Outside, a white van pulled up to the entrance and the men shoved her inside with rough, practiced efficiency.

And suddenly the entire situation clicked together inside Stan’s mind with cold, brutal clarity.

She’d been drugged.

That explained the sweating. The collapsing legs. The sluggish movements. The fear.

She hadn’t recoiled from Stan because he had done anything threatening.

She’d recoiled because she was terrified, half-incapacitated, and incapable of distinguishing between danger and safety anymore.

Stan turned sharply toward the street.

He didn’t have time to retrieve the Huracán. The car was still at the service center, and even if it wasn’t, following a kidnapping in a matte-black Lamborghini would be the exact opposite of subtle. It’ll attract way too much attention.

The van had already begun pulling away.

Stan stepped to the curb and flagged down the nearest taxi.

The moment it stopped, he got in and pointed toward the departing vehicle.

"Follow that white van," he said calmly. "Keep your distance. There’s money in it for you."

The driver glanced at the van, sensed both the urgency and the promise of cash, and immediately pulled into traffic after it.

The van traveled toward the edge of the district before finally stopping in front of an abandoned building.

It was the kind of place every city had hidden somewhere in its forgotten corners, derelict, empty, isolated. The sort of building chosen specifically because nobody ever came near it.

The men dragged the woman out of the van and hauled her inside.

Stan paid the taxi driver, told him to leave, then approached the building on foot, keeping close to the surrounding structures and out of sight of the broken windows.

A door slammed shut somewhere inside.

Then voices followed.

"Leave me alone, you animals!" the woman screamed. Her voice sounded hoarse, panicked, but still defiant. "What do you even gain from this? Let me go!"

"Scream all you want," a rough male voice replied. "Nobody’s coming. Nobody even knows you’re here."

"You want money?" she cried desperately. "I have money. I’ll give you whatever you want. Please, just let me go, "

"Money?" the man laughed harshly. "We’ll take the money. Then we’ll take the rest of what we came for."

Stan’s expression went completely still.

He moved toward the entrance and found a narrow gap beside one of the boarded windows.

Looking through it, he assessed the situation instantly.

Five men.

The woman was bound on the floor, wrists tied behind her back. Her clothing had been partially torn, exposing intimate areas, tears streaked down her face, and the lingering effects of whatever drug they had given her still left her weak and disoriented.

One of the men was already moving toward her with intentions that needed no explanation.

Stan analyzed the room in seconds.

Positions. Distances. No visible firearms. Limited space. Five opponents.

He had handled worse odds before, at Neon Pulse, at the Wanhai Grand. As long as none of them pulled out a gun before he closed the distance, the outcome was not seriously in doubt.

Stan inhaled slowly.

Then he stepped forward.

"Stop."

At the same moment, he drove his shoulder and palm into the door with a single focused burst of force.

The lock exploded apart.

Metal snapped.

The frame splintered.

The entire door slammed violently against the wall with a crack that echoed through the building.

Everyone inside froze.

Stan himself paused for half a second.

That should not have happened.

He knew the system had been strengthening him. His baseline physical ability had been climbing steadily since it activated, and he was already lifting weights that would have sounded ridiculous two weeks ago.

But this was different.

An iron lock wasn’t a barbell.

And yet he had torn through it like rotten wood.

The realization registered quietly in the back of his mind before he pushed it aside. There would be time to think about it later.

Right now, five men were staring at him in shock from inside the wrecked doorway, their expressions slowly shifting from confusion to the dawning realization that the isolated room they had chosen for privacy had just stopped being secure.

On the floor, the woman lifted her head weakly.

Her wrists were bound behind her back. Her bare feet scraped against the concrete as she struggled to move. Her hair was disheveled, her face streaked with tears and fear. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

But the moment she saw Stan standing there, tall, calm, framed by the shattered doorway, something changed in her expression.

Hope.

She dragged herself desperately across the floor toward him.

"Help me..." she choked out. "Please... help me..."

She had spent years believing men were, at best, selfish obstacles and, at worst, predators waiting for an opportunity.

The past hour had only reinforced that belief.

And yet the man standing in the doorway had just broken through an iron-locked door to reach her.

For the first time in years, a crack appeared in the certainty she’d built her worldview around.

Maybe she had been wrong about all of them.

Stan stepped fully into the room.

His gaze settled on the five men.

"You picked the wrong building," he said quietly.

"And the wrong time."

In that moment, Amelia Don realized something her entire adult life had taught her was impossible:

There were good men in the world.

And one of them was standing in the shattered doorway of an abandoned building, having come for her when nobody else would.

He was her savior.

There was simply no other word for it.

Stan, meanwhile, was assessing the room with cold, steady clarity.

The apprehension was there, the natural tension any sane person felt before walking into a fight, but beneath it was something else entirely.

Curiosity.

He knew the system had been strengthening him. Breaking through the door had already proven that his physical growth had gone far beyond what his recent gym sessions alone could explain.

Part of him genuinely wanted to know where the ceiling was now.

More importantly, none of the men had drawn weapons.

That single detail simplified everything.

No firearms meant the situation became straightforward mathematics, and the numbers were overwhelmingly in his favor.