Chapter 5 - The Hunt Begins
Back at the North Side estate, the silence of the morning was shattered at 5:41 a.m.
Adrian Bellandi woke up rolling over to pull Claire into his arms, only to find her side of the mattress ice-cold and completely empty.
Frowning, he rose, assuming she was downstairs making coffee. But when he walked down the grand staircase, the house felt dead. The security system log on his tablet blinked with a strange, unverified alert from the basement service sector at 2:03 a.m.
He strode into their bedroom, noticed her wedding ring resting on the nightstand beside the folded piece of hotel stationery, and unfolded it.
You made your choice. Goodbye.
The blood drained entirely from Adrian’s tanned face. A blind, primal panic surged through his veins, ripping away every trace of his legendary composure.
"Marco!" he roared, his voice echoing violently through the high-ceilinged mansion so loudly that Elena woke up startled in the guest suite down the hall.
Marco burst into the master bedroom within five seconds, breathless and pale. "Boss? What is it?"
"Find her," Adrian snarled, holding out the hotel note like a death warrant, his eyes burning with a desperate, terrifying fury. "Search every highway, every airport, every train station in this state. Tear this country apart if you have to. But find my wife, or God help me, I will burn every single asset we own to the ground until she is back in this house."
Marco swallowed hard, looking at the ring and the empty bed, realizing with a cold jolt of dread that the Bellandi empire had just lost its true anchor.
May you like
"On it, Boss," Marco whispered, turning sharply to mobilize every man on the payroll.
Adrian stood alone in the center of the silent room, the reality crashing down on him. He had chosen a ghost from his past, and in doing so, he had lost the only real thing that had ever mattered in his life. The hunt was on, but as Adrian stared out the window into the empty dawn, he knew deep in his bones that winning her back would require much more than an army—it would require a miracle.
