Page 104 of Sinful Bride

"This morning around nine. She was in the living room reading." A pause. "Declan, the front door was locked from the inside. All the windows are secure. But she's not here."

My mind races through possibilities. She couldn't have left through the front—my men are stationed in the lobby. The windows don't open on the upper floors. Which means⁠—

"Service entrance," I say. "Check the logs. See if anyone came up today."

"On it."

I'm already grabbing my jacket and my gun. The elevator ride down feels like it takes hours instead of seconds. My heart pounds against my ribs, a sick feeling spreading through my chest. She ran.

Of course she ran. I locked her up like a prisoner, refused to listen to her explanations, treated her like the enemy. What the fuck did I expect, even if she did deserve it? But where would she go?

My teeth are clenched the entire ride home. The lobby is quiet when I get to my building. Two of my men straighten when they see me, reading the tension in my body. "Boss?"

"Elena left the building. I want to know how and when. Pull security footage. Now." They move immediately, one heading for the security office while the other pulls out his phone. I pace while I wait, my hands clenched into fists.

She could be anywhere. The city is massive, and she has money and connections, places she could hide. But she wouldn't just run without a plan. Elena doesn't do anything without thinking it through first. So where would she go?

My phone buzzes. It’s Finn. "Maintenance service came up at ten-thirty this morning," he says. "Building manager confirmed it was scheduled. HVAC inspection."

"Did they leave with anyone?"

"Working on it. I'm pulling street-camera footage now."

I close my eyes and think. If she used the maintenance visit to slip out, she would have gone down the service elevator. Out the back entrance. From there⁠—

"Focus on the alley behind the building," I tell Finn. "She would have called a car. Rideshare, probably. Something that wouldn't be traced back to her family. And track her phone."

"Got it."

The line goes dead. I stand in the middle of my lobby, surrounded by marble and glass and all the trappings of power, and feel completely fucking helpless.

She's out there somewhere. Alone, and vulnerable. Or she's with her family, and this was the plan all along. The thought makes my stomach turn, but I can't ignore it. I can't pretend she didn't stand over me with a gun three nights ago.

My phone goes off a little while later.

Finn: Can't track the phone. Wherever she is, it must have been destroyed.

My phone buzzes again a second later. This time it's a text from Finn with a screenshot attached—security footage from a camera across the street. The timestamp reads 10:47 AM.

Elena climbing into the back of a silver sedan. The license plate is visible.

I forward the image to three of my best men with a single instruction: Find this car. Find the driver. Bring him to the warehouse. Then I get in my own car and drive.

—

The warehouse is one of several properties I inherited from Lachlan—places that exist off the books where business can be conducted without witnesses. The driver is already there when I arrive, zip-tied to a chair in the middle of the concrete floor. He's young, maybe twenty-five, and he looks like he's never been in real trouble before.

He's about to learn what trouble looks like.

"Mr. Murphy." One of my newer men steps forward. "Found him at a coffee shop in Wicker Park. Wasn't hard to convince him to come with us."

I look at the driver. He's sweating, his eyes wide and darting between me and the three armed men standing around him. "What's your name?" I ask.

"J-Jason. Jason Miller." His voice shakes. "Look, man, I don't know what this is about, but I'm just a driver. I pick people up, I drop them off. That's it."

"You picked up a woman this morning, around ten-forty-five. From an alley.”

His face goes pale. "I—yeah. Yeah, I did. But she was just a fare. I didn't⁠—"