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“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” he spits, pressing his fist to my shoulder hard enough that Casper and Francis feel the need to close around the two of us.
“Or what?”
“Hey!” Arabella calls at us, breathless like she’s run a marathon to get back to us.
Something is seriously wrong from her paled face and panicked expression. She can barely talk as she pushes past Francis to look at me.
“Oh fuck.” She heaves for breath, holding her belly with both arms in a way that looks like she’s about to squat and drop the kid out. “G-George…”
“Where is she?” I look past her as Christopher instantly begins to check her over, searching for any sign of Georgina following after her, but the longer I stare back at the house, the more my gut twists.
If that wasn’t enough to tell me the time for figuring shit out is up, Arabella looks up at me with her chin trembling as she says, “I-I don’t…I don’t know.”
“Bella,” Casper grits out as I start for the house.
My heart is beating so hard in my chest that it’s bruising my ribs and punching the air from my lungs with every step I take and glance around me that comes up empty. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I bring up the tracker app, tapping on the refresh button for her necklace again and again, only for it to tell me that it can’t be found.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck…
I refresh the screen again, closing the app and opening it back up again as I race to the front door and find Cooper at his post with Ryan manning the door of the formal lounge. Both of them head straight to me.
“Georgina,” I tell them as I start opening every fucking door in the hallway, and they follow behind me. “Where the fuck is she?”
“I can’t get the fucking app to work,” Casper growls as he finds us. “Arabella said they were in the kitchen. She turned her back for a second, and George was gone.”
Fuck.
She can’t be gone.
This can’t be happening.
Except I feel it deep in my bones. My one fear has come to life. All my sins have finally come back to haunt me.
My precious swan is gone.
Chapter 27
FREDDIE
The world is spinning so fast around me that I can’t think as I stare at the white rose in my hand. Georgina’s rose, still perfectly intact and as beautiful as when I put it in her hair. The footage from the traffic cameras continues rolling in front of me. It doesn’t matter how many times I rewind and play, I find nothing—always fucking nothing—and the longer I stare at the screen and listen to Sarah jibe at me, the brighter my anger burns until it’s a full-on rage that I can’t see through anymore.
“See, there’s nothing! Isn’t it enough that my husband is gone? Why are you trying to take my daughter from me too?” Sarah pauses to the side of Harry’s desk, hands on her hips as she levels me with a scowl. “You’re as insane as your father was, you know that?”
Both Casper and Christopher are standing on either side of me, waiting for me to blow. I’m going to. It’s a guarantee from the way my blood is boiling in my veins, making it impossible to think about anything else but the fact that all of this has been under my nose all this time. Clear as day, and I missed it. I fucked up, and now Georgina is paying the price, and I just can’t think through all the fucking noise.
“It’s really fucking simple. Someone shuts her pie hole, or I’ll shut it for her…for good.”
Lucian tries to get her to sit down, but she refuses, and with his history, you’d think he’d find it really fucking easy to put the bitch back in her place. Still, all he can manage is some pitiful codswallop about how we’re not taking anyone away, we’re only trying to help everyone involved.
It’s a lie, and I don’t do this kind of placating bullshit.
“Let’s get one thing straight here: your daughter played me. That little cunt touched what’s mine, and now, I’m going to fucking gut her.” The words come out low enough that I’m disappointed with my delivery, but she gets the memo as she starts backing away, turning to Laura with a scowl.
“Look what you’ve done,” she spits at her, disgust twisting her face and making her green eyes glow. “Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?”
“Not my fault you picked the wrong fucking horse…Mother. I’m just doing what my dad would’ve wanted me to do…finish what he started.”
“Your father was a coward. A coward and a fraud, and he had it coming. Him and all the others that got her into this.” Sarah looks between Francis and Lucian, pulling her phone from the pocket of her dress. “Max knew what he was doing when he sent her to them. He knew that she was never going to come back to me, and now, by some miracle, she has…you’re not taking her away again.”
