บททั้งหมดของ Lovely Little Liar : บทที่ 61 - บทที่ 70

NIKOLAI Pov She was gone. That was the information Petrov delivered to me in the flat, careful voice because he understood that what he was saying was going to produce a reaction and was bracing for it. Ms. Costa had left the search perimeter on foot. Approximately forty minutes ago. They had assumed she had gone back to the cabin. She had not gone back to the cabin. I looked at him. "And you're telling me this now.". He said nothing. There was nothing useful to say. I turned away from him before I said something that went beyond the situation, which was already bad enough without adding to it. Noah was missing. Arianna was missing. It was dark, and the search team I had doubled was combing land they couldn't fully see, and somewhere between the property and wherever she had gone she had slipped through every layer of security I had put in place as cleanly as if it hadn't existed. "Hospitals," I said. "Every one within thirty kilometres. Check whether a child matching his des

NIKOLAI POV The radio wouldn't stop. Every station I passed through had different anchors, same information, the same footage playing on a loop because breaking news in a small region ran on repetition. Arianna Costa who was presumed dead was found alive in a Vllage police station. My phone had given up trying to ring individually and had moved into a sustained vibration that I could feel through my jacket pocket like a second pulse. My father and Arande, with three numbers I recognized as board members who had no business calling me at this hour about anything. I reached into my pocket and turned it face down on the passenger seat without looking at the screen. The station appeared in my headlights. Two officers were positioned outside, positioned with self-conscious alertness. I parked and got out and walked toward the entrance and one of them stepped into my path. "Sir, this is an active…" I walked past him. The station went quiet the moment I came through the door. Six peop

Nikolas PovThe road was just a blur. I knew the trees were whipping past, the dark pressing in, headlights slicing through the same damn stretch of countryside I’d driven four times in the last two days, but none of it really landed. My hands were on the wheel. The car was moving. That was about all I could handle right now.*Nothing must happen to her.*I pushed the gas harder.The cabin finally appeared through the trees. I killed the engine and was out of the car before it even stopped rolling, gravel crunching under my shoes as I crossed to the door. One of the guards opened it without a word.The nurse looked up when I stepped into the room.Arianna didn’t.She was lying on the bed with an IV in her arm, face turned slightly toward the window. Her breathing was shallow, and too even. The lamp on the nightstand cast this soft glow over her, and she looked... smaller. Not in size, but like something inside her had finally given up the fight. The kind of smallness that hits you whe

NOAH PovHis head hurt.That was the first thing he noticed. A dull, pressing weight behind his eyes that made the light coming through the small dirty window feel too sharp. He blinked, tried to lift his hand to rub his face, and couldn't. Something held his wrists behind the back of the chair, rough and tight, and that was when the fear arrived, flooding his chest."Mama." His voice came out smaller than he meant it to. He tried again, louder. "Mama. Where are you? Mama!"Nobody answered.Five men occupied the room. None of them looked at him. They were gathered around a table near the far wall, cards spread between them, a bottle of something dark passing from hand to hand. Cigarette smoke drifted in slow coils toward the ceiling. The cabin smelled of smoke and alcohol, and Noah pressed his lips together and looked around the room because his mother had always told him, when you're scared, look first. Look at everything. Think.He looked.One door. Two windows, both small, and both

THIRD PERSONThe boardroom held its silence for a while after Nikolai left.Konstantin sat at the head of the table, looking still like a man who was too proud to show that he was rattled, but the muscle working in his jaw gave him away. He looked at the door Nikolai had walked through and said nothing, his fingers resting flat on the polished wood.Arande watched him.She had been watching him the entire meeting, really. She understood Konstantin Morozov in a way she suspected few people did, because she had spent five years studying him as carefully as she had studied his son, and what she had learned was that his approval was not given freely but once given was almost impossible to withdraw.She softened her expression before she spoke. "Don't be angry with him."Konstantin looked at her."He's under a great deal of pressure," she continued, her voice calm. "Whatever you think of how he handled this morning, that's not who he usually is. You know that."Something shifted in Konstan