“There’s no privacy needed,” I said indifferently. “You talk here, or you don’t talk at all.”
Her throat bobbed. She breathed in and stepped further inside.
“I don’t know where Zoella is,” she began, “but I can try to help you find her.”
Blake snapped his head to her. “Lillian, don’t.”
She flinched at his tone but didn’t stop. “Weeks before she got married to you, I found something in her room. A fake ID. I figured it was nothing—something she used to get intoclubs when she was younger, perhaps. I didn’t know she’d…I didn’t think she’d actually use it to disappear.”
“What name?” I asked sharply.
She paused, glancing at Blake, then at me again. “Jennifer Monroe.”
Everything went silent in my head.
I walked over to the desk along the wall, extracting a file from a locked drawer that had all the details on her. Red covers marked sightings, alias possibilities, but Jennifer Monroe had not been on it.
Until now.
Lillian stepped closer, her voice quieter. “She hid it under the lining of her drawer. I only saw it once. I never told Blake. I should’ve. I didn’t know it would matter.”
“You’ve told me now,” I replied. “Thanks for the useful information.”
Blake fought the wires on his wrist, his voice raspy. “Please don’t hurt her. Whatever she’s done, she doesn’t deserve—
“She drugged me,” I cut in, my words slicing the air like a knife. “She lied to me, and she ran with my child in her belly.”
His eyes widened, his jaw dropping open for a second before he shut it close.
I stepped closer to him again, slow and purposeful, my words dripping with frost. “She made her decision. And now, I’ll make mine.”
“She’s young,” Blake said wildly. “Scared. She’s acting out, that’s all. Don’t make this into something it doesn’t need to be.”
“It already is,” I said to him, standing over him. “She’s in my world now. A part of my family. She can’t run away or escape me.”
Blake looked up at me with a hint of pleading. “If you ever had any feelings for her, you wouldn’t hurt her. She’s your wife.”
“That’s strange coming from you, Carter. If you really loved your daughter,” I responded coldly, “you would not have thrown her to the wolves.”
Blake’s mouth opened, but I didn’t allow him to say anything.
“She’s one of us now, whether you like it or not, and she’s not leaving the pack.”
He paled further, the fight draining from his face.
I turned to Kirill. “Get him out of my sight. Let him stew somewhere colder. No food. No water until I confirm everything this woman said is correct.”
“You can’t do that. I gave you the information you needed,” she cried. “Please let him go. He is still her father.”
“He’s nothing more than bait to me,” I said. “And I’m not letting him leave this place until I find my wife.”
Chapter 21 – Zoella
There were different kinds of silence. There was the quiet that followed laughter, soft and easy, like the world was catching its breath.
There was the silence of sleep, when even the walls felt like they’d dozed off.
And then there was the silence I was surrounded by now.
