Chapter 106 23 YEARS AGO.

Chapter 106 23 YEARS AGO.

THANE'S POV:

Most people would've been furious about being kidnapped. Terrified. Plotting revenge.

I wasn't. Not exactly.

At the time, I remember the sting of a needle, the metallic taste in my mouth, and the blur of streetlights flickering past through the tinted glass. I’d been too drugged to resist, too disoriented to care.

Looking back now, it had been necessary.

Nonetheless, knowing that Madison, my mother, and the rest of them were probably losing their minds, imagining the worst… that part? That tore me apart.

Agu, as he'd eventually insisted I call him had taken me to ensure secrecy. He didn't want anyone exploiting the situation before he understood what he was dealing with.

I'd woken in a medical facility halfway across the world in Azuvia. Doctors watched me like I was some rare specimen. The guards stood silent,  not hostile, just blank, as if emotion itself had been forbidden.

When I was deemed “stable,” they moved me to a private suite, sterile and soundproof. Luxury with the quiet cruelty of confinement.

The next few days were… tense, to say the least. I wasn’t mistreated, but I wasn’t exactly free either. The President himself kept his distance until the fifth night, when I was finally summoned to his private chambers.

He stood there with a commanding presence. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm enough to terrify.

“You claim to know my daughter,” he’d said. “But if you’re lying to me, Thane Slade…If you're wasting my time, if this is some elaborate con, I will have you executed. No trial. No evidence. You'll simply disappear."

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. And the threat wasn't empty. I'd seen it in his eyes.

A DNA test was ordered.

They'd taken samples. Hair, blood, saliva. Sent them to labs I wasn't allowed to know about. Then I'd waited. One week. Two. Then the days stopped meaning anything.

I was living in a place the world seemed to have forgotten, and maybe I was being forgotten too. Perhaps people had finally stopped looking for someone who'd gone off the radar so completely. That was exactly how Azuvia was built, to keep both the good and the bad from finding those who lived here.

The day the results came back, Kwame had walked into my room with tears streaming down his face. Pulled me into an embrace that nearly cracked my ribs.

"She's mine," he'd sobbed. "Adanna is mine. You found my daughter."

That night, with Adeyemi present, Kwame told me everything.

Twenty-three years ago, he hadn't been president. He'd been second-in-command to a corrupt regime that bled Azuvia dry. Foreign corporations exploiting resources. Citizens starving while leaders lived in palaces. Children dying from preventable diseases while medicine rotted in warehouses, too expensive for ordinary people to afford.

Kwame had built alliances in secret. Military leaders tired of serving tyrants. Educators who wanted better for their students. Doctors who couldn't save patients because supplies went to the highest bidder.

The coup had been swift. Brutal. Necessary.

He'd overthrown the government, killed those who refused to surrender, imprisoned the rest. Declared himself interim president with a promise to hold elections once stability returned.

That's when Liana became pregnant.

"The doctors said it was impossible," Kwame had told me. He was filled with emotions. "She'd been told since she was young that her body couldn't carry children. We'd accepted it. Made peace with it."

Then, a miracle. Or so it seemed.

"My enemies would've used that vulnerability," Kwame continued. "A pregnant wife. A child. Leverage to make me compromise everything I'd fought for. So I entrusted her safety to the only person I could, my brother Adeyemi."

Adeyemi had taken Liana to his home, far from the capital. Kept her hidden, protected.

The night Adanna was born, the chief priest placed the royal necklace around her neck, a tradition centuries old. Only the ruling family could wear such pieces. Three existed: one for the king, one for the queen, one for the first heir or heiress.

Hours later, Adeyemi's compound was attacked.

“They told me my daughter was killed,” Kwame’s hand balled into a fist. His voice broke just for a second, before he steadied himself again.

"No body recovered. Just blood. And the certainty she was gone.”

I couldn’t look away. For all his power, in that moment he was just a father grieving a ghost.

He'd launched investigations. Hunted for answers. Executed everyone who'd been present that night: midwife, maids, guards. Anyone who could confirm Adanna had existed to erase any traces of her history.

Liana fell into depression so deep she couldn't speak for months. The pregnancy had been kept secret. The birth had been kept secret. Now the death would be buried even deeper.

Only four people carried the knowledge: Kwame, Liana, Adeyemi, and the chief priest who had once blessed her existence and now, her death.

Adeyemi's family survived only because they'd been sent away before the attack. Spared by timing and geography.

Years passed. Kwame consolidated power. Transformed Azuvia from exploited colony into sovereign nation. Liana never conceived again despite trying everything, best doctors, traditional medicine, prayers to gods old and new.

"We poured everything into the country instead," Kwame said. "If we couldn't have a daughter, we'd build something worthy of her memory."

And they had.

Azuvia had closed its borders. Not violently, just quietly withdrew from international affairs. Stopped exporting resources at predatory prices. Stopped allowing foreign corporations to extract wealth. Focused inward on building something sustainable, something that would last.

The world forgot about them. Which was exactly the point.

Now, standing in the palace, I understood why.

Azuvia was paradise.