The world didn't quiet for Adrian.
It never had.
Even when everything around him was still, the city, the men who followed him, the night itself, his mind moved. His world has never been still.
It was always restless and moving.
Grinding like machinery that had long forgotten how to shut down.
He stood in the back of the black SUV as it moved through the city, the passing lights carving sharp stripes of gold and shadow across his face. He looked like a man entirely made of edges, the kind that did not soften, the kind that carved back.
Seraphina drifted through his mind like light sliding along the edge of steel a glint, not a cut.
Not pain… just something he was still responsible for.
A missing piece doesn't always ache.
Sometimes it simply sits in the dark,
waiting for the moment it's noticed.
Seraphina was gone, vanished.
And the world believed she still around. Even her parents does.
But he knew the truth.
Someone had taken her, though the trail led nowhere,
