Chapter 18
286 Words
Elliot
He had always believed fear was a tool.
Something to be sharpened. Controlled. Used.
Until it turned on him.
The moment he realized Celina was gone—truly gone—something in him split open. Not cracked. Not bent. Torn.
No phone.
No security trace.
No cameras that mattered.
For the first time in his life, Elliot Blackwood had no leverage.
He tore through the city like a man possessed, black coat abandoned, tie discarded somewhere between the ballroom and the street. He questioned doormen, kitchen staff, valets—his voice raw, stripped of command, stripped of polish.
“She was here,” he kept saying.
“She was here.”
By dawn, the brothers knew something was wrong.
By noon, Frank stopped asking permission.
“You can’t do this alone,” Frank said quietly as Elliot stared at the city from the penthouse window, knuckles white, eyes hollow. “You won’t survive it.”
Elliot laughed once. It sounded broken.
“I already didn’t.”
He asked for help.
Not demanded.
Not ordered.
Asked.
Search teams were mobilized. Hospitals contacted. Shelters. Cameras pulled from places he had never bothered to see before—alleys, corners, forgotten spaces.
And all the while, the truth beat against his ribs like a second heart:
He had driven her away.
He had cornered her.
He had loved her like a man who didn’t know how not to cage the thing he wanted.
When they found her, collapsed but alive, something inside him finally gave way.
He didn’t touch her.
Didn’t command.
He simply knelt beside the bed and whispered the only thing that mattered anymore.
“I’m here. And if you tell me to leave, I will.”
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