Chapter 1 - The Midnight Ring
Paige stared at her illuminated smartphone screen as if it were a primed grenade waiting to detonate. The name Colton Beckett flashed across the glass, casting a pale, clinical glow over the darkened living room. In my arms, seventeen-day-old Ren let out a soft, fluttery sigh, completely unaware that her father was an underworld kingpin capable of tearing down entire city blocks to reclaim what he considered his property.
"Lauren," Paige whispered again, her knuckles turning bone-white around the casing. "What do I do? If I decline it, he’ll know you’re here. Colton isn't stupid. He knows every single contact in your life."
"Put it on speaker," I whispered, my voice raw and trembling. "Don't tell him where we are. Just pretend you haven't seen me."
Paige swiped the screen with a trembling thumb and set the phone flat on the glass coffee table between us.
"Paige," Colton’s voice filled the room. It wasn't the menacing growl of an enraged mob boss, nor was it the calculating tone he used during high-stakes boardroom negotiations. It was ragged, strained, and threaded with an icy undercurrent of barely controlled panic. "Where is my wife?"
Paige cleared her throat, forcing a tired, confused cadence into her voice. "Colton? What are you talking about? It’s half past one in the morning. I’m on call at the hospital in four hours."
"Cut the crap, Paige," Colton snapped, the gravel in his tone hardening. In the background, I could hear car engines roaring and the low murmur of his lieutenants receiving clipped commands. "Her car is gone. The nursery is stripped of essentials. Her emergency bag is missing. I don't give a damn about our marital issues tonight, but my daughter needs her medication, and Lauren hasn't even cleared her postpartum hemorrhage window. Is she with you?"
"I haven't heard from her since yesterday afternoon, Colton," Paige lied, though a drop of sweat tracked down her temple. "Did you two have a fight? What did you do?"
A heavy, suffocating silence stretched over the speaker for three agonizing seconds. I could hear Colton breathing—slow, measured, terrifying.
"If she contacts you," Colton murmured, his voice dropping into a deadly, intimate register that made my spine go entirely rigid, "tell her that Jade Foresight is not who she thinks she is. Tell her that staying in the open right now is a death sentence. The city is locked down, Paige. My brothers have the interstates covered. I am bringing my family home before sunrise, whether she hates me or not."
The call clicked dead.
Paige slowly looked up at me, the blood completely drained from her cheeks. "Lauren... he’s already tracking us. He’s closing the perimeter."
I clutched Ren tighter to my chest. The betrayal felt like a jagged piece of glass twisting in my gut. He was still lying. Even now, with one-way tickets to Portugal sitting on his mahogany desk beside Jade's name, he was trying to play the heroic protector. He wasn't tracking me to save my life; he was tracking me to save his pride. A mafia boss didn't get abandoned by his newborn daughter's mother. It looked weak. It looked like a crack in his armor.
"We have to leave," I said, standing up on shaky legs, every suture in my healing body screaming in protest. "We can't stay here. If Tom’s men are watching the interstates, they’ll check Paige’s address within thirty minutes."
"Where can you go?" Paige asked frantically, gathering baby wipes and diapers into the tote bag. "You have no cash. You can't use your cards."
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"My grandmother’s old cabin in Blue Ridge," I whispered. "It’s off the grid. The deed is under my maiden name, buried in local county records Dad never transferred to the Beckett registry."
Just as I reached for Ren's car seat, the quiet suburban street outside went pitch-black. The streetlights flickered and died. A low, rhythmic rumble vibrated through the floorboards—the unmistakable idle of twin heavy-duty diesel engines pulling up to the curb.
