller kidnapper's eyes narrowed behind his mask as he turned toward Emma. My heart stopped. Time itself seemed to freeze as I watched his hand tighten around the blade.

"No!" I screamed, thrashing against my restraints with renewed desperation. "Take me! Kill me instead!"

He ignored my pleas, moving toward my daughter with methodical purpose. Emma's eyes, wide with terror, found mine in a silent plea for the protection I could not give.

"Mommy," she whispered, her voice small and broken.

I pulled against the zip ties until I felt my wrists tear open, blood slicking my hands as I fought to break free. "Please! She's innocent! She's just a child!"

The shorter kidnapper held Emma in place, her tiny frame dwarfed by his massive hands. "Nothing personal," he muttered. "Just following orders."

"Whose orders?" I sobbed, already knowing the answer. "Jonathan wouldn't—he couldn't—"

"Not his," the taller one said, his voice eerily calm. "The lady's. She was very specific."

Victoria. The name burned through my mind like acid. This wasn't just about taking me out of the picture. This was about destroying everything.

Emma's eyes never left mine, trust and terror mingling in their depths. Even now, she believed I would save her. That her mother would protect her. That her father would come back.

"Close your eyes, baby," I whispered, my voice breaking. "Think about the beach. Remember how we built that big sandcastle last summer?"

She nodded slightly, her lower lip trembling. "With the seashell windows."

"That's right, sweetheart. And the moat around it. Think about that. Just think about—"

The motion was so swift I almost missed it. A flash of steel, a spray of crimson, and then—silence. Emma's body crumpled to the concrete floor like a discarded doll, Hoppy still clutched in her lifeless fingers.

The scream that tore from my throat wasn't human. It was primal, animalistic—the sound of a mother watching her child die. It bounced off the warehouse walls, echoing back to me in a chorus of unbearable agony.

"That's that, then," the taller kidnapper said, wiping the blade on his pants. "Let's go."

"What about her?" the shorter one asked, nodding toward me.

"She'll be picked up later. Different team." He leaned close to my face, his breath hot against my mutilated cheek. "You've got a date with a surgeon, pretty lady. Someone wants what's inside you."

Their footsteps receded, the heavy warehouse door groaning shut behind them. And then I was alone with the body of my daughter, blood pooling around her like a macabre halo.

"Emma," I whispered, though I knew she couldn't hear me. "Emma, baby, I'm so sorry."

Tears mixed with blood on my face, stinging the fresh wounds as they fell. I stared at my daughter's still form, willing her chest to rise, her eyes to open. But she remained motionless, her face peaceful in death in a way it hadn't been in her final moments of terror.

I don't know how long I sat there, bound to that chair, my daughter's blood cooling on the concrete floor. Minutes or hours—time had lost all meaning. But eventually, survival instinct began to stir beneath my grief.

They were coming back for me. For my heart. Victoria wanted the very core of me.

I twisted my wrists against the zip ties, feeling the plastic cut deeper into my already lacerated skin. The chair I was bound to was old, rusted in places. As I shifted my weight, I felt something give slightly—a loose bolt in the arm.

Desperately, I rocked back and forth, ignoring the pain shooting through my body. The bolt worked free, clattering to the floor. The metal arm of the chair was now loose, with a jagged edge where the bolt had been.

I maneuvered my bound wrists against this edge, sawing the plastic ties against the metal. Blood from my wrists made my hands slippery, but I persisted, driven by a single thought: I would not die here. I would not let Emma's death be for nothing.

The zip tie snapped suddenly, freeing my hands. I lurched forward, falling to my knees beside Emma's body. I gathered her into my arms one last time, pressing my forehead to hers.

"I will make them pay," I whispered against her cooling skin. "All of them. I promise you."

I gently closed her eyes, placed Hoppy more securely in her arms, and forced myself to stand on shaking legs. Somewhere in this city, my husband was celebrating with the woman who had orchestrated our destruction. And I was going to find them.