No Way Home

{Harper’s POV}

The intimidating, suffocating quiet of the massive room presses heavily against my ears as Moretti steps closer. The space felt terrifying enough when it was full of armed, dangerous men, but with them gone, the grand chamber turns into a claustrophobic cage. The long mahogany table stretches across the center of the room, the empty chairs pushed back like silent witnesses to my impending doom. He studies me with an unnerving, predatory lack of impatience. His intense green eyes meticulously pick apart every detail of my existence, assessing me as if I am a puzzle missing half its pieces. The heavy silence stretches, making my skin prickle with a cold, unrelenting sweat. His interrogation feels less like a criminal probing for leverage and more like a cruel, methodical confirmation of my deeply mundane reality.

"You study journalism." He states the fact, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrates through the marble floorboards beneath my feet.

"Yes." I swallow hard, forcing the single word past the dry lump in my throat, trying to keep my chin lifted.

"You live in a cramped off-campus apartment."

"Yes. I have a roommate because I cannot afford the rent alone." I reply, my voice shaking slightly despite my best efforts to project strength.

"You survive on part-time library shifts. Do you have any other family?"

"Just my sick mother. She is all I have left." I fold my arms across my chest, digging my nails into the frayed fabric of my oversized hoodie. I try to make myself look smaller, harder to hit, harder to break. "Are these warm-up questions? Or are you just trying to determine exactly how sad and pathetic my life choices are before you dispose of me?"

He ignores the jab. His gaze remains fixed on my face, unblinking and devoid of empathy. "Your abduction tonight was a catastrophic mistake made by my men. You were leaving work at the Elmwood Drive library."

"Well, I am thrilled the kidnapping portion of this evening came with accurate research." I force a strained, sarcastic smile, my anxiety spiking to unbearable levels as he continues to stare at me in silence.

He watches me for another long moment. Then, with terrifying calm, he delivers a crushing, world-ending blow.

"You will remain here."

My brain fiercely rejects the sentence. It refuses to process the absurdity of his command. I let out a sharp, breathless laugh that sounds frantic and unhinged, echoing off the high ceilings.

"Sorry. What did you just say?" I raise a trembling hand, waving away the words like a bad joke.

"You will remain here." He repeats the sentence, the unyielding calm in his tone making the meaning land with bruising force against my ribs.

"No." The word punches out of my throat, firm and flat.

"You saw the men who took you. You saw the interior of this fortified house." He lists the reasons with clinical, ruthless detachment.

"That feels like a solvable problem! You kidnapped me by mistake, and now you’re telling me I can’t go home?" I argue, my voice tightening and pitching higher as the grim reality settles into my bones. My stomach drops into a bottomless pit.

"You know the specific route my men took. You cannot leave."

"You do not get to decide that!" I step forward, my chest heaving with every ragged breath. The sheer, maddening indifference radiating from him makes my blood boil. I want to scream. I want to hit a wall. I want to do anything to shatter his stoic expression. "You think you can just tell someone their life is over because your men messed up? I have an actual life! I have looming responsibilities. I have classes I need to attend. My mother will be terrified when I do not come home!"

His expression does not falter for a fraction of a second.

"You have seen too much."

"That is not my fault! You grabbed me in a dark parking lot. You threw me into a van. I woke up in the middle of a kidnapping, and somehow I am the one who has to deal with the consequences? This is abduction." I snap, shouting frantically into the empty room, my anger masking the pure terror clawing at my throat.

"No." He replies evenly, his voice devoid of any moral conflict. "This is precaution."

I let out a ragged breath. "Wow. That is an incredible rebranding."

Before I can hurl another desperate accusation, he turns his back on me and faces the heavy mahogany doors.

"Enzo." He summons loudly.

A man steps into the room, leaning casually against the doorframe the moment he enters. Enzo is tall, dark-haired, and moves with a fluid, dangerous grace that screams trained killer. His sharp, perceptive eyes flick rapidly between Moretti’s rigid posture and my disheveled, panicking state. An immediate, knowing amusement lights up his handsome face.

"You kidnapped a college student? That’s new." Enzo asks, turning to Moretti with a faint, mocking smile appearing on his lips.

I throw my hands up in an exhausted, desperate greeting, begging for someone sane to intervene. "Hey. Please tell me you possess a shred of logic."

Moretti flatly ignores my plea. He addresses the newcomer with a frigid, unyielding command. "Watch her. Ensure she does not move from this house."

Enzo sighs, pushing off the doorframe. "Well, this should be interesting."

{Moretti}

Hours later, the silence of my private office does little to quell the storm raging in my mind. I sit at my heavy mahogany desk, the leather chair groaning softly under my weight. The glow of the security monitors casts long, jagged shadows across the polished wood. I reach out and crack open the freshly compiled background file on the girl.

I have long believed, through years of blood, shattered bones, and bitter betrayal, that mistakes rarely appear alone. They usually reveal something much larger, something venomous hiding just beneath the surface. I refuse to accept that tonight's botched operation was mere coincidence.

I flip open the thick manila folder. At first glance, twenty-one-year-old Harper Hayes is exactly what she appeared to be in the war council room: an unfortunate civilian mistake. She is a struggling college student with no criminal history, no gang affiliations, and a painfully mundane existence. Our actual, intended target had been Katarina, the closely guarded daughter of the Scorpion. Harper Hayes was supposed to be meaningless collateral damage.

I read through her academic records, her meager bank statements, and her part-time employment history. Nothing stands out. But as my eyes scan further down the digital document provided by my intelligence team, tracking the sparse lineage records, a single, buried detail makes my blood run cold.

I stop breathing for a fraction of a second. The ambient hum of the computer servers in the corner of the room fades into dead silence.

Her mother's maiden name is listed clearly on a faded, digitized birth certificate scan: Nadia Sokolov.

I lean back slowly, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth grind together. "Sokolov."

Earlier this evening, my operatives confirmed the true identity of the Scorpion. The faceless phantom who rules the underworld with an iron fist is Viktor Sokolov. He is the ruthless, untouchable crime lord whose brutal operations stole my mother’s life and fractured my family beyond repair. I have hunted him relentlessly through the shadows for years, tearing apart his syndicates piece by piece, searching for a singular weakness. Targeting his elusive daughter was supposed to be my ultimate leverage to draw him out into the light.

The miscreant could breed. We missed Katarina Sokolov tonight.

But we caught a ghost instead.

I dig furiously deeper into the encrypted system logs. I cross-reference old, redacted marriage certificates, untraceable shell companies, and hidden financial trails leading out of Eastern Europe. I bypass firewalls, my fingers flying across the keyboard. The staggering, unbelievable truth materializes on the glowing screen before me, linking Nadia Sokolov directly to Viktor's inner circle decades ago.

I drop the heavy file onto the desk. The sound echoes sharply in the quiet room like a gunshot. I surge to my feet, my chair skidding backward across the plush rug. I stride out of the office, my mind racing with the lethal implications of this massive discovery.

I find Enzo waiting casually outside the heavily guarded guest room at the end of the western corridor. He is scrolling through his phone, leaning his broad shoulders against the patterned wallpaper.

He smirks as I approach, shoving his phone into his pocket. "She just asked me if the windows in there were bulletproof. I stared at her weirdly. Are they?"

"Yes." I grit out, ignoring his running commentary.

"Okay. Nice."

I slip past him, gripping the brass handle and pushing the heavy wooden door open.

Harper is sitting stiffly on the very edge of the plush velvet sofa. Her knees are pressed tightly together, and her arms are folded fiercely across her chest like a physical shield. The second she sees me step into the room, she springs to her feet.

"Tell me you are here to announce that I am leaving, because I am not tolerating this kidnapping nonsense anymore!" She bawls loudly, her voice cracking with exhausted fury. "I want my things, and I want a ride home right now!"

Unfazed by her defensive distaste, I stop a calculated distance away from her. I keep my posture rigid, my expression wiped clean of the turbulent revelation churning in my gut. I lock my eyes onto hers, watching the rapid, panicked rise and fall of her chest.

"Who is your father?" I demand.

She stops mid-rant. Her mouth falls open slightly. Her brow furrows in genuine confusion, the frantic anger draining away to leave raw, helpless vulnerability in its wake.

"My father?" She echoes, blinking rapidly.

"Yes."

She shrugs helplessly, letting her arms drop to her sides in defeat. "I don’t know. My mom raised me by herself. He left when I was really young. I don’t know much of the story."

I study the minute details of her face, leaning on years of interrogating hardened killers and seasoned liars. I watch the steady, rhythmic pulse beating at the base of her neck. I look for the subtle eye-darting, the defensive micro-expressions, the telltale twitch of a fabricated story. There is no hesitation. There is no subtle hint of deception in her voice.

She speaks the undeniable truth. She genuinely does not know the monster whose blood runs through her veins.

"Why?" She asks, her voice suddenly a bit faint. She takes a small half-step backward, sensing the violent shift in the room's gravity. The air between us grows impossibly heavy, suffocating the space we share.

"The woman we intended to take tonight was the daughter of the most renowned criminal lord in the city—other than my father." I answer slowly. I take a deliberate step closer to her, letting the crushing weight of my words suffocate the space between us.

She shoots me a confused, frantic look. "Okay?"

"And so are you."