No One’s Pov

On the other side of the city, Dominic returned to his grand estate, his mind heavy with exhaustion. He marched down the long, dim hallway toward his private study, but the moment he reached the heavy doors, he stopped dead in his tracks.

His sharp instincts, honed over years of ruling the criminal underworld, instantly flared up. Something felt entirely wrong. The shift in the shadow beneath his door told him his privacy had been breached.

Dominic didn’t hesitate for a single second. Keeping his movements completely silent, he slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out his loaded firearm. His finger rested lightly on the trigger. He took a deep breath, gripped the brass doorknob, and kicked the door open, swinging his gun into the room to clear his corners.

He moved through his study, checking behind the curtains and around the dark corners of the large room. His eyes scanned every inch of the space, but indeed, no one was hiding inside. The intruder was already gone.

Just as he was about to lower his weapon, his siren eyes caught sight of something unusual resting directly on the center of his desk. It was a single neatly folded piece of white paper that definitely hadn’t been there when he left.

Dominic kept his guard up as he walked over to the desk. He placed his black gun onto the wood table and picked up the note, unfolding it with his gloved fingers.

Inside, there were no names. It simply had a specific address written in the center of the page- nothing else. Dominic frowned, staring down at the mysterious handwriting. But as he turned the paper slightly under the desk lamp, his eyes suddenly locked onto the bottom corner.

There was a tiny faint smudge of dried red blood on the edge of the paper.

A dangerous glint returned to Dominic’s gloomy eyes. He didn’t waste a single second. He grabbed his desk phone and immediately dialed his assistant’s number.

"Get up to my study right now," Dominic commanded, his voice a low.

A few seconds later, his assistant burst through the door, breathing heavily. "Yes, Boss? What happened?"

Dominic shoved the white paper directly into his assistant’s hands. "Investigate this place immediately," he ordered coldly, pointing at the address. "Send our best scouts to surround the area and find out who owns it. And more importantly, take this paper to our private lab. Investigate the blood smudge on the corner. Run the DNA profile and find the match. I want to know exactly whose blood is on this note."

The assistant looked at the bloodstain, his eyes widening as he realized the gravity of the situation. "Yes, Boss! I will get the lab team on it right away!" he said firmly, bowing before quickly rushing out of the room to execute the orders.

Left alone in the quiet study, Dominic picked up his gun and stared out the large window into the dark city. His heart aching with desperate hope. If the address is connected with Vivien by any chance, he was finally close to bringing his amore mio back home.

___________

The mysterious girl gently wiped her hands with a clean cloth, her cold dark pupils looking down at Vivien’s sleeping figure. Vivien’s breathing was slow and shallow, her face still pale from the trauma of the explosion and her extensive injuries.

"Has Master made any moves yet?" the girl asked, her voice a quiet whisper.

The maid standing by the door shook her head firmly, indicating that everything was still quiet on his end.

"Hm, okay. You can go," the girl murmured flatly. The maid bowed quickly and left the room, shutting the heavy door behind her with a soft click.

Left completely alone in the quiet room, the girl stepped closer to the bedside. Her eyes finally fixed on Vivien’s face, tracing the soft features that weren’t covered by the medical bandages.

She reached out a pale slender hand, her fingers gently caressing Vivien’s deep red wine hair. Even while covered in wounds and fighting for her life, Vivien looked particularly alluring, possessing a delicate beauty that seemed entirely out of place in such a dangerous world.

"I don’t know what my master has planned for you..." the girl muttered under her breath, her voice devoid of emotion as she pulled her hand away and turned to walk off into the darkness of the room.

But before she could even take a single step away from the mattress, she suddenly felt a weak tug. She stopped. Looking down, she noticed Vivien’s trembling fingers had reached out from beneath the blanket, tightly holding onto the fabric of her clothes.

The girl’s eyebrows furrowed slightly as she looked back at the bed. Vivien’s face was shifting, twisting into a painful grimace as if she were trapped deep inside some kind of horrific nightmare. A cold sweat was breaking out across her forehead.

Interested and cautious, the girl slowly crouched down by the edge of the mattress, leaning her ear close to Vivien’s chapped, moving lips. She tried to carefully listen to the weakmurmurs slipping from her unconscious mind.

"Don’t... please... it’s scary..." Vivien breathed out, her voice cracking with a childlike terror. "It’s so scary... Lily..."

The very moment the name left Vivien’s lips, the mysterious girl completely froze. Her entire body went rigid, her breath catching in her throat as those empty pitch-black pupils suddenly widened in absolute shock.

That name felt so familiar to her, striking a chord deep within her chest that she didn’t even know existed.

Honestly, when Vivien had asked her for her name earlier, she hadn’t said anything because the truth was simple- she didn’t have one. She had been brought into this dark underworld by her Master, trained to be a heartless weapon.

He had never given her a name, only a purpose. Her first ever official mission from him after arriving in this world had been to free this exact girl lying in front of her from Dominic’s heavily guarded mansion.

Yet, the very first time she had laid eyes on Vivien back then, a strange sensation had washed over her. She felt like she already knew this girl. She didn’t possess a single memory of her past, yet looking at Vivien made her feel like she had tons of forgotten memories with her.

The next time she saw her was just three days ago, when her Master brought Vivien back to the house completely bloody and broken from the explosion- she had felt her numb heart skip a beat.

An unfamiliar panic had surged through her veins. What was happening to her? Why did this stranger affect her so deeply?

Driven by those unexplainable feelings, she had decided to do Vivien a quiet favor. She had gone out tonight, tracking down Amelia and her father, and ruthlessly took out the thorns for her, ensuring they would never hurt Vivien again.

The girl looked down at the hand tightly gripping her sleeve. Slowly, she relaxed her rigid posture and sat down on the edge of the mattress.

"This will be the last time I do anything for you," she whispered softly to the sleeping Vivien, her cold voice holding a rare hint of softness.

As if hearing her voice through the nightmare, Vivien subconsciously pulled closer, hugging the girl’s arm tightly as her breathing finally stabilized, lulling herself back into a peaceful sleep.

The nameless girl didn’t pull away, staying frozen in the dark room, staring at the girl who held the key to her forgotten past.

_____________

Soon enough, Dominic’s chief assistant returned to the study, his face pale as he held a fresh stack of intelligence reports.

"Boss, the location from the address has been fully mapped," the assistant reported quickly. "But it’s not anywhere near our territory. It’s located deep within Country X. The coordinates point to a heavily secured, highly secluded private beach area hidden away from the main cities."

Dominic’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.

"Country X... Isn’t that the exact same country Amelia and her corrupt father ran off to when they fled?"

The assistant nodded quickly, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. "Yes, Boss. It is. And about the blood smudge left on the note... the forensics team ran the DNA through the global database. The blood profile matches Miss Amelia perfectly."

Dominic’s grip on his pen tightened until it snapped into two, his posture turning entirely rigid. "So she dared to sneak into my estate and leave a note?"

"No, Boss... there’s absolutely no way possible she could have returned here to leave it because..." The assistant hesitated, swallowing hard as his voice lowered to a whisper.

"Because what? Speak!" Dominic commanded, his voice booming through the quiet room.

"Because it has been officially confirmed by our local scouts over there that they are dead," the assistant stammered. "Both Amelia and her father were violently abducted from their hideout and executed. Our team tracked down the site just an hour ago. They were completely eliminated."

Dominic’s dark eyebrows furrowed deeply, a calculated stillness taking over his gaunt features. The pieces of the puzzle weren’t adding up. If Amelia was dead, then whoever had brutally tortured her was the exact same person who had sneaked into his heavily guarded mansion to leave the note.

But why? Why would a ruthless killer execute his enemies, take their blood, and leave him a roadmap to a private beach in Country X? Was this a genuine lead to finding his missing amore mio or was someone pulling the strings from the shadows, setting up a massive, deadly trap to finish him off once and for all?

Dominic didn’t care about the risk. Even if it was an open trap leading straight into hell, he would gladly walk into the fire if it meant a single chance at finding Vivien alive.

He stood up to his full height, his eyes burning with a fierce obsessive determination.

"Prepare the private jet immediately," Dominic ordered coldly, grabbing his black gun from the desk and slipping it into his holster. "We are leaving for Country X within the hour."

"Yes, Boss!" the assistant replied firmly, bowing deeply before rushing out to mobilize their elite forces for war.

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TO BE CONTINUED