The Hunter’s Net
The travel from Nadia’s modest flat, Millbank to Nadia’s vandalized flat, Millbank consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The dust motes danced in the low afternoon light slanting through the grimy kitchen window, swirling like tiny portents of disaster. Nadia’s hand trembled against the doorframe, the wood cool and unyielding beneath her palm. The words she had just spoken hung in the air between them, heavy as the silence that followed.
Adrian stood motionless near the small cast-iron stove, his silhouette sharp against the faded wallpaper. He didn’t answer immediately—instead, his eyes tracked the room, cataloging every detail with a precision born of years spent surviving men like his father. The dented kettle. The chipped teacup on the counter. The child’s drawing of a horse pinned to the wall with a single nail.
Eli was in the bedroom, unaware of the weight pressing down on his mother’s shoulders.
Adrian finally spoke, his voice low and steady. “They’ve already started.”
Nadia’s breath caught. “What do you mean?”
He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper, creased and worn as if he had read it many times. He held it out to her. She took it with fingers that refused to still.
The note was written in a sharp, angular hand—masculine, deliberate, violent in its economy of ink.
*Your little bastard won’t save the Ashby name. It ends with you. —C.B.*
Cole Blackthorn’s mark was pressed into the bottom corner of the page, a seal of wax the color of dried blood.
Nadia’s stomach turned. She had known the Blackthorns would come eventually. She had hoped, foolishly, that the passage of time might soften their ambition. That the memory of Adrian’s father, Thomas Ashby, might fade into history, and with it, the long-standing feud that had left both families impoverished in honor if not in coin.
But hope was a luxury she had never been able to afford.
“When did this arrive?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“This morning. Reid found it nailed to the gate at Ashby Manor.” Adrian’s jaw worked silently—a brief, controlled tremor that betrayed more than a sigh ever could. “My father’s death was never enough for them. They want the line extinguished. Every last leaf on the branch.”
Nadia’s eyes darted toward the bedroom door. Eli was humming a tune she didn’t recognize, the melody drifting through the thin walls like a ghost of innocence she had failed to protect.
She turned back to Adrian, her face pale but resolute. “We’ve been careful. I’ve changed our names twice. The flat is registered under Margot’s maiden name. No one knows we’re here.”
“Jasper knows,” Adrian said.
The name landed like a stone in still water.
Jasper Blackthorn, heir to the Blackthorn fortune and reputation, was everything his father Cole had molded him to be: cunning, ruthless, and patient in the way predators were patient. He had been a boy of fourteen when Adrian last saw him—a boy with cold eyes who had watched his father beat a stablehand half to death for a minor theft. He had not flinched. He had smiled.
Now Jasper was a man of twenty-three, and his father had given him the leash.
Adrian crossed the room in three long strides, his hand closing over Nadia’s. She flinched at the warmth of his touch—she had spent so many years without it that the sensation felt foreign, almost dangerous.
“I should never have come here,” he said quietly. “I put you at risk.”
“You came because Eli is ill,” she said, her voice cracking. “You came because he asked for you. I couldn’t deny him that.”
Adrian’s gaze softened for a fraction of a second before hardening again. “Then I have to get you both out of London. Tonight. Before Jasper’s men find this address.”
Nadia pulled her hand free and stepped back, her arms wrapping around her ribs as if to hold herself together. “Go where? To Ashby Manor? The first place they’ll look?”
“The last place they’ll look,” Adrian countered. “The Ashby estate has been sealed since my father’s funeral. The gates are chained. The staff dismissed. It’s a ghost house with twenty rooms and a wall that has stood for three centuries. No one expects me to return there.”
“And what happens when they do?”
Adrian had no time to answer.
The sound of splintering wood ripped through the quiet of the flat, followed by the crash of the front door slamming against the entry wall. Nadia’s heart seized. She grabbed the kitchen counter, her knuckles white, as heavy footsteps pounded across the floorboards in the hallway.
Three men, by the sound of it. Maybe four.
Adrian moved before the second footstep landed. He crossed to the bedroom door in a single, fluid motion, pushing it open just wide enough to see Eli’s startled face. “Stay inside. Lock the door. Do not open it until I tell you.”
Eli’s eyes went wide, but he nodded with a gravity that broke something in Nadia’s chest. He was only eight. He should never have learned to recognize fear in his father’s voice.
The lock clicked into place.
Adrian turned to face the intruders.
The first man to enter the kitchen was a brute with a scar running from temple to jaw, a thick cudgel swinging loosely in his grip. He stopped at the threshold, his eyes scanning the room with practiced contempt. Behind him, two more men crowded the doorway, their faces hard and unreadable.
“Mr. Ashby,” the scarred man said, his voice carrying the gravel of a man who had broken bones for a living. “We was told you might be here.”
Adrian stood between the men and the bedroom door, his posture deceptively relaxed, his hands at his sides. “And who exactly gave you that information?”
The man grinned, revealing a missing tooth. “A gentleman pays for results, not conversation.”
Nadia’s eyes darted to the counter, where a cast-iron skillet sat beside the stove. She had no illusions about her ability to fight—she was a woman of ink and paper, not steel—but she would not stand idle if they reached for her son.
Adrian took a single step forward, and the men tensed.
“You have ten seconds to leave this flat before I forget that I am a gentleman,” Adrian said.
The scarred man laughed, a wet, ugly sound. “You’re outnumbered, Ashby. Three to one, and I hear you haven’t held a sword in years. What are you going to do, write us a stern letter?”
Adrian’s eyes did not waver. “I count four, actually.”
The scarred man’s grin faltered.
Behind him, one of the other men made a sound—a sharp, choked gasp—and then crumpled to the floor as Reid’s arm locked around his throat from behind. The security chief moved like a shadow given form, his face utterly devoid of emotion as he drove his knee into the fallen man’s ribs.
The third man turned, reaching for a knife at his belt, but Reid was faster. He caught the man’s wrist, twisted it until the bone groaned, and sent the knife clattering across the floor. A single, efficient blow to the temple, and the man joined his companion on the floorboards.
The scarred man stared at his fallen comrades, then back at Adrian, his expression flickering between fury and calculation.
“You’ll regret this,” he spat.
Adrian stepped closer until he was inches from the man’s face. “Tell Jasper Blackthorn that if he wants the Ashby heir, he will have to come for him himself. If I see your face again, I will not be so merciful.”
The scarred man hesitated, his pride warring with his instinct for survival. Pride lost. He turned and fled, his boots thudding down the hallway and out into the street.
Reid straightened, brushing dust from his coat as if he had merely rearranged furniture. “The carriage is waiting around the corner. We have perhaps ten minutes before they regroup.”
Nadia’s legs gave way. She caught herself on the edge of the kitchen table, her breath coming in shallow, ragged bursts. “Eli,” she managed. “I need to get Eli.”
Adrian was already at the bedroom door, knocking softly. “It’s safe now, son. Open the door.”
The lock turned, and Eli emerged, his small face pale but determined. He looked at his father, then at the men sprawled on the floor, and said nothing. He simply took Adrian’s hand.
Nadia forced herself upright, her gaze meeting Adrian’s over their son’s head. There were a thousand questions she wanted to ask—how had Reid found them, when had Adrian planned this, what would happen when the Blackthorns escalated—but there was no time. There was never enough time.
“Grab only what you need,” Adrian said. “Clothes, documents, nothing sentimental.”
Nadia moved through the flat like a woman in a dream, bundling Eli’s few possessions into a worn carpet bag. Her hands trembled as she stuffed his drawing of the horse into the bag, then her own small collection of letters tied with a faded ribbon.
Reid appeared in the doorway, his expression grim. “The carriage is ready. But there’s something else.”
Adrian turned. “What?”
Reid held up a small device—a brass compass, its glass face cracked, its needle spinning in wild, erratic circles. “Found it nailed beneath the windowsill. A tracking beacon. Sophisticated work for street thugs.”
Adrian’s face went very still.
“They knew exactly where she was,” Reid said quietly. “They’ve known for days.”
Nadia felt the floor tilt beneath her. She grabbed the doorframe, her vision narrowing to a pinprick of terror. They had been watched. Eli had been watched. Every night she had tucked him into bed, every morning she had walked him to the small schoolhouse around the corner—Jasper’s men had been there, counting the minutes, waiting for the order.
Adrian took the compass from Reid’s hand and crushed it beneath his boot.
“We leave now,” he said. “No more stops.”
They moved as a unit, Nadia clutching Eli’s hand, Adrian leading the way, Reid covering their rear. The hallway was empty, the street outside quiet save for the distant clatter of a merchant’s cart. The afternoon light had faded into the bruised purple of early dusk, and the gas lamps had begun to flicker to life along the cobblestones.
The carriage waited at the end of the lane, its driver hunched in his coat, the horses stamping impatiently against the cold.
Adrian handed Nadia and Eli into the carriage, then turned to Reid. “Ride with us to the edge of the city. Then double back and make sure we weren’t followed.”
Reid nodded and climbed onto the driver’s bench without a word.
The carriage lurched forward, its wheels rattling over the uneven stones. Nadia held Eli close, her hand pressed against the back of his head, his breath warm against her neck. Adrian sat across from them, his face half-hidden in shadow, his eyes fixed on the curtained window.
For a long moment, the only sound was the clop of hooves and the creak of the carriage frame.
Then the alert came.
A sharp buzz, metallic and urgent, from a small black box in Adrian’s coat pocket. He pulled it out, his expression turning to stone as he read the message printed on the slip of paper inside.
“What is it?” Nadia asked.
Adrian’s voice was flat, controlled, terrible. “The safe house tracking alert. Someone triggered the perimeter at the manor.”
Nadia’s blood turned to ice.
The carriage slowed as they approached the city gates, the driver calling out to the night watchman. The sound of footsteps echoed in the narrow street behind them—measured, deliberate, unhurried.
Footsteps that stopped outside the carriage door.
The world held its breath.
Adrian reached for the handle, his hand steady, his eyes never leaving the curtained window. “Stay behind me. Both of you.”
Nadia pulled Eli tighter, her heart hammering against her ribs, as the latch began to turn.
As they fled into the waiting carriage, Jasper’s voice echoed from the shadows: “You can’t hide from me, Ashby. I’ll see your heir in the ground.”