GRANT POV
It had been three days since my nymph disappeared. Three fucking days since I’d seen her, heard her voice, touched her, or had her smile one of those perfect smiles at .
If my life was in shambles the last ti she got kidnapped, now my life was in ruins. And even more so, I regretted not trusting her gut the last ti she told she felt like sothing bad was about to happen. I’d brushed her words aside and thought she was paranoid, but once again her instinct had proven to be true.
Fuck.
I chose not to numb myself by being depressed or drowning myself in alcohol. No. This ti I did everything possible. I started where it all fell apart, their apartnt.
Lena opened the door with that smirk I’d once found endearing. Now it made my blood boil.
"Dad." She said it like a challenge, leaning against the doorfra. "What brings you here?"
"Where is she?"
"Who?" The fake innocence in her voice made want to put my fist through the wall.
"Don’t play gas with , Lena. Where is Nova?"
She shrugged, examining her nails. "I don’t know the whereabouts of your Nova. Last I heard, she dropped out. Sha, really. She had so much potential."
The way she said it was so casual and unbothered, like she hadn’t destroyed soone’s entire life. That’s when I knew. My daughter was involved. My daughter had done this.
"What did you do?" My voice ca out low and dangerous.
"?" She laughed. "Dad, I didn’t do anything. Nova made her own choices. Fucked her best friend’s dad, let herself get recorded, ruined her own reputation. All I did was help the truth co to light."
I grabbed her by the arm, probably harder than I should have. "What. Did. You. Do?"
For a second, fear flashed in her eyes. Good. She should be scared.
"I showed everyone who she really is," she spat. "A gold-digging slut who was using you—using our family—for money and status. Soone had to protect you from her."
"Protect ?" I released her arm like it burned. "You destroyed an innocent girl because you were jealous."
"Jealous?" Her voice pitched higher. "You replaced with her! My best friend! And you expect to just—what? Accept it? Be happy for you?"
"So you ruined her life? Drove her away?" I stepped back, looking at my daughter like I was seeing her for the first ti. "You’re just like your mother."
That hit her. I could see it in the way her face crumpled for a second before the mask ca back up.
"Get out," she said quietly.
"Gladly. But know this Elena, you are no longer my daughter. Legally, financially, emotionally. You’re dead to ."
I walked away before she could respond. I didn’t care anymore.
I reached out to Professor Hendricks, a man who owed several favors from when I’d saved his departnt from budget cuts. He forwarded the clip within an hour.
Watching it made sick.
Soone had recorded . Recorded having sex with my girlfriend in my own house. Soone had violated our privacy, our intimacy, and then released it to destroy her.
The angle was clear, it was taken from a hidden cara, probably in one of the decorative pieces Nova always admired. The footage was steady and deliberate. This wasn’t an accident. This was planned.
That very day, as soon as I got ho, I lined up every mber of my staff that slept on the estate grounds overnight during that period. It wasn’t difficult to fish out the culprit.
Maria. A young maid who’d been with us for less than a year. She broke within ten minutes.
"Miss Lena approached ," she sobbed, wringing her hands. "She said Nova was a gold digger. That she was using you. That I’d be doing the family a favor by... by docunting her behavior."
"So you hid a cara in my private space and recorded us." My voice was ice.
"I didn’t think—I didn’t know she’d use it like that. She said it was just for evidence. Just in case. Then after she got the video, she threatened . Said if I ever told anyone about her involvent, she’d make sure I never worked again."
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all. I knew Lena had much of Bianca in her, but I never knew the toxicity and poison ran this deep. I never knew a child I’d cared for and seen as mine could harm this way. I thought only an outsider was capable of such things, but just like Bianca had shown her true colors, Lena had finally shown hers.
I fired Maria on the spot. Had her escorted off the property. Then I called my lawyer.
Within hours, Lena was being cut off from my shares and will. I started the process to disown her legally and made it clear that she was free to take her mother’s surna, but she’d never get another cent from . I was done feeding people who wouldn’t hesitate to feed on .
I would have pressed charges against her, but I had other pressing issues to attend to. Like finding Nova.
Her phone. That was the sa thing that had led to us finding her before, so it was automatically my first resort.
It was more difficult to track this ti because she wasn’t picking up my calls or replying to any of my ssages. I had to go back to where I got the phone and pretend it was stolen so I could track it down.
It was past one in the morning when I finally got to the shitty motel. The Sunset Inn. A place that looked like it catered to people who didn’t want to be found.
I asked the receptionist—an old woman who looked half-asleep—and she gave a vague response that showed she wasn’t paying attention to her guests. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if she was coherent enough to understand what I was talking about with the way she kept staring at .
When I instructed Ivin and my other n to start checking rooms, she finally spoke in a voice I could have missed if I wasn’t paying extra attention to details.
"Don’t break down any doors. Furniture’s expensive to replace these days." She pushed a container that had seen better days toward . It was filled with different keys with their room numbers written on the tags.
I shared the keys amongst my n. Minutes later, after an unsuccessful search, I finally opened the last door. Room 12. It looked like it hadn’t been used in days, but when I opened the door and t an empty room, sothing told to keep searching.
I went into the bathroom.
And there, glaring at , was the last thing I expected to see.
Nova’s new phone. And next to it, so used pregnancy test strips.
My hands shook as I picked one up. Two pink lines. Positive.
I checked the others. All positive.
All of them.
Nova was pregnant. With my child.
But there was no Nova.
I sank to the floor of that shitty motel bathroom, phone and tests clutched in my hands, and for the first ti in twenty years, I broke down.
She was pregnant. Scared. Alone in an unfamiliar place. And I hadn’t been there.
I stayed on that floor for I don’t know how long. Ivin eventually ca in, saw , and quietly backed out. He understood. This wasn’t sothing words could fix.
When I finally pulled myself together and walked out of that room, I had the phone and the tests with as evidence and a proof, a reminder of what I’d lost.
Back at the estate, I imdiately started making calls. I reached out to Professor Hendricks again and had him change Nova’s dismissal from rustication to a transfer. I arranged for another school, a better one. Set up an apartnt in her na. Paid her tuition for the remaining two years.
All she needed to do was show up.
I hired the best hackers in the world. Within twenty-four hours, every trace of that damning video was being scrubbed from the internet. Twitter, Instagram, porn sites, cloud storage—everything. My nymph’s slate would be clean.
I even drove to her godmother’s house with cash and dope, hoping the old woman would rember sothing, maybe a family property, a distant relative, anywhere Nova might run to. But the godmother just took the money and the drugs and looked at with glazed eyes that showed she didn’t care her goddaughter was missing.
I reached out to n who owed favors. Friends I could count on. Even enemies I had to negotiate with. Luca Vitellio was surprisingly helpful probably because he understood what it felt like to almost lose soone.
My n started checking locations. Small towns, big cities, anywhere within driving distance. There was no plane ticket in her na, I’d already checked. Her car was still missing, which ant she was still mobile.
That was my biggest regret. I’d bought that car with cash and signed it fully over to Nova imdiately. No tracker. No way to find it.
I’d wanted to give her freedom. Wanted her to feel like she owned sothing that was completely hers.
Now that freedom had made her disappear.
Three days felt like three years. I couldn’t function properly. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think about anything except where she might be. If she was safe. If she was still pregnant or if she’d already—
No. I couldn’t think about that.
I sat in my office, staring at the pregnancy tests I’d placed on my desk. Three positive tests. Three pieces of evidence that sowhere out there, the woman I loved was carrying my child.
And I had no idea where she was.
My phone rang. I grabbed it imdiately, hoping—
It was just Ivin. "Boss, we checked the neighboring states. No sign of the car. No hotel bookings under her na. Nothing."
"Keep looking," I said, my voice hoarse. "She’s out there sowhere. We just have to find her."
"Yes, sir."
I hung up and stared at those tests again.
Where are you, Nova? Where is our child?
And will I ever get the chance to tell you I’m sorry?
The not knowing was killing . Not knowing if she was safe. Not knowing if she’d keep the baby. Not knowing if I’d ever see her again.
I’d disowned my daughter and burned bridges just to try to make things right. But what good was any of it if Nova was gone?
My heart broke with every passing hour.
And all I could do was wait. And search. And hope that sohow, so way, I’d find her before it was too late.
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