Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 206

Chapter 206

The room was very quiet.

Morrison nodded once. “We understand, Mr. Kane.”

Alexander’s phone buzzed in his jacket pocket.

He pulled it out. Unknown number. A message.

He looked at the screen.

*Come get your kids. Bring the FBI. 14 Carver Street, Dockside Industrial. Basement. Tonight. Come alone won’ t work, so bring whoever you need. Just come.*

Alexander read it three times. His heart was going so fast he could feel it in his fingertips.

The last unknown number had sent him to an empty warehouse. Had sent him and Lucia across a sleeping

city to find a television playing footage of their daughters in a room they still couldn’t find. Had felt like a fist through glass, the specific cruelty of hope used as a weapon.

His thumb hovered over the screen.

Monica’s face on that photograph. The bruise on her cheek. The rope on her wrists.

He crossed the room to Morrison in four steps and held out the phone without speaking.

Morrison read the message. His expression shifted. He looked up at Alexander, then at the other agents, something moving through the room that felt like a gear engaging.

“This could be another diversion,” Morrison said carefully.

“I know.” Alexander took the phone back. “I also know my daughters have been in a basement for five days an someone just sent me a specific address and told me to bring you.” He looked at Morrison. “The last message was designed to humiliate. This one is different. This one reads like someone who wants this to be

over.”

Morrison was already moving, pulling out his own phone, signaling to his team.

“We treat it as a live lead,” he said. “Full tactical response, approach carefully, no assumptions.” He looked at Alexander. “We go in right.”

“We go now,” Alexander said.

“Alexander.”

Lucia’s voice.

He turned. She was standing up from the couch. Lena’s sweater was still in her arms and she was looking at him with an expression that had no request in it, only statement.

“I’m coming,” she said.

“Lucia, Morrison’s team-”

“I am coming.” Her voice was completely flat. She was not asking and she was not negotiating and every person in the room could see that clearly. “Those are my daughters in that basement. I have been sitting on that couch for five days holding their clothes because it was the only way to feel close to them. I am not sitting here while you go.”

Alexander looked at her face. At the woman who had not slept properly in five days, who was holding their daughters’ clothes against her chest, whose eyes were swollen and whose hands were shaking and who was still, still, standing up.

He looked at Morrison.

Morrison gave him a look that said this was not protocol and also said some things were past protocol. “Stay with me,” Alexander told her. “You stay right beside me the entire time.”

Lucia nodded once. She put Monica’s jacket down on the couch carefully, folding it, setting it down like she was leaving a placeholder for the girl who would come back to claim it.

She kept Lena’s sweater in her arms.

Chapter 206

Ria was on her feet. “I want to come.”

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