Chapter 46 The Hunt Begins

Chapter 46 The Hunt Begins

Scarlett’s POV

Cold air tore at my skin as the men dragged me across the gravel. I tried to fight, but one strike to the ribs stole my breath and the world narrowed to flashes of light and pain.

Kade’s voice cut through the storm.
“Careful with her,” he said. “She’s worth more alive.”

They shoved me into the back of a van. The door slammed, the lock clanged, and darkness swallowed me whole. My wrists burned against the plastic ties. The van jolted forward, engine humming like a heartbeat I couldn’t control.

I forced myself to breathe, to think. Damien would come. He had to. But a part of me cold, trembling whispered that maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe I was still just Project Scarlett to him.

When the doors finally opened, I was pulled into a warehouse that smelled of oil and rain. Dim lights swung overhead. Kade stood near a table cluttered with files and monitors. He looked almost elegant in his calm.

“Welcome home,” he said.

I glared. “You call this home?”

He smiled. “You don’t remember, do you? Your father started this place. Every experiment, every encrypted file they all lead back to him. You inherited more than his name, Scarlett.”

He tossed a folder toward me. Photos slid out images of me from years ago. School, the hospital after my father’s death, security footage I never knew existed.

My stomach twisted. “You’ve been watching me?”

“Protecting an investment,” he corrected softly. “Your blood carries the code your father designed. Without you, the sequence dies.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You will.”

He gestured, and one of the men pressed a gun to my temple. The click echoed.

“Bring him in,” Kade ordered.

Moments later, Damien was shoved into the light hands bound, blood streaked across his jaw. His eyes locked on mine, raw with panic.

“Scarlett—”

“Quiet,” Kade said, drawing his own weapon. “It’s touching, really. The handler fell for his assignment. But love makes people weak, and weakness gets expensive.”

He turned to me. “You want to know the truth? Damien tried to shut the project down. He thought he could save you. That’s why I’m giving him a choice.”

Kade pointed the gun at Damien’s chest.
“Either he finishes what your father started by using you or I end him right here.”

My pulse roared in my ears. “Don’t,” I whispered. “Please—”

Damien’s voice was low, steady. “Kade, you’ll never get the code without her consent.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Kade smiled and pressed a small remote. Screens around us flickered to life lines of data scrolling fast. “Your father built a failsafe into her DNA. Pain activates memory. Memory unlocks access.”

I froze. “What are you talking about?”

Kade stepped closer. “Your body holds the key. And I intend to turn it around.”

Damien lunged, but the guards slammed him back.

Something in me broke then not fear, not anger, but the realization that no one was coming to save me. I was going to have to save us.

“Kade,” I said quietly, forcing my voice to stop trembling. “You want the code? You’ll have to take it from me.”

He arched his brow. “Brave words.”

I smiled faintly. “Not brave. Just tired of being your project.”

Before he could react, I slammed my heel into the guard’s shin, twisted, and grabbed his gun. The shot cracked the air lightning in metal walls. Chaos erupted.

Damien broke free, tackling one of the men. Kade ducked behind a crate, shouting orders. I ran toward the exit, heart hammering, smoke burning my throat.

Then I heard Damien shout my name.

I turned just in time to see Kade raise his weapon and fire.

The bullet hit something metal, sparks exploding. The ceiling groaned, and a beam collapsed between us, a wall of fire dividing me from Damien.

“Go!” he shouted through the flames.

I hesitated, tears mixing with smoke. “I’m not leaving you!”

“Scarlett, go!”

Another explosion shook the floor. I stumbled through a side door, choking on ash, out into the rain-soaked night.

The warehouse burned behind me.

I didn’t know if Damien was alive. I didn’t know if I was free or just running deeper into the trap.

But as sirens wailed in the distance and the first light of dawn broke through the clouds, one truth settled hard in my chest: the hunt had begun, and this time, I wasn’t the prey.

Rain hammered against the windshield, a relentless rhythm that kept me from collapsing into silence. The city lights blurred through the downpour as I drove aimlessly, the steering wheel slick beneath my palms.

Smoke still clung to me the scent of burning metal, splintered wood, and the echo of Damien’s voice. I could still see him through the flames, shouting for me to run, the fire swallowing his silhouette.

Every mile I drove, guilt pressed harder against my chest. He could be dead. And if he wasn’t, Kade would make sure I wished he was.

I pulled into the ruins of an old gas station on the outskirts of town. The lights flickered weakly above the empty lot. I killed the engine and sat there, my reflection fractured in the rearview mirror. My eyes looked hollow, like they belonged to someone I didn’t recognize.

For years I’d survived by believing in control. Now, I was running on instinct and fear.

My phone buzzed on the passenger seat with a single encrypted ping. No caller ID. My stomach tightened as I opened it.

> Unknown: “He’s alive. South pier. 3 AM.”

My breath caught.

Alive.

I should’ve felt relief. Instead, I felt dread. Because whoever sent that message knew exactly how to manipulate me.

I checked the clock. Two hours. I could wait—or I could go.

But I already knew I would go.

By the time I reached the pier, the rain had softened into a mist that curled around the rusted shipping containers. The sea was black and endless, the air cold enough to sting.

My footsteps echoed as I approached the far end of the dock. A single light glowed from a small boathouse.

I hesitated. Then pushed the door open.

Inside, Damien sat slumped against a crate, his shirt torn, blood dried across his arm. He looked barely alive.

“Damien.”

His head lifted slowly, and when his eyes met mine, something unspoken passed between us relief, anger, longing. Maybe all three.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he rasped.

“Neither should you,” I shot back, crossing the room and kneeling beside him. “You’re hurt.”

He tried to push my hands away, but his strength faltered. “I told you to run.”

“And I didn’t,” I said, forcing a shaky smile. “You should know by now I don’t follow orders well.”

He almost smiled. Almost. Then his hand caught mine, his grip trembling but sure. “He has your father’s data. The files survived the fire.”

My throat tightened. “How do you know?”

“Because he made me watch him load them onto the boat,” Damien said, his voice low. “He wanted me to tell you. He wants you to come for him.”

The realization hit like a punch. “He’s baiting me.”

He nodded. “And you’re going to take it.”

I looked away, out toward the dark waves. “You think I’d let him keep what’s left of my father’s life? No. He took everything else. He doesn’t get that either.”

Damien exhaled, pain flashing across his face. “Then we do it together. But on my terms this time.”

I met his gaze. “Your terms got you shot.”

“And your impulsiveness almost got you killed,” he snapped, then sighed. “Scarlett… please. Just listen.”

The sound of my name in his voice was a kind of ache I couldn’t bear. It wasn’t just concern, it was everything he refused to say out loud.

“I’ve been listening,” I whispered. “To you. To him. To ghosts. Maybe it’s time I start listening to myself.”

He studied me for a long moment, eyes dark and searching. “And what is it you want?”

“I want to end this,” I said. “And I want to know why my father died for a lie.”

Silence filled the boathouse, broken only by the creak of the waves below. Then Damien reached into his pocket and pulled out a small metal key.

“I found this in Kade’s office,” he said, handing it to me. “It’s marked with your initials.”

The key was small, unremarkable except for the engraving. S.C.

My heart stuttered. “What does it open?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” he said.

We didn’t speak for a long while after that. I cleaned the wound on his shoulder, wrapping it tight, my fingers brushing his skin just long enough to stir something in both of us, something raw, electric, dangerous.

Every time his eyes met mine, I felt it—the unspoken war between what we wanted and what we couldn’t have.

When he finally drifted into an uneasy sleep, I sat beside him, the key turning over and over in my hand.

Outside, the waves crashed harder against the dock, as if the ocean itself was warning me.

But the choice had already been made.

Tomorrow, we will go after Kade.
Tomorrow, I will unlock whatever secret my father died protecting.

And when I did, there would be no going back.