Chapter 13
Old Agreements / New Clauses
Once she was securely back in Warren Manor, Monica took a moment to collect herself into the woman everyone expected her to be before calling Ethan and telling him everything.
Well, almost everything. There were certain details he didn’t need to know.
“Thailand…” Ethan was too silent for too long.What I would give to have him in this room with me.Yet he refused to come over out of fear of someone seeing him during such a pivotal time in the Warrens’ collective lives.Just let me know you’re still there, Ethan.This man was her biggest rock outside of Henry, and not just because they were former lovers. He was her true best friend and the only other man who could come close to understanding her and Henry’s unconditional love for their daughter, even though he wasn’t yet a father.
“Are you there?” Monica whispered from the safety of her couch.
“Yes. Sorry. I was just thinking.” Ethan cleared his throat. “Trying to think of a connection between that family and Thailand.”
“Eva is somewhere trying to figure out the same thing. Guess we’re lucky because she used to oversee the family’s mines in Southeast Asia before we sold them. She’s familiar with the region and her family’s connection to it, at least.”
“Good. I’m sorry that this is happening, Monica. It was bad enough when your mother-in-law kidnapped Abigail to France. But Thailand? At least they have a treaty with this country.”
“I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. I still haven’t even told Henry yet. I haven’t heard from him at all.” That realization only dawned on her then. Monica had been so busy rushing from here to there in search of information about her daughter’s whereabouts that she had forgotten that Henry should have been in Nice by now. He was heading straight to the Beaumonts’ villa to demand answers if Abigail wasn’t there… and if what Paisley said was right, then no, Abigail was already gone.
Ethan offered to look into it as well, although he couldn’t promise anything.
“Thank you.” Monica was crying again, her cheeks so hot, then cold, that she wondered what was the point of trying to keep the tears from coming. “I feel like a chicken running around with her head cut off. What if I don’t find her in time, Ethan? What if Isabella is in this for the long haul and isn’t about to be found? She’s so…crazy!”
“She must know she’s in huge trouble if she’s caught. She’s not coming back from this.”
“I want her in prison for the rest of her life,” Monica growled into her phone. “If not dead, then imprisoned forlife.I want her so scared of coming back to America that I never see her again!I just…” She banged her head back on the couch. “I just need Abby. Good God, I just need to find her. Now.”
“I’ll keep you posted. Keep me updated, too.”
Monica tossed her phone on the other side of the couch when she hung up. After closing her eyes and pressing her fingers to her forehead, she found more tears around her eyes and hated herself for being so weak.Why am I still here?Her nerves begged her to get off that couch andrun. Why am I not on a plane to Thailand right now?Because she didn’t knowwherein that large country to go. Looking up the Beaumonts’ secret holiday compound wasn’t as easy as using Google Maps or calling her best friends for the latest scoop. This wasn’t crashing someone’s wedding or upstaging a rival at her birthday party. This wasAbigail’s life.
Because no matter how Monica parsed it, she was afraid for her daughter’s future. Abigail may be young enough to still believe she was on a fun getaway with Grandma, but things would change once she realized she couldn’t see her parents. That they were in hiding. That her name had possibly changed, and that Grandma had no intention of going back to America.
That they were country-hopping to stay ahead of investigations. Abigail’s passport was still good for a few more years. As long as Isabella was smart about what countries she smuggled her granddaughter into… the authorities, let alone the other Warrens, might never know.
And then what? Abigail was raised in isolation? Brainwashed to become her grandmother’s perfectrealdaughter, because her actual children turned out to be such disappointments? Because they didn’t adhere to her ideas of what it meant to be a Warren?
She could hear Isabella now.“You and Henry can have another one. This one will not be corrupted, though.”
As Monica sank deeper into despair, her phone buzzed. She could not bring herself to check her messages. Life was mucheasier right now if she simply buried her face in her couch pillow and sobbed.
It took Elson shaking her arm to get Monica to come up for air, her nose dripping and her eyes swollen from tears.
“My apologies, but it’s urgent, Mrs. Warren,” the butler said. “Eva sent me over to fetch you. She’s asked me to bring you to where she’s currently ‘interrogating’ her father.”
“Gerald’s here?” Had he come back from Montana? Already? “Did Eva get something out of him?”
“I’m not sure, ma’am. She simply said it’s urgent.”
Knowing Eva, it was more along the lines of,“Drag her ass back here if you have to!”but Monica got the point. She agreed to go with Elson just as soon as she finished wiping off her face and making herself presentable to her father-in-law, who knew more than he let on.
She checked her phone on the way out of her living room. Sure enough, it was from Eva, and Gerald was on the verge of squealing.
The only nice thing Monica could say about her father-in-law, the man who had plunged his family into dire debt with Jackson Lyle, was that he was motivated by one obvious thing.
Monica had seen it the first time they met a decade ago. She had dedicated most of her adult life to anticipating and serving the needs of men, after all, so why wouldn’t someone as uninspired as Gerald Warren be the easiest book in the world to read? Because while many men she knew were driven by power, lust, and greed, Gerald was past all of that and simply begged to be left alone to his own floundering devices.
The whole reason he and Isabella had moved to a ranch out in Montana was to get away from the creditors and to let their children deal with the worst of it. From what Monica understood, it was all Gerald’s plan: the man wanted to retire, and he wanted it to be an isolated retirement where nobody would bother him. He was over the urban, socialite lifestyle and desired to simply invite select people to visit him in Montana when it suited him. Old friends and business associates who would smoke his cigars, play at his custom poker table and affirm that the mountain views were exquisite and the snow perfect for outdoor adventure.
