Chapter 2 - The Predator Unshackled
The silence inside the Beckett estate at 4:00 p.m. that afternoon had been absolute—until Colton stepped through the mahogany double doors of his foyer and sensed an unnatural stillness in the air.
Usually, the house was alive with the soft, muffled hum of a newborn: the occasional chirp of a baby monitor, the gentle footsteps of the night nurse, or Lauren’s melodic humming as she rocked Ren to sleep. Today, the quiet was heavy, oppressive, and suffocating.
"Lauren?" Colton called out, tossing his tailored suit jacket over the back of the entryway sofa. His tie was loosened, his shoulders tight from a grueling board meeting with his shipping executives down at the port of Savannah.
No answer.
He strode down the wide hallway, checking the kitchen. The espresso machine was cold. The stainless-steel counters were immaculate. A faint, nagging coil of unease tightened in his chest—an instinct honed by a decade in Atlanta’s underworld, where missing details usually meant a bullet or a betrayal.
He took the stairs two at a time, pushing open the nursery door.
The room was pristine. The mobile above the mahogany crib spun slowly in a stray breeze from the cracked window. But the crib itself was empty.
Colton’s breath caught in his throat. A cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck. He rushed to the mahogany changing table, pulling open drawers. Ren’s diaper bag was gone. Her emergency medical kit was gone. Her birth certificate folio—which he kept locked in the master safe—was missing.
He sprinted into the master bedroom, ripping open the closet doors. Lauren’s sensible driving shoes were missing from the rack. Her favorite beige trench coat was gone.
He didn't panic—not yet. Men in Colton’s position did not panic; they investigated. He pulled out his encrypted satellite phone, dialing his head of security, Marcus Vance.
"Vance," Colton growled, his voice dropping into the icy register that made hardened killers flinch. "Run the license plate on Mrs. Beckett’s SUV through our traffic grid. Find out where she went. Now."
Within four minutes, Vance’s callback came through. "Boss... Mrs. Beckett’s vehicle passed a traffic camera heading south on Interstate 85 twenty miles out, roughly four hours ago. She exited near the medical district. We're tracking her phone ping now."
"Her phone is switched off to voicemail," Colton snapped, slamming his hand against the doorframe so hard the wood splintered. "Where is she?"
"Her best friend, Dr. Paige Miller, lives in that district," Vance replied cautiously. "Shall I send a team to secure the perimeter?"
"No!" Colton roared, his chest heaving with a suffocating terror he hadn't felt since he buried his father. "Nobody touches them. If anyone so much as looks at my wife or daughter the wrong way, I’ll strip their stripes before they hit the ground. Saddle up the Escalade. I’m going."
By the time Colton reached his SUV, his mind was racing through a labyrinth of paranoia. Who could have gotten to her? Had a rival syndicate—the Moretti family or the Russian syndicate out of Doraville—discovered his plans to move his family out of the country?
Because that was the secret. The flight to Lisbon wasn't an escape with Jade Foresight. It was an extraction.
Three weeks before Ren was born, intercepted intelligence chatter revealed that a splinter faction within the syndicate had put a contract out on Colton’s bloodline to cripple his empire from within. Jade Foresight—a brilliant former Mossad operative now working as a high-level corporate security consultant—had uncovered the leak. To throw the assassins off the scent and secure a safehouse in Portugal while he cleaned house in Atlanta, Colton had purchased the flight under Jade's name and his own as a diversionary decoy. It was a high-stakes, ruthless chess move designed to draw the assassins into the open while his real family was smuggled out by trusted guards.
But he hadn't told Lauren. He wanted to protect her from the terrifying reality of his war until the threat was neutralized.
And now, by hiding the truth, he had driven her straight into terrified seclusion. She thought he was abandoning her for another woman. She thought he was a monster.
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Sitting in the back of his speeding Escalade, Colton stared at his phone, his thumb hovering over Lauren’s number. He had sent her the texts, but there was no reply. When Vance confirmed that Lauren’s SUV was parked outside Dr. Paige Miller’s townhouse, Colton felt a desperate, agonizing knot twist in his gut.
He ordered his drivers to pull two blocks away, killing the headlights. He stepped out into the crisp evening air, adjusting his holster beneath his coat. He couldn't storm in like a mafia boss; he had to approach her like a desperate husband begging for his life.
