"I want my child back." Saira said into the phone as soon as the man answered the call.
And received an imdiate reply, "No."
"What do you an no? I said I want him back. You have to bring him back to !"
"No ans exactly that, Saira." His tone didn’t waver. It was calm, flat—dangerously so. "When the child was born, you made your choice. You handed him over instead of taking the other choice and coming with the child. It can be considered you sold your child. Whether it was legal, moral, or just a desperate move at the ti, it doesn’t matter now. The fact remains—he is mine now. The only reason you still get photos is because I made a promise. A small rcy. Nothing more."
"If you don’t bring my child, I will sue you! I will have you charged for kidnapping! I was barely in my right mind when everything happened..." she snapped but the man simply laughed.
"Sue ? Charge for kidnapping?" he echoed, his amusent laced with cruelty. "Really? And how exactly do you plan to pull that off? You seem to forget—you don’t even know who I am. You’ve never seen my face, not once. You don’t even know what I sound like outside of this call. I’m a ghost, Saira. A voice without a face. A na without a trail. You can’t sue soone who doesn’t exist, Saira."
"I’ll find you.I swear I will. I’ll find you if it’s the last thing I do." Saira whispered desperately but the other person only chuckled in answer and said tauntingly,"Will you? I’d advise you to think that through. Because if you try to threaten again, if you so much as breathe wrong in my direction, all I have to do is change my number. That’s it. One button, Saira. Just one. And then—poof. The last connection you have to your son will vanish. Gone like smoke. So don’t call with threats. Don’t make demands. Not unless you’re prepared to lose everything."
"I want to introduce him to Adam," she blurted out desperately when she realized that he was about to hang up, probably.
There was a pause. The line went so quiet that for a mont, she thought the call had dropped. She stared at the screen of her phone and breathed a sigh of relief when she realized he was still there. Finally, he answered, "What did you say?"
"I said I want the child to et his biological father.." She swallowed the lump rising in her throat. "You promised. You promised that the day I was ready to let them et, you’d bring the child."
A long silence followed. She checked her screen again to make sure the call hadn’t ended when he asked quietly, "You’ve co clean to him? Confessed everything?"
Saira gave a dry laugh, but it carried no real humor.
"Co clean? Confess?" she repeated. "What is there to confess anymore? Haven’t you been watching the news? Everything is out there now. Besides..." She exhaled. "The only way Adam is even considering helping is if I can arrange for him to et the child. That’s his condition. So yes—you have to bring him here."
There was another beat of silence, heavier this ti.
"I’ll think about it," the man said at last.
"What do you an you’ll think about it?" she said sharply. "You have to bring him here. You owe that much!"
"You really don’t understand simple phrases, do you?" he answered in a voice as cold as ice. "I said I will think about it. That doesn’t an yes. That doesn’t an no. It ans I will decide. And until then, don’t call again."
She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off before she could.
"I will call you when I’ve co to a decision. Not a mont sooner. Goodbye, Saira."
And with that, the line went dead.
Saira let out a frustrated growl, slamming her phone down onto the table with more force than necessary. Damn it. She hated this. She hated him. But more than that, she hated Lady Collins. That conniving old woman might have been dead, buried, and forgotten by the world—but she was still haunting her life.
Of course she had no love for the child but now that she needed the child, what use was it when she didn’t even know where the child was and with whom. She never should have agreed with the old woman. But she’d had no choice. By the ti she’d woken up from the anaesthesia’s effects, her child had already been taken away.
It was her—Lady Collins—who had taken the child from the hospital while Saira was still groggy from anesthesia. She had made the arrangents, she had pulled the strings. And then, with that cold smile, she’d looked her dead in the eyes and threatened her.
"Tell Sir Roberts the baby was born still."
Like a fool, she had agreed. It wasn’t as if she had cared for the child but she’d thought that with the child gone, she would also be able to escape Sir Collins’ grip faster. And even if she did not, she would later coerce the older woman to tell her the whereabouts of the child and use it later.
But how could she have predicted that Lady Collins would die before any of that could happen. Before she could tell Saira where the boy was. And now she was at the rcy of a ghost—a man she couldn’t trace, couldn’t control, and definitely couldn’t threaten. He had the boy. And she had nothing but empty promises, a string of regrets, and a war she was slowly losing.
She pressed her trembling fingers to her temples and shut her eyes.
There had to be a way to fix this.
There had to be sothing—soone—left who knew the person Lady Collins had trusted the boy with.
Because if not, then she hadn’t just lost her son... she had lost the one card that could bring Adam to her side.
And without Adam, she had no hope of surviving what was coming next.
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