CHAPTER 1: THE MIDNIGHT RANSOM
1628 Words
A gun pressed hard against my temple, cold and real, and in that moment I finally saw the truth—my father’s so-called protection was just a lie wrapped in a price tag.
“Don’t move, Princess,” the man growled through a tactical mask. His breath reeked of cigarettes and nerves. “One scream, and you redecorate the walls. Your brains, everywhere.”
I could barely get the words out. “Please,” I whispered, shaking so bad the bedframe rattled. “My father will pay. Whatever you want. Take the safe, take the jewelry—just let me go.”
He laughed, rough and sharp. “Your father? Ivy, sweetheart, who do you think handed over the elevator codes?”
My heart just stopped. The room spun. “No. You’re lying.”
“Is he?”
Someone else spoke up. Not the kidnapper—this voice was deeper, steady, and somehow made the air feel heavier.
The man holding me went rigid. “Who the hell is that? Stay back!”
I squinted through the dark. There was a huge figure in the doorway, lit up by the dim hallway lights. He wasn’t a burglar. He looked like trouble. The kind that hunts.
“Let her go,” the stranger ordered.
“I’ve got a gun to her head! I’ll do it!” The man’s grip dug into my arm, and I winced.
“You’ll try,” the stranger replied, stepping into the light.
And suddenly, I knew those eyes. Storm-gray, icy, impossible to forget. Caden Sterling. He’d been my only friend, once, before our families started tearing each other apart. He was supposed to be dead.
“Caden?” I breathed.
He didn’t even look at me. Just moved. Drew a pistol—quick, deadly, silent. Thwip. Thwip.
The pressure at my head disappeared. The man dropped, blood soaking the cream rug. I scrambled away, chest heaving, hitting the headboard hard.
Caden stepped over the body like it was nothing. He towered over me, stealing the air right out of the room.
“Get up, Ivy,” he said, reaching for me.
“You… you killed him,” I stammered. “He’s dead.”
“He was sloppy,” Caden said, grabbing my wrist and yanking me up. “But he was right about one thing—your father sold you out. The Vance empire’s going down, and you’re the first one up for auction.”
“I don’t believe you! My father loves me!”
Caden leaned in, close enough that I could feel his breath. “He loves his offshore accounts. He signed off on your ‘extraction’ twenty minutes ago. You’re worth fifty million if you die tonight. Or you come with me, and you’re worth nothing to him.”
“Why would I go with you? You hate us!” I tried to pull free, but he was like stone.
“I do hate your family,” he said, his thumb pressed right on my racing pulse. “But I need you alive to destroy him. So, you want to stay here and wait for team two, or are you coming?”
Heavy boots pounded in the hall. They were close. Too close.
“They’re here!” I grabbed his vest, panicked. “Caden, please!”
“Then move!”
He shoved a coat at me and dragged me to the balcony.
“We’re on the fiftieth floor!” I shrieked as he clipped a carabiner to his belt. “What are you doing?”
“Hold on,” he barked. “Legs around my waist. Arms around my neck. Now, Ivy!”
I clung to him, trembling, as the bedroom door crashed open and bullets tore through the pillows where I’d been a second ago.
“Hold your breath,” Caden muttered.
Then we were off the edge.
Wind ripped through my hair, and the city blurred below. I buried my face in his neck—gunpowder and expensive cologne. We shot down a cable, slammed onto the roof of a black SUV.
Caden shoved me into the passenger seat before I could even breathe. He jumped in beside me and floored it, tires screaming as we tore through the alley.
“Where are we going?” I yelled, gripping the door. “Take me to the police!”
“The police work for your father, Ivy. Wake up.”
“Then take me to my aunt, my—”
“You have no one,” Caden cut in, eyes locked on the mirror. “You’re a ghost now. As far as anyone knows, Ivy Vance died tonight.”
A deep chill settled in my bones. “You’re kidnapping me too, aren’t you? This isn’t saving me. It’s just… something else.”
Caden glanced over, a crooked, wicked smirk on his face. “Maybe you’re smarter than your old man said.”
“What do you want from me, Caden? Money? Revenge?”
“I want the ledger,” he said, weaving through traffic like he owned the road. “The one your father keeps locked up at the estate. The one that proves he murdered my father to steal Sterling Global.”
“I don’t know anything about a ledger! I’m just his daughter, Caden. I paint, that’s it. I don’t do business.”
He shot me a look, voice dropping low. “Well, you’re about to learn. You’re the only one who can open that vault. Your dad made sure of it. And until I get what I came for, you’re not leaving my sight.”
“And if I say no?”
He reached over, his hand swallowing mine, hot as fire. “Then I hand you back to the men in your bedroom. I’m guessing they won’t bother being as gentle as I am.”
I stared at him—sharp jaw, those scars that said he’d seen things no one should. This was a stranger. A dangerous, gorgeous stranger. Hard to believe he used to be the boy I once loved.
“You’re a monster,” I whispered.
He didn’t flinch. “I’m the monster keeping you alive right now. Pick a side, Ivy.”
We sped out of the city, skyscrapers shrinking behind us, replaced by dark trees crowding the road. My head was spinning. My father—the man who tucked me in, who spoiled me with pearls and silk—he tried to kill me? It felt unreal, like I’d stumbled into someone else’s nightmare.
“Wait,” I blurted as a new, awful realization slammed into me. My hand flew to my stomach. “Caden, stop the car. I’m going to be sick.”
“We don’t stop,” he said, not even looking at me.
“I mean it! I’m... I’m not well.”
He glanced over, eyes narrowing. “You’re pale. Shock?”
I couldn’t tell him. Not yet. How do you tell the man who wants to destroy your family that you might be carrying something that ties you together forever? The masquerade gala from three months ago flashed through my mind—the man in the wolf mask, the heat, the way he held me in the garden. I never saw his face. All I remember is the way he made me feel.
But then I looked at Caden’s hand on the wheel—a jagged scar on his knuckle. The same one I’d traced with my tongue that night.
My breath caught.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Caden’s voice was sharp, suspicious.
“Nothing,” I lied, turning to the window. “I just realized I left something behind.”
“Your life? Forget it. It was all a lie anyway.”
“No,” I whispered to the glass, my hand shaking as I pressed it to my stomach. “Something way more important.”
We turned onto a dirt road, climbing into the mountains. The world shrank until it was just us, the SUV, and the trees pressing in on all sides.
“We’re here,” Caden said, pulling up to a harsh concrete house hidden behind a wall of pines. “Your new home. Welcome to the cage, Princess.”
He got out and opened my door but didn’t offer a hand this time. He just waited, silent and solid.
I stepped out, mountain air biting at my skin. I looked at the dark house, then at the man who was both my captor and, somehow, my protector.
“One question, Caden,” I said, forcing my voice steady.
He paused, hand on the door. “Make it quick.”
“If you get the ledger, if you get your revenge and my father’s gone, what happens to me?”
Caden stepped closer, his shadow swallowing me up. He reached out, traced my jaw with a touch that scared me more than any threat.
“That’s the thing about a billion-dollar lie, Ivy,” he whispered, lips brushing my ear. “Once you start living it, you don’t ever get to go back.”
Then he turned and walked toward the house, leaving me in the dark.
I looked down at the diamond ring my father gave me for my birthday. It felt like a shackle now. I watched Caden’s back as he walked away—the man from my dreams and my nightmares.
I had to survive. Not just for me. For the secret growing inside me.
But as the heavy steel door of the house groaned open, a single thought haunted me, sharper than any knife:
Does Caden already know that he isn't just kidnapping his enemy’s daughter, but the mother of his unborn heir?
- Writer
