Chapter 823

I rolled my eyes so hard they almost got stuck. Hayden really had way too much time on his hands. Decorating an urn and stashing a data sync device in a jewelry box? Was this some kind of cosmic joke? Then again, maybe he’d done it to throw people off—make them think it was just a random trinket and not something insanely valuable.

“What the hell is this?” Cole snapped, reaching for the box.

I smacked his hand away. “Chill, Drago. What’s the rush? Don’t you think there’s a scorpion inside or something?”

He gave me an annoyed side-eye. “Just open it already. Hayden’s brain must be a circus to come up with this nonsense.”

Ignoring him, I pulled the tiny red box from its fluffy nest of white feathers. It was way too light. No way it held the device. Still, I flipped it open—and, of course, my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“A ring?” Cole said, his voice somewhere between disbelief and irritation.

Yup. A diamond ring. And judging by the size of that rock, it could probably pay off a small country’s debt.

Seriously, Hayden? Another ring? First, it was those weird high-tech matching rings, and now this bling. What was his deal?

I reached for it, but Cole snatched it before I could, holding it up like he expected it to transform into a secret gadget or something. I ignored his theatrics and focused on the jewelry box itself, poking around its insides. Empty. Totally bare.

Meanwhile, Cole was flipping the ring over, inspecting it like a jeweler on a mission. When that turned up nothing, he grabbed the box and started ripping it apart. Lining, inserts, every layer—it all got shredded.

Nothing. His smirk vanished, replaced with a stormy glare. He wasn’t done. Grabbing the urn, he dumped its contents onto the ground, sifting through the mess with feverish determination. Still, zilch.

Finally, with a growl, he kicked the urn toward his men. “Smash it. Now.” He refused to give up.

Chapter 823

One of the goons swung a shovel, shattering the urn into jagged shards. But even broken into pieces, it revealed no hidden compartments, no secrets.

Cole’s fists clenched at his sides, the tension rolling off him like a storm. Months of chasing me, following leads, and this was all he had to show for it? I almost felt bad for him. Almost. He had no choice but to accept the truth, no matter how much it stung.

As for me, I was reeling too. Hayden had told me the urn held the device. If it wasn’t here, where had it gone? Had someone switched it?

I retraced my steps in my head. I’d buried the urn myself, and everything seemed untouched when they dug it up. That left only one possibility: it had been swapped before it got to me. Yara had been the one to hand it over. Could she have been the one who switched it? Before I could think it through, a sharp pain shot through my shoulder as Cole’s hand clamped down hard. His grip was like iron, his fingers digging in painfully.

“You’ve got two options,” he said, his voice low and cold, like a snake sizing up its prey. “Either you hand over what I want, or… ” His gaze dropped to the freshly dug pit. “Or I bury you right here instead.”

Chapter 824