The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 625

Chapter 625 The Hair Tie

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“Something made by your own hands? Then of course I’ll wear it,” Julius said, extending his wrist toward her without hesitation.

His wrist was as graceful as his long pianist’s fingers— the kind of beauty that somehow made even a simple joint look sculpted.

Quinn studied the vivid red loop resting against her palm. Imagining it circling that elegant wrist stirred an unexpected flutter inside her chest.

“You’re not going to help me put it on?” Julius prodded gently.

She finally lifted her hand and slipped the loop over his hand, letting it settle snugly against his skin. A strange, warm current spread through her, and in a flash, she understood why every girl in school had loved this tiny ceremony.

“What’s running through that mind of yours?” Julius murmured close to her ear, his breath a gentle pulse of warmth.

“Just thinking that once a guy puts on a girl’s hair tie, it feels like he belongs to her—and only her,” she confessed in a small, almost embarrassed voice.

“Exactly. I’ve been yours for a long time,” Julius whispered, drawing her into his arms. “You’re the only person on this planet who gets to do whatever she pleases with me.”

His warm breath grazed the shell of her ear, and Quinn’s cheeks ignited with sudden color.

“This hair tie isn’t just decoration,” she began, her scientist’s enthusiasm peeking through, “it actually-”

Her explanation cut off when Julius‘ phone rang, slicing through the hush of the temple like a sudden bell.

Julius glanced at the caller ID and sighed. “I need to take this. I’ll have one of the guards walk you back to your room.”

“All right,” Quinn said, giving a quick nod.

The details of the hair tie could wait, she decided.

She had woven a micro–tracker into the thread itself, braiding the circuitry until it looked like nothing more than ordinary red cotton.

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Chapter 625 The Hair Tie

Plain to the eye, it served as perfect camouflage.

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Someday she could run the same filament through jacket seams or stitch it into car upholstery; the possibilities sprawled out before her like a blueprint.

The concept had lived in her notebooks for years, nurtured in hurried margins between larger projects.

Free time had finally opened when she wrapped up the drone software for Azure Technologies, and she’d seized the chance to finish the prototype. Of course, the device still awaited its first field test; for all she knew it might be a brilliant failure.

Once he had walked a safe distance away, Julius lifted the phone to his ear. “Talk to me—what’s going on?”

A tense, static–laced voice burst across the encrypted channel. “Mr. Whitethorn, Ms. Laura Wentworth has disappeared. Half the men assigned to guard her were battered and left unconscious. The rest are standing upright, but their eyes are vacant–they appear to be caught in some kind of induced trance.”

Julius‘ features tightened, the light in his study paling beneath the sudden shadow that crossed his face.

The same trick–hypnosis. Whoever did this wants me rattled before the first move is even made.

“Did Father take her?” Julius asked, voice stripped of ornament, blade–sharp with urgency.

“All surveillance at Ms. Wentworth’s last known location has been wiped,” the caller replied after a shaky breath. “Her father vanished alongside her. We can’t determine whether Mr. Caxton Wentworth took her, or if your father, Mr. Joaquin Whitethorn, did.”

Cold resolve cooled Julius‘ eyes. “Understood.”

He cut the line, immediately dialed Joaquin’s private number, and waited with a taut stillness that set every clock–tick echoing like gunfire.

To his surprise, the call connected almost at once.

Joaquin’s languid drawl drifted through the speaker. “What is it, my dear son? Feeling nostalgic for a chat with your old man?”

“Did you take Laura?” Julius asked, wasting no breath on pleasantries.

“Indeed, I did,” Joaquin answered with a soft laugh. “Tell me, are you actually planning to play the hero for that woman?”

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“Release her. Whatever grudge exists between you and me, we settle it–just between us,” Julius said, voice iced over.

“Since when do you care about someone so irrelevant?” Joaquin scoffed, amusement curling around every word. “Is it because she’s Quinn Bridger’s friend? Picture this, Julius: if one day you and this woman dangled over the same abyss, which of you do you think Quinn would save?”

“Set her free,” Julius demanded, his tone now glacial enough to frost steel. “If you refuse, I will burn Mother’s farewell letter–right now.”

On the other end, silence fell–heavy, disbelieving–followed by a ragged intake of breath. “What did you say? You have your mother’s letter?”

“Yes,” Julius replied. “She slipped it between the pages of the book, mottled with her blood. You never bothered to open it, did you? That’s why you never even knew it existed.”

A long beat passed before Joaquin’s voice returned, stripped of mockery. “What… what does her letter say?”

Memories clawed at Joaquin–the sight of his wife’s lifeless form, the book speckled red resting beside her, an eternal indictment of his failure. Back then, he could barely endure the room’s air, let alone touch that book.

If Edward hadn’t ordered the book removed, he might have hurled it into the fire himself. Never—never—had he imagined that within those pages lay her final words.

“Read it yourself once you let Laura go,” Julius said. “Those are the terms.”

“Very well,” Joaquin answered, voice gravelly low. “Bring the letter. We trade–my hostage for your pages.”

“Agreed.”

Julius understood the line he had just drawn. His father had gone to extraordinary lengths to seize Laura; he would not surrender her for anything less than something equally precious.