Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 70801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 354(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 354(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Dean Maddox.
My spine goes stiff.
Dean doesn’t call unless the world is on fire or about to be. “Ozzy,” he says, low and calm.
“Dean,” I answer. My voice is steady, but my body is already bracing. “What’s going on?”
A pause. Then: “How much does Salem know about her father?”
The question lands like a dropped weight. My jaw tightens. I glance back at the window without meaning to. That soft light. That small shape shifting under covers. “She hasn’t mentioned him,” I say carefully. “Not once. If she has one, she doesn’t talk about him.”
Dean exhales. “Okay. That’s what I suspected.”
My stomach twists. “What did you find?” I ask.
Dean’s voice stays even, but there’s an edge to it now. “We traced the secure booking.”
The booking. The extraction. The contract. The money trail that got Maddox Security involved at all.
My grip tightens on the phone. “And?”
“It wasn’t anonymous,” Dean says. “Not really. Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep their identity buried, but we peeled it back.” A pause, like he’s choosing the most controlled way to say it. “It’s her father, Ozzy.”
My breath leaves my lungs too fast. For a second, all I can hear is the distant creek and my own pulse.
“Her father hired Maddox Security,” Dean repeats. “He’s the one who paid to get her out.”
I stare into the darkness like it might give me a reaction that isn’t… rage.
Confusion. A sharp, painful kind of hope I don’t want to touch. I swallow hard. “Do we have a name?”
“Arthur Charles.”
I won’t pretend it doesn’t make something tighten in my chest—because names mean responsibility. Names mean the story gets bigger. I’ve never heard the name before, but still it makes me wonder about him.
“And you talked to him?” I ask immediately.
Dean’s voice turns grim. “No. That’s the problem. We’ve been trying to contact him since we confirmed the trace. No answer. No callback. Nothing.”
Cold slides under my skin. “Maybe he’s—” I start.
“Missing,” Dean says flatly, finishing it for me. “Or hiding. Or dead. We don’t know yet.”
My jaw clenches so hard it aches. Salem’s father pays to save her… and then vanishes? That doesn’t smell like a loving parent who just remembered he has a daughter. That smells like fear. Or guilt. Or both. “What else?” I ask, because I already know there’s more. Dean didn’t call just to drop a family bomb.
Dean sighs once. “We dug into Carl.”
My stomach knots. “And?” I bite out.
“We located him and Salem’s mother,” Dean says. “They’re on vacation. Tropics. Resort. Private bungalow. A place that costs more than either of them should be able to afford.”
My hands curl into a fist. Salem’s mother—who barely cares if she exists—suddenly has money for a luxury getaway. While her daughter is trafficked. I feel something dark rise in my chest, slow and poisonous. “That’s not a coincidence,” I say.
“No,” Dean agrees. “It’s not.”
I press a hand to my forehead, forcing my breathing to stay even. “I’ll have to tell her.”
“Not yet,” Dean says. “I wouldn’t tell her until we have something solid and a plan.”
I glance back through the glass again. The warm glow. The safe quiet. The girl in that bed who thinks her mother might miss her.
My throat tightens.
Dean continues, “I have eyes on them. People following. We’re looking into Carl’s connections. We’re running his financials, his travel, his contacts. We’re pulling everything.”
“Good,” I say, voice tight. “Burn him down.”
Dean’s tone turns sharper. “And one more thing.”
I straighten, adrenaline spiking again. “Yeah?”
“The ring,” he says. “It has a name.”
My skin prickles.
“Goldenbell,” Dean says.
The word feels wrong in my mouth—pretty, delicate, harmless. A name designed to hide the rot.
Dean’s voice goes colder. “I believe Serafina is connected to it.”
There it is. Serafina. The woman who circles Dean like a vulture with a grudge. The shadow behind the other shadows. The reason this world keeps colliding—vigilantes and Maddox Security and safehouses and blood.
My grip tightens on the phone again. “You’re sure?”
“No,” Dean says. “But I’m close. I’ve been tracking her for a long time. Goldenbell is the first tangible thread we’ve had that fits her patterns.”
I close my eyes for a second. Salem isn’t just collateral. She’s a piece on a board I didn’t know existed. And someone is moving pieces that shouldn’t even be in play.
Dean’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “We’re closing in, Ozzy.”
I open my eyes. “How close?”
“Close enough that things will get messy,” he says. “Goldenbell won’t go quietly.”
I suck in a breath and exhale slowly.
“Protect her,” Dean orders. Not as a suggestion. As law. “Until I tell you otherwise, Rainmaker is priority.”
“Copy,” I say instantly. “I’m keeping her safe.”
Dean pauses, like he can read my mind. Like he knows I’m quickly falling for her. “And Ozzy?”
“Yeah.”
“Be smart about your feelings.” My throat tightens like he reached in and grabbed a truth I didn’t want anyone else touching.