Page 163 of Cobra
Blaze looks toward the broken wall, then back at me. “Then we find the next place.”
A notification pings. One clean sound. Small. Sharp. Every man in the office freezes.
Dom’s eyes snap to the laptop.
Logan says, “What is it?”
Dom doesn’t answer immediately. He reads. His face goes flat. Then he turns the laptop slightly so Logan can see. I don’t wait for permission. I step close enough to read it. The message is clean. No rage. No taunt. No sloppy threat.
Business.
If you want her back, you can try to buy her.
Below it, a link.
My pulse slows. Not from calm. From focus so complete everything else drops away.
Logan’s voice is quiet. “Open it.”
Dom clicks. The screen goes black for one second. Then a website loads.Not ugly. Not crude. Not the dark, dirty nightmare people imagine when they pretend evil looks obvious. It’s clean. Professional. High-end. Black background. Gold lettering. Minimal design. Private access portal. Encrypted buyer credentials already accepted. Refined evil. That’s worse.
Dom scrolls.
Listings. Lot numbers. Times. Codes. Locations obscured. Some pages locked. Some already completed.
My stomach doesn’t turn. It freezes. These are people. Women. Reduced to numbers, condition notes, buyer preferences, timing windows.
Dom stops scrolling.
The screen updates. A new lot appears. Scheduled tonight. One hour from now.
No name. No full photo at first. Just a cropped image. Hair. Jawline. Mouth. Enough. My hand closes on the edge of the desk hard enough the wood groans.
Olivia.
Landon leans in.
“Starting bid,” Dom says, voice dead. He clicks. The number appears.Five hundred thousand. The room goes silent.
Then Blaze breathes, “Jesus fuck.”
Cain mutters something darker.
Hammer’s hand curls on the back of a chair.
Joker’s smile appears again, thin and dead.
Landon shakes his head once. “We don’t have that kind of liquid capital.”
Logan looks at him. “How fast can we move assets?”
“Not fast enough,” Landon answers. “Not clean. Not in an hour. Even if we stripped emergency reserves and moved through every channel we have, we’d trip flags before we reached half that. That’s also just the starting bid, no telling what it will take to win.”
“Workaround?” Shadow asks.
“No.”
The word lands like a door slamming. I stare at the number. Then at her lot code. Then at the countdown.
