Chapter 72

**Matthew’s POV**

I wasn’t in control anymore.

I could feel it—the rage burning too hot, too deep, too wild. My hands were still stained with Bruce’s blood, my breath still ragged from nearly choking the life out of him, my head still pounding with the image of Heizel on that screen. I was one second away from snapping completely.

And Taylor knew it. That’s why he took over.

I barely registered what was happening when he stepped between me and Bruce’s crumpled body, his voice calm but commanding, barking orders to our men while I stood there, staring down at my trembling hands, trying to force the fire in my veins to cool.

“Get this place locked down,” Taylor ordered, his tone razor-sharp. “I want all of Bruce’s security taken out. Every single one of those motherfuckers who helped him is done. Make sure they don’t walk away from this.”

His words barely reached me.

I knew what he was doing.

Taylor had always been the cooler head, the one who knew when to step in, the one who had always understood that I was wired differently, that once I crossed a certain threshold, I didn’t come back easily.

I should’ve been the one giving orders. But right now? Right now, I was too close to losing myself completely. And Taylor knew that, too.

That’s why I let him take the lead.

And that’s why I appreciated him more than I could ever say.

Within ten minutes, the entire operation shifted.

The so-called security team that Bruce had hired to keep him safe? They were gone.

My men swept through the estate like a wave of death, taking down every last trace of Bruce’s personal army, ensuring that he had no one left to protect him. The Hill name used to mean power, wealth, control.

Now it meant nothing.

Bruce sat slumped in the corner of his own mansion, surrounded by the wreckage of his empire, watching in mute horror as everything he built was ripped apart in front of him.

But I didn’t care about him anymore.

I cared about finding Heizel. And that’s exactly what we were going to do.

Ten minutes later, our real team arrived.

Black SUVs poured into the estate, sleek and unmarked, carrying some of the most dangerous and brilliant minds in the underground world.

Weapons experts. Hackers. Surveillance trackers.

Men who didn’t just work for me—they were my brothers, my specialists, my personal war machine.

They came fully equipped—laptops, satellite scanners, heat signature detectors, signal interceptors—everything we needed to trace that video and track Heizel’s location.

I finally forced myself to take a slow, steady breath.

The fire was still there, burning beneath my skin, but now? Now I had a direction to aim it.

Taylor stood beside me, arms crossed, watching as the tech teams began their work. His jaw was tight, his expression unreadable, but I could tell—he was thinking the same thing I was.

None of this made sense.

Bruce was a snake, but he was never a true predator. He was weak, a businessman who thought he was powerful because he had money and connections. But the man behind this? The one who had Heizel?

That was someone entirely different. Someone worse.

I felt the shift in the air, the same cold, unsettling weight settling into my chest that I saw reflected in the faces of every man in the room.

Darius.

The name alone sent a ripple of unease through even my most battle-hardened soldiers.

Because everyone knew who he was.

And more importantly—everyone knew what he was capable of. Darius wasn’t just a killer.

He wasn’t just a crime lord. He was something worse.

For over a decade, he had been the most feared man in the world of organized crime. A man who didn’t just kill his enemies—he hunted them. 

For sport.

People whispered his name in hushed voices, telling stories that sounded too insane to be real.

That he once took a man to the Arctic, stripped him naked, and made him run across the ice with nothing but a ten-second head start.

That he once dropped a politician into the middle of the Amazon rainforest, left him with a knife, and told him if he could survive a month, he’d let him go.

That he once locked a group of rival gang members inside a mansion, turned off the lights, and hunted them down one by one.

He didn’t just kill.

He made art out of it.

And then, twenty years ago—he disappeared. The FBI took him down. Sent him to prison. Buried him so deep that no one ever expected to see his face again.

He was supposed to rot in a cell for the rest of his life. But now, he was here.

In New York.

And he had Heizel.

A muscle in my jaw tightened. Heizel had no idea what kind of monster had taken her.

But I did.

And the second I got my hands on him?

I was going to make him regret every breath he had ever taken.

“Tell me we have something,” I said, my voice low, sharp, coiled with barely restrained rage.

One of my hackers, Dex, glanced up from his laptop, the blue glow of the screen reflecting in his eyes as his fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard.

“Almost,” he said. “Whoever recorded that video? They were smart. Encrypted signals, rerouted locations, multiple false leads… but they made a mistake.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What mistake?”

Dex smirked. “They didn’t expect us.”

A faint flicker of hope surged in my chest.

Taylor exhaled beside me, the first sign of relief in his normally unreadable features. “How long?”

“Thirty minutes,” Dex replied. “Maybe less.”

I nodded. That was enough.

Thirty minutes.

And then we’d have a location. Then, we’d hunt him.

And then, I’d show Darius exactly what happened when he took something that belonged to me.