Page 125 of Emperor of Lust

She swears. “Fucking Kolya?”

“Fucking Kolya,” I reply.

Freya exhales slowly. “Okay… Take a picture of it and text it to me. And see if you can find a bar code or serial number. I doubt I can remotely disable it, but I might be able to track it.”

“It’s a start,” I mutter, pulling up my pant leg, taking a photo. Then I slip the phone closer to my foot and snap a pic of a series of numbers I find printed there. “Texting you now,” I say.

“Got it.”

“Priority, though, is?—”

“Hana. Yeah, no shit,” she mutters, clicking away at her laptop. “Hang on, I’m trying to trace Miyamoto’s phone… Yes!” she hisses triumphantly. “He’s on the move, definitely in a car. Looks like he’s on the way to his house.”

I start the car and ram it into drive. Suddenly, my brow creases.

That’d be too easy, him keeping her at his house. Plus lazy and stupid. And there’s clearly nothing lazy or stupid about Miyamoto for him to have orchestrated all this.

“Can you tell where he’s drivingfrom?”

“Good, an actual challenge,” Freya mutters, clicking away. “Yeah, I can triangulate his data patterns and sub-node transmitter cache?—”

“Translate the nerd-speak, Frey,” I growl.

“It means shut the fuck up and let me work,” she snaps back, fingers clacking on the keys. “Got it!” she crows. “He was just at the destroyed Mori Holdings office building.”

The tires squeal as I explode from the curb, roaring into the night to find the woman I love.

39

HANA

It takeseverything I have to keep the panic and the screaming anxiety at bay as the ropes press into my flesh.

The darkness around me presses down heavily as I pull at the restraints. My pulse thuds in my ears. I can feel every splinter of the rough wood of the chair, the ropes cutting deep into my skin, and the thin rivulet of blood as it trickles down my wrist.

I try to force my mind to stay focused—to cling to thoughts of Damian.

Breathe. Just breathe.

One pull, then another. I yank harder, the rope shifting. The give is encouraging.

The board rocks unsteadily beneath me. I freeze, turning to glance at the girl. She’s watching me, those wide, haunted eyes staring right into mine, catching every move I make. She’s silent, but I don’t need her to speak. She’s got a lethal gaze trained on me, one that doesn’t do anything to mask her obvious fear at my motions rocking the board.

"Sorry," I whisper, my voice barely loud enough to bridge the distance. She just narrows her eyes, then throws a pointed look into the shadowy abyss below.

She’s right. Even if I get free, then what? If I ran toward the middle, to the beam, the whole thing would tip over, sending her to her death.

Obviously I’m not going to do that.

“I’m working on that part," I murmur to her, low and intense, fingers digging harder into the knot at my wrist. "If I can just get free..."

My hand finally slips through. I gasp quietly as it pulls loose, my fingers coated in blood and sweat. The girl’s eyes widen, but her expression doesn’t soften. We’re both still as trapped as we were a second ago. But my tension and panic start to ebb slightly.

It’s something.

I work to free my other hand, then bend carefully to yank at the knots at my ankles, trying to keep my movements small.

A noise cuts through the silence—a faint echo from the shadows nearby. I freeze, every muscle tensing. I barely breathe as I squint into the dark recesses of the building, waiting. Another sound—a door opening, the creak of metal on metal. My blood chills, but I don’t stop, hands working faster. I’m so close.

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