"Did you find her?" Alex asked, his voice a low murmur before he took a slow sip of his wine.
Lucian's gaze flickered over Alex's shoulder, tracking Maria as she moved, but his mind was elsewhere. "Yeah… she's fine." He paused, the words tasting absent on his tongue. "Hey, what do you know about Maria Stark?"
Before Alex could answer, Adrian's voice cut through the space between them, sharp and cold. "I know you don't care, but you could at least find a heart for the baby growing inside her."
Lucian choked, the wine burning a path down the wrong pipe. The world seemed to tilt, the clinking glasses and distant laughter of the gala fading into a dull roar. For a split second, he was certain Adrian had misspoken. That he meant someone else. Anyone else.
Adrian watched the shock bleed the color from Lucian's face. A grim, hollow satisfaction settled in his own chest. "From your reaction, I'm guessing you didn't know."
Alex leaned back, swirling the wine in his glass, a silent observer to the unraveling. The disbelief on Lucian's face was a rare, priceless thing.
"What?" The single word was a blade, jagged and raw, as Lucian set his glass down on the small round table. His phone vibrated against his palm, an insistent, mechanical buzz he ignored while his world was being rewritten.
"Star is preg—"
His phone vibrated again, more urgent this time. Lucian glanced at the screen. The words died in his throat, replaced by a cold dread that eclipsed everything else.
"She's in danger."
He bolted, a sudden, fluid motion that left Alex and Adrian scrambling in his wake.
They found them inside the yacht's main cabin—Safe, his face a mask of grim determination, was carrying Star's limp body up the steps. A crimson rivulet traced a terrifying path from her temple, staining her hair and dripping into nothing.
Adrian's heart didn't just break; it seized, a fist of ice closing around it. "What happened?!" He lunged forward, trying to take her. "And who the hell are you?!"
Lucian's hand was already on her, his voice a low, commanding tremor. "Will you calm down!"
They froze, a tableau of confusion and fear, each man's hands hovering, claiming, protecting.
Then Alex's voice cut through, deceptively calm. "Guys." His eyes were fixed on a point just beyond Safe, on two guards lying in a crumpled, lifeless heap by the door.
Safe moved to the sofabed by the window, laying Star down with a gentleness that seemed impossible from someone so powerfully built.
Lucian and Adrian left her side to inspect the scene, their personal war momentarily forgotten in the face of a common threat.
Adrian's attention snapped back, his emotions a volatile cocktail of fear and rage. He rounded on Safe, who was typing furiously on his phone. "Why aren't you speaking? What happened here?!" He jabbed a finger at Safe's chest, not even glancing at the screen.
Alex placed a steadying hand on Adrian's shoulder. "Safe," he asked, his tone a calm command, "what did you see?"
Safe turned the phone screen towards them.
Someone from the gala kidnapped her. I knocked him down. He's the one in the room.
Lucian returned, his frown deepening the lines on his face. "There's no one in the room, Safe."
He looked at Alex. "Can you check on her?", then he looked at Adrian, "What are you doing?" a frown deep on his face,
Adrian was already on his phone. "I'm calling my doctor. She's bleeding, for god's sake!"
"Alex is a doctor," Lucian said, his voice brooking no argument. "He'll check on her." He moved to a discreet cupboard, pressing a hidden button. A large screen materialized on the wall, flickering through camera feeds. He swiped, accessing his security system's diagnostic panel. "No breaches. The system is intact."
"I don't understand…" he muttered, staring at the pristine data.
"What is it?" Adrian asked, peering at the screen.
"If a feather falls on this yacht, I know about it. Inside and out." To demonstrate, Lucian unclasped his watch and dropped it. The heavy thud was instantly tracked on the screen, a red pinpoint appearing on a 3D model of the room, logging the event, the location, and even their own heat signatures clustered around it. "See? It should have picked up a struggle."
"Maybe you were hacked," Adrian said, impressed despite the bitter taste it left in his mouth.
"If this is one of your enemies," Alex said, his expression unreadable as he stood up from Star's side, "and you have a lot—they know how careful you are. So, they got more careful."
"How is she?" Adrian's question was immediate, all the fight draining from his voice.
"She's stable internally," Alex replied, his tone clinical. "The head wound will just need a stitch or two."
Adrian moved towards her, but Safe stepped into his path, his face apologetic but firm. He held up his phone, a new message blinking. Irritation flared in Adrian's eyes before he finally read the words.
The guy was asking why Star was in your mother's room. There's some kind of scanner that captured her. Maybe a scanner to a secret room.
Adrian's face contorted in denial. "What? No." He scoffed, a short, disbelieving sound. "That's impossible."
In his desperation, Safe's hands began to move, gesturing in a silent, urgent language, his expression pleading with Adrian to understand.
"Maybe you didn't hear him right!" Adrian's voice rose, teetering on the edge of a yell. "Why would my mother have a scanner? You mean a secret room? My mother doesn't have a secret room!"
Lucian stepped forward, a shield between Safe and Adrian's rising fury. "Hey, back off!" His voice was dangerously quiet. "What is happening here?"
"My mother," Adrian spat, his eyes fixed on Safe, "doesn't have a secret room, you mute—"
"Leave," Lucian said. The single word held no room for argument.
Adrian blinked, stunned. "What?"
A raw, guttural scream tore from the sofabed. "MOM!!!"
Star sat bolt upright, her eyes wide and unseeing, fixed on her hands as if they were covered in something only she could see. Grief and terror contorted her beautiful face, her breath coming in ragged, silent gasps.
"Mama." The word was a broken whisper, a ghost of a sound, as she looked around the room, utterly lost.
Every man froze. The rage, the fear, the confusion—it all leached away, replaced by a profound, aching helplessness in the face of her unraveling.
Then her eyes, swimming with tears, found Lucian's. "Lucy." The nickname was a lifeline. She tried to stand, her legs buckling. Both Adrian and Lucian lunged forward, but Lucian was there first, his arm circling her waist, offering solid, unwavering support.
She collapsed into him, not as a lover, but as a drowning woman clutching driftwood, and sobbed. Deep, wrenching cries that seemed to pull the sorrow from her very bones, soaking the fine fabric of his suit.
Alex felt a cold fist clench around his own heart. He had seen darkness, had been cold, had been a monster. But this… this raw, human grief from a stranger he was sure he didn't even like, was too much. It was a mirror he didn't want to look into. "I... I'm gonna… go," he stuttered, a crack in his emotionless armor, before retreating from the room.
Inside, Star's cries subsided into shuddering sobs. She became aware of the wetness against his chest, the ruin of his expensive jacket. "I'm sorry," she breathed, her voice fractured, wiping ineffectually at the tears. "Your suit… it's ruined with my tears."
Lucian didn't look at the stain. His eyes held hers, a profound calm in the center of the storm. "This is your crying shoulder. It will always be your crying shoulder, no matter what cloth covers it. Your tears are more precious than anything in this room, and it is an honor for this suit to catch them."
A fragile, watery smile touched her lips. "Thank you," she mouthed.
Adrian watched the moment crystallize between them, an intimacy sharp and bright as a diamond. He felt a cold, possessive fury tighten his jaw. "We should go home," he said, his voice a blunt instrument shattering the glass.
Star's eyes drifted from Lucian's safe embrace to Adrian, to Safe, and back to the man holding her. And then the night rushed back in. Lucian's lies. The angry, desperate contract marriage. The kidnapping.
"Oh, god," she whispered, the weight of it all crushing her. "What have I done?" Regret was thick in her voice, but her fingers, of their own volition, tightened on the fabric of Lucian's suit jacket, knuckles white against the damp material.
Adrian's eyes followed the movement, and his jaw tightened to the point of pain.