Chapter 120
Luke Victor's POV
When the gunfire finally stopped, the crystal chandelier in the Lowe family estate flickered back to life.
Harsh white light flooded down, illuminating the floor strewn with shattered glass, overturned furniture, and Lowe security personnel kneeling with their hands clasped behind their heads.
I stood in the center of the ballroom, the barely-healed wound in my chest throbbing with a dull ache. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass. But I couldn't afford to care about that right now.
"All secured." Lily's voice crackled through the radio, crisp and efficient.
That story Lawrence had put out about a "car plunging into the Hudson"—just another one of his typical tricks.
My sister was tougher than that bastard could ever imagine. Much harder to kill.
My team swiftly took control of every exit in the estate.
The Lowe family's usually arrogant security detail turned out to be fragile as paper when faced with combat-hardened mercenaries who'd actually seen blood.
Lawrence was dragged out from the second-floor study by two of my men. His suit was splattered with someone's blood, but incredibly, there was still a trace of a smile on his face.
They forced him to his knees in front of me.
I looked down at him.
This man had blown up my yacht, burned my evidence, imprisoned my woman, and used a web of lies to turn me into a wanted fugitive. And now, kneeling at my feet with his knees grinding into broken glass, he could still manage to smile.
I drew the gun from my waistband and pressed the cold muzzle against his temple.
"Where is Emily?"
Lawrence tilted his head slightly, as if the gun pressed to his skull belonged to some irrelevant stranger rather than himself.
He lifted those cold, calculating eyes to meet mine, his voice carrying a note of dark amusement.
"Luke. Long time no see."
"I asked you a question. Where is Emily?"
"No idea." He smiled faintly, the words floating out as casually as a weather observation.
I didn't hesitate.
I shifted the barrel two inches and aimed at the security captain still struggling behind him.
I pulled the trigger.
The gunshot exploded through the cavernous ballroom. The bullet tore precisely through the man's kneecap.
The captain collapsed screaming, blood snaking across the marble floor.
Every Lowe family member in the room flinched. The air filled with gunsmoke and the sour stench of fear.
"The next shot won't just hit a kneecap." I brought the gun back to Lawrence's temple, my fingertip registering the weapon's faint vibration. "Last chance. Where is Emily?"
Lawrence's smile finally dimmed, but his mouth remained stubbornly set like stone.
"Luke, what's the point of killing my people?" He turned his head slightly, the muzzle scraping a red mark across his temple, utterly unconcerned. "I told you I don't know. She was with me all night. When you stormed in, everything went to hell. I've been looking for her too."
I stared into his eyes, trying to parse truth from the bottomless depths of those pupils.
Rapid footsteps echoed from the far end of the hallway.
Lily strode in, dragging a woman with her.
The woman's arms were twisted behind her back. Her fire-red backless gown had been torn badly in the chaos, exposing pale skin. Her makeup was ruined, eyeliner smeared into twin black streaks down her face. She writhed like a hooked fish being hauled from water.
Lily threw her to the floor and delivered a sharp, efficient slap across her face.
Anna's head snapped to the side, half her face swelling instantly. She froze for a moment, then let out a shrill, wounded shriek.
"You dare hit me! You psycho bitch! Lawrence! Look what she—"
"Shut up." Lily stared down at her coldly, eyes burning with months of accumulated hatred. "One more word out of your trashy mouth and I'll rip it off your face."
Anna flinched under that gaze, her scream dying in her throat.
I didn't have time for their drama.
I turned to Lily. "Round up every member of the Lowe family. First floor. Old, young—everyone."
Lily understood. She moved to execute the order.
Less than five minutes later, Shirley and several Lowe family elders were marched into the ballroom.
The moment they saw Lawrence kneeling on the floor, their expressions were priceless—shock, terror, and a pale recognition of their own mortality.
I pointed the gun at Shirley but kept my eyes on Lawrence.
"You don't care about your own life. What about your family?"
Lawrence's pupils finally reacted. A barely perceptible contraction—like the first crack appearing on a thin sheet of ice.
"Luke, you—"
"Emily's location." I cut him off, my voice as calm as if I were stating a fact. "In exchange for your family's lives."
Shirley's legs buckled. She clutched desperately at the arm of the guard beside her.
Lawrence's great-uncle's wrinkled face turned the color of liver, his cane tapping furiously against the floor, but he couldn't manage a single word of protest.
Lawrence stared at me. For a long moment. Then the smile vanished completely from his face.
"I genuinely don't know." His voice dropped, stripped of its earlier mockery, leaving only a cornered, oppressive coldness. "Search if you want. Turn the whole estate upside down. I'm not hiding her."
I gestured to my team.
My people tore through that mansion like they were dismantling a skeleton.
Every room. Every closet. The basement. The safe rooms. The greenhouse in the back garden. The trunk of every car in the garage.
Emily wasn't there.
I stood in the second-floor bedroom that had clearly been hers, staring at the floor littered with shredded dresses and overturned cosmetics. The wound in my chest felt like someone was carving into it with a dull blade.
"Luke. Security room." Lily's voice came from behind me, carrying an edge of bad news.
I followed her to the surveillance hub. An entire wall of monitors displayed nothing but static. The main console had been dismantled, the hard drives physically destroyed, storage chips pulled out one by one.
"Deliberate." Lily crouched on the floor examining the wreckage of cables and circuits. "And it was done beforehand. Not after we breached."
The surveillance had been wiped in advance.
Someone had intentionally erased Emily's movements before we even made our move.
Not Lawrence. My team had pinned him down in the study while he was on the phone—the timeline didn't match.
Then who?
I returned to the first floor and walked over to Anna.
She was curled up on the ground. When she saw me approaching, she shrank into herself, shaking like a leaf.
I crouched down, drew my gun from its holster, and leveled the barrel at her forehead with slow, deliberate precision.
"What—what are you doing—" Anna's voice warped into a high, grating screech like nails on glass.
"I'm going to count to three." I looked into those eyes stretched wide with terror, my voice soft. "If you don't tell me where Emily is, I'm going to put a hole in your head."
"I don't know! I don't know anything!"
"One."
"You're insane! Lawrence! Do something—"
"Two."
My thumb flicked off the safety. The metallic click rang out clearly in the dead silence.
Anna watched the motion, pupils contracting violently, her last layer of pretense shattering.
"It was me! I arranged for someone to take her!" Anna screamed, her voice cracking. "She begged me to help her escape! I had someone take her out through the service corridor by the loading docks!"
The ballroom went so silent you could hear a pin drop.
Lawrence whipped his head around, staring at Anna with an expression that wasn't surprise—it was the barely controlled fury of someone who'd been betrayed.
"What did you say?"
Anna didn't dare look at him. She just nodded frantically at me, tears mixing with ruined makeup into a blurred mess across her face.
"She changed into a server's uniform. My contact drove a gray van out through the B-wing underground garage. About... about half an hour ago."
Half an hour.
I shot to my feet and turned to Lily.
"Check every exit from B-wing garage. Gray van. Pull footage from every traffic camera in the area."
Lily was already on her phone.
I gripped the gun, my knuckles white with pressure.
Half an hour. More than enough time for a vehicle to disappear into any corner of New York.
Emily, where the hell did you run to?