Sebastian was halfway down the mountain road when the call came through.
"Sir" Liam's voice crackled with static, sharp with panic. "We've got a breach."
Sebastian's hands tightened on the wheel. "Where?"
"Inside the estate. East wing."
A curse tore from his lips. "Isabelle?"
"No visual. Security feed went dark two minutes ago."
For a split second, the world narrowed to a single point of dread.
He swung the car into a brutal U-turn, tires screaming against asphalt.
"She's still in the house," he growled.
"Already dispatching the guards"
"Too late. Lock down the perimeter. Nobody gets in or out."
He threw the phone aside and hit the accelerator, engine roaring as the mansion came back into view on the hill, lights flickering like dying stars.
He'd told her not to go near the east corridor.
He'd warned her the house wasn't as empty as it looked.
But Isabelle had always been too brave, too stubborn, too alive to stay behind locked doors.
And that was what terrified him most she'd risk everything for the truth.
Even if it destroyed her.
By the time he reached the gates, the guards were already down tranquilized, not killed.
Precision shots.
Whoever had done this was trained.
He stormed inside, his voice cutting through the silence.
"Isabelle!"
Only the wind answered, whistling faintly through broken glass.
His gun was in his hand before he realized it. The old instincts came back too easily years of enemies, betrayal, secrets that refused to stay buried.
He moved through the marble hallway, scanning corners, counting shadows.
The mansion felt wrong too quiet, too cold. Like the house itself was holding its breath.
The east wing door was ajar.
His heart seized.
He pressed forward.
The keypad beside the hidden room was glowing green unlocked.
Someone had been inside.
Recently.
He stepped in and stopped dead.
The lights flickered, revealing open folders strewn across the floor photos of Isabelle, papers torn apart, the locket he'd kept hidden now lying open on the piano.
And no sign of her.
"Damn it," he hissed, voice trembling with barely contained fury.
Then he saw it the monitor still flickering on the far wall.
The last frame before the feed cut Isabelle, standing in the room, candleholder raised and behind her, a blurred figure stepping through the door.
Female.
Tall.
Auburn hair.
Sebastian's breath caught.
"No," he whispered, as the impossible realization hit him.
He turned toward the corridor, muscles coiled, every nerve on fire.
"She can't be alive," he muttered more to himself than anyone else. "She can't be."
But deep down, a part of him already knew the truth.
Evelyn Kane the woman he buried years ago had just walked back into his house.
And she had Isabelle.