Chapter 9 - THE HUNT BEGINSAdrian didn't hesitate for a single second.
He spun away from the console, drawing his sidearm as he bolted out of the command center and sprinted toward the private stairwell leading up to the residential quarters.
"Lock down the entire estate!" Adrian roared into his comms. "Seal every exit! No one leaves the island!"
Sirens began to wail across the sunny compound, the harsh red emergency lights flashing against the white stucco walls. Down in the courtyard, guards scrambled into tactical formations, sweeping the perimeter.
Adrian burst through the double doors leading to the second-floor nursery.
"Grace!" he shouted.
Grace emerged from the adjoining room, clutching a terrified Lucy in her arms. "Mr. Adrian! What’s happening? Someone just tripped the hallway alarm upstairs!"
Adrian didn't answer. He rushed to the crib.
Baby Clara was still there, sleeping soundly, completely undisturbed. But as Adrian’s hands hovered over her blanket, his fingers brushed against a tiny, cold object pinned near her pillow.
It was a micro-transmitter, pulsing with a faint blue light.
Attached to it was a miniature silver crest—the exact same signet symbol seen on the ring of the mysterious man in the Zurich penthouse.
Grace gasped, covering her mouth as she saw the emblem. "Whose crest is that? How did someone get in here? We’re miles out in the ocean!"
Adrian picked up the transmitter, crushing it to dust between his bare fingers. The blue light winked out.
"They didn't break in," Adrian said, his voice terrifyingly quiet as the pieces of a much larger, darker puzzle finally fell into place. "They were already here before we landed."
Before Grace could ask what he meant, the secure communicator on Adrian’s wrist buzzed violently.
He tapped the receiver.
"Boss!" the head of security yelled over the sound of heavy wind and shouting men. "We searched the perimeter! We didn't find an intruder... but we found the coastal radar buoy. It’s been modified. A submarine... a stealth submersible just surfaced in the private cove on the northern cliffs, unloaded a package, and slipped back out into the trench!"
Adrian looked down at sleeping Clara, then toward the open balcony doors where the ocean breeze swept gently through the room.
The game with Elena Vance and Colin Ward had never been the real war. It was just a distraction—a smoke screen thrown up by a far more dangerous adversary who had been pulling the strings from the very beginning.
Adrian walked over to the balcony, looking out over the endless expanse of the deep blue ocean where a submarine had vanished without a trace.
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He rested his hand on the stone railing, his knuckles whitening as his grip tightened until the stone cracked.
"You want my daughter?" Adrian whispered to the wind, his eyes burning with a dark, lethal resolve. "Then come and try to take her yourself."
