After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law-Chapter 146: Clean Up on Aisle 9

"Twelve minutes."

Damien stared at the face of his Rolex.

He stood at the butcher counter, the sterile, ambient hum of Elysium’s refrigeration units buzzing in his ears. Dennis, the butcher, proudly held out a package wrapped in pristine butcher paper containing the A5 Wagyu ribeye.

Damien didn’t take it.

Aria had said she needed to use the restroom twelve minutes ago.

Damien pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed her number.

It rang once. Twice. Then, the automated voice kicked in. Your call has been forwarded to voicemail...

The domestic, playful bubble they had been floating in for the past hour shattered into razor-sharp shards. A cold, leaden weight dropped into the pit of Damien’s stomach.

He abandoned the shopping cart, leaving it in the middle of the aisle.

He moved with a long, predatory stride toward the front of the store, the relaxed slouch of his shoulders vanishing, replaced by the rigid, terrifying posture of a man walking into a war zone.

"Damien!"

A woman stepped directly into his path near the artisanal cheese display. She was a famous runway model, draped in a silk trench coat, her lips glossed and pouting.

"I haven’t seen you since the Met Gala," she purred, reaching a manicured hand out to trail a finger down the open collar of his white dress shirt. "You look... tense. Want to get a drink?"

Damien didn’t stop. He didn’t slow down. He simply slapped her hand away with a violent, dismissive flick of his wrist.

"Fuck off," Damien snarled, his voice a low, gravelly threat that made the model physically recoil as if she had been burned.

He kept walking.

Two aisles down, a Silicon Valley tech billionaire who had been trying to secure a meeting with Sinclair Corp for six months spotted him. The man’s eyes lit up with networking greed. He stepped out from behind a display of imported olive oil, holding his hands up in a placating, friendly gesture.

"Mr. Sinclair! What a coincidence. Listen, about that API integration merger we pitched—"

Damien didn’t even break his stride. He leveled a glare at the man so incredibly dark, so utterly devoid of human empathy, that the tech billionaire choked on his own spit and scrambled backward into a pyramid of balsamic vinegar bottles just to get out of the blast radius.

Damien reached the discreet, gold-lettered alcove that led to the restrooms.

The heavy wooden door to the women’s room was closed.

Damien didn’t knock. He shoved the door open with his shoulder.

It was pitch black.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. A high-end, biometric-secured facility like Elysium didn’t just have blown fuses.

The only sound in the darkness was the heavy, steady rush of water pouring from an open faucet into a porcelain basin.

Damien pulled his phone out, his thumb hitting the flashlight icon.

The harsh white beam of the LED swept across the imported Italian marble. It illuminated the vanity. It illuminated the running water.

And then, the beam dropped to the floor.

Damien stopped breathing.

Lying on the pristine marble were Aria’s Louboutin heels. They were kicked off haphazardly, abandoned. A few feet away, glinting in the harsh light of the flashlight, was her iPhone. The screen was violently shattered into a spiderweb of cracked glass.

But it was the marks on the floor that made Damien’s blood run ice-cold.

Stark against the polished white marble, smeared through the water that had splashed from the sink, were muddy, distinct tread marks.

Heavy tactical boots. Multiple pairs.

They formed a chaotic, scuffed pattern around Aria’s discarded shoes, and then tracked straight toward the heavy metal push-bar door at the back of the room—the service exit leading to the alley.

They took her.

Damien picked up his phone. His thumb bypassed his regular contacts, hitting a speed dial.

It rang for half a second.

"Sir," Ken’s voice answered, crisp and alert.

"Code Black," Damien ordered. His voice was a terrifying, deadpan monotone—the voice of a man issuing an execution order. "Elysium grocery store. Upper East Side."

"Code Black confirmed," Ken said, the sound of keyboards instantly clacking in the background. "Deploying the extraction team. ETA is four minutes. Local law enforcement?"

"No cops," Damien stated, turning on his heel and marching out of the pitch-black bathroom. "Seal the perimeter. Lock down the grid. Get Kai to hack the city traffic cameras in a ten-block radius. Look for a tactical extraction vehicle. A van or an SUV."

"Understood."

Damien burst out of the restroom alcove and into the main floor of the grocery store.

"Lock the doors!" Damien roared, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings, shattering the quiet, pretentious atmosphere of the supermarket.

The few security guards stationed around the store looked up, startled. They recognized him instantly. When Damien Sinclair gave an order, you didn’t ask for a manager’s permission.

A guard slammed his hand onto the emergency override button behind the main counter.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

Massive, reinforced steel security shutters dropped from the ceiling, slamming into the marble floor and completely sealing the frosted glass front entrance. The back exits locked automatically.

The store erupted into chaos.

"What is going on?!" the runway model shrieked, dropping her basket.

"I have a flight to catch!" the tech billionaire yelled, rushing toward the locked steel shutters. "Open the doors!"

"Is this a robbery?!" an older socialite gasped, clutching her Hermès bag.

Damien walked to the exact center of the store. He was a terrifying monument of lethal stillness amidst the panic. His crisp white shirt was undone, his sleeves rolled up, his golden eyes sweeping over the trapped elite like a hawk surveying a field of mice.

"Everyone shut the fuck up," Damien commanded.

The sheer, oppressive weight of his killing intent suffocated the room. The screaming stopped. The billionaires and celebrities froze, staring at the man who looked ready to rip their throats out with his bare hands.

"My wife is missing," Damien said, the words echoing in the dead silence. He looked at the store manager, who was trembling behind the organic fruit display. "Bring me your security footage. Now. And nobody leaves this building until I have her back."