8.

REED

I didn’t realize how long I’d been staring at the empty hallway until Travis cleared his throat beside me.

“She left through the east exit,” he said. “Do you want me to follow?”

I hesitated. Something about that woman had lingered with me… the way she held herself like she expected the world to hit her again at any moment. She looked like someone who needed help. Someone who needed saving.

But I had a board meeting in twenty minutes.

“Find out who she is,” I finally said.

“Yes, Boss.”

I left the hospital, half-expecting Travis to call me with a name. Instead, an hour later, he reported that she’d slipped into thin air. No sign of her in any ward, lobby, side door… nothing.

It wasn’t the first mystery haunting my thoughts.

By the time my meeting ended, the weight of everything else I’d been avoiding came crashing back. The woman I’d raped weeks ago. The memory made my stomach tighten every time it crawled up. I hadn’t meant to touch her. I’d been drunk, drugged, really by friends who thought it would “help me forget” the breakup Sidney had thrown at me that morning.

When she walked into that dim room, I’d thought she was Sidney. My mind had been a mess, and I’d committed the most shameful act of my life. The next day, Sidney proved she’d already been in Italy, laughing in bikini photos. So the woman I’d touched wasn’t her. She was a stranger.

I hired a private investigator immediately, but she vanished just as cleanly as the woman from the hospital. Two ghosts in the same month. My conscience was running out of space.

My driver pulled into Grandma’s estate while I was still replaying old mistakes.

She met me on the terrace, teacup in hand, pretending she wasn’t fragile. “You’re staying for dinner,” she said in a tone that left no room for argument.

“Grandma, I have another....”

“No,” she cut in. “Sit. You look thin. It worries me.”

I sat. Not because she commanded it, but because she was the only person I loved enough to obey without question.

She heaped food onto my plate while fussing about my cheeks, my schedule, my stress levels, every excuse she could find to avoid talking about her health. Eventually, I took her hand.

“What did the doctor say?”

She deflected at first, but I wasn’t a child anymore. When she finally sighed, something inside me braced.

“Five months,” she whispered. “If things go well, I just might outlive even all these doctors.”

My grip tightened around her fingers. She, somehow, used her free hand to wipe my cheek even though I hadn’t realized a tear had escaped.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I hate leaving you alone.”

“You’re not leaving,” I said automatically, but she only shook her head.

There was something else she wanted to say, and I knew what it was before she asked.

“Did you find her… Emily?”

Emily Sinclair… the little girl my mother adored, the daughter of my father’s bodyguard who died saving him. Grandma had given her to her father after the accident, expecting they’d stay in touch.

They didn’t.

“No,” I said. “My team can’t even confirm she’s still in the country.”

Grandma looked down, regret shadowing her features. “I promised her mother I’d protect her. And I broke that promise.”

She reached for her tablet with trembling hands and pulled up a picture. Emily, maybe six or seven, smiling up at her mother. And around the little girl’s hand my mother’s jade necklace.

“She only wore it on special occasions,” Grandma said quietly. “Your mother loved Emily’s mother. She gave her that necklace herself.”

The image hit something raw in me.

“Find her,” Grandma whispered. “Please. Before I go.”

When I left her house that night, I leaned against my car for a moment, letting the night settle around me. Everything felt like it was closing in.

Three women.

The one who vanished from the hospital.

The one I raped and couldn’t find.

And Emily, the girl my mother would have wanted me to protect.

I had people searching for all of them. But every trail went cold.

And I couldn’t shake the feeling that time was running out.