Luna's fingers shook so hard the phone bobbed. The photo on the screen shouldn't have been possible: Mrs. Chen's face was a waxen, lifeless mask, eyes shut, with a thin dark line of blood at the temple. Like someone had cut a strip out of a bad dream and stapled it onto her life. The panic, though, was not a dream. It sat heavy in her chest, clawing at her ribs. She swallowed and felt the scrape. Was Mrs. Chen still breathing? Or had someone already decided otherwise?
The phone vibrated again. Another message slid into view. Another image.
A clock. 11:47 AM.
Luna's breath hitched. Twelve hours. The voice on the call—distorted, low—had said twelve hours, or Mrs. Chen would be dead. Midnight. The deadline unfurled inside her like a slow, oppressive hand.
Her thoughts ricocheted. She tried to shape a plan and found only memory: Mrs. Chen's soft grin last week, the woman who'd brought soup when Luna's father died, who teased her about Thai pronunciation, who winked at Ethan and told Luna she'd snagged a husband with kind eyes. Now that same woman—a tie of betrayal?—was bound somewhere cold because of Luna's marriage. Because of Ethan.
She grabbed at the photos splayed across the floor and shoved them back into the envelope Sienna had pressed into her hands. Her fingers were clumsy, leaving smudges on glossy paper. The phone rang again before she could stand.
Ethan.
She picked up before thinking. "They have Mrs. Chen."
Silence hung on the line like someone holding their breath.
"Who has her?" he asked finally. He sounded unnervingly calm.
"I don't know," Luna said, her voice coming apart at the edges. "They called. Sent photos. They want the Singapore files. They say you've been hiding them. Twelve hours, Ethan. If they don't get them, they'll kill her."
Three seconds. Then, flatly, "Where are you?"
"The community center."
"I'm ten minutes away. Stay put."
"Ethan—"
"Luna." His tone sliced. "Don't move. Don't call anyone. And don't open the envelope Sienna gave you."
She glanced down at the paper trembling in her hands. "How do you know about—"
"Because I have eyes everywhere," he said, brusque and too sure. "Including outside that building. I saw Sienna come. I saw her leave. I saw you reading."
Heat flared beneath the fear. "You were watching me?"
"I'm protecting you."
"Is there a difference?" she snapped.
"Yes." He was sharp. "A very big one. Luna, the Singapore files are dangerous. If the wrong people get them—"
"An innocent woman dies if they don't!" Luna's shout cracked like breaking glass.
"And thousands could die if they do," Ethan replied, quiet as a blade. "Those files contain information that can topple governments and wreck economies."
The room tilted. "You're exaggerating."
"I wish I were." He sounded tired of wishing. "Trust me for ten minutes. I'll explain when I get there."
The call ended.
Trust me. The words stung, like salt on an open wound. How do you trust someone when every truth feels threaded through another lie? Still—Mrs. Chen hung by a thread.
She forced herself to open the envelope.
The first page turned her stomach: a corporate chart, Cole Empire Holdings at the top, subsidiaries fanning out like a spider web—real estate, finance, manufacturing, tech. She skimmed, pulse thudding.
And then: Harris Tech Solutions. Her father's company.
The next sheet was worse. A purchase agreement, dated three months before. Ethan had quietly acquired forty percent of Harris Tech without telling her.
Page after page: a hostile takeover plan. Target: Tan Industries. Method: acquire Harris Tech. Leverage Luna's inheritance. Force a merger. Destroy Marcus Tan.
Her vision blurred. The documents laid out calculations with the chill precision of a surgeon: firms absorbed, reputations ground down, livelihoods treated as collateral. It was the architecture of power, exposed and ugly.
A photograph slipped free—yellowed at the edges. A younger Ethan with an older man, arm slung over the man's shoulders, both smiling. Caption: Ethan Cole and Robert Harris. Singapore Business Summit. 2015.
Her father's handwriting slanted across an attached letter.
"Dear Ethan, Thank you for your mentorship over the past year…"
She felt a hollow opening inside her. Ethan hadn't just known her father casually. Not at all.
The door banged open.
Ethan stood there, breathing ragged, eyes raw in a way Luna had never seen.
"You knew my father," she whispered, holding the letter up.
"Yes," he said.
"For how long?"
"Nine years."
She sank into a chair as if the wood might hold her up. "You knew him when I was eighteen. When my mother was alive."
"Yes."
"And you knew about me." She didn't soften the accusation.
"I knew of you," Ethan said. "Your father talked about you constantly."
"So you planned this," Luna said. "The marriage."
"No," he answered, steady. "I planned to protect you."
"From what?"
"From what killed him."
The words hit like a fist. Ethan rifled through his phone and, in quick flashes, showed her medical records, bank transfers, doctor's notes with signatures that didn't match, and payments funneled through shell companies—evidence that her father hadn't died peacefully; he'd been poisoned.
"You're lying," she breathed.
"I'm not." He laid out names, dates, transactions, and the bribed doctors. When Luna saw the forgeries and the money trail, something inside her cracked.
"My uncle?" she whispered.
"Yes."
The truth settled over her like ice.
"This is why I married you," Ethan said. "To keep you alive."
"And the Singapore files?" Luna asked, voice thin.
"Evidence of everything," he replied. "Enough to bring them down."
"But now Mrs. Chen—"
"A diversion." Ethan's voice went flat. "They want those files. They won't stop."
"I won't let her die."
"Neither will I." He went cold. "I know who took her."
Minutes later they were moving through Bangkok in a blur—streetlights streaked, vendors dissolved into color. Ethan barked into his phone with a terrifying, composed calm that made Luna's teeth ache. They slid into his operations center, and the scale of what he'd built opened up: banks of screens, live feeds crawling with data, and teams moving with surgical precision.
From the armored SUV by the warehouse, Luna watched Ethan's crew melt into the dark. Commands crackled in her earpiece; the rat-a-tat of radios matched her racing pulse.
Then—over the line—"Hostage secured."
Mrs. Chen was alive.
When Ethan carried her out, Luna folded. Relief hit like rain after a drought; she clung to him as if that would stitch everything back together.
Cliffhanger: And then Kay's voice cut through the comms. Quiet, brutal: "The Singapore files are gone."
Ethan's face went stone.
The room lurched. The nightmare wasn't a single line anymore; it had knotted into a rope. Mrs. Chen had been bait—and now, with the Singapore files in the hands of Ethan's enemies, they possessed the one weapon that could destroy them both.