Chapter 6

Ava’s POV

The message stayed on my screen long after I stopped reading it. This is only the beginning.

Those words should not have been enough to scare me, but somehow they carried more weight than any threat I had ever received. They sat there, staring back at me from my phone, filling my mind with possibilities I didn’t want to imagine.

My fingers tightened around the phone as I stared, waiting for another message to appear. I kept hoping whoever sent it would make a mistake, reveal something, anything that could give us a clue about where the girls were or who had taken them. But nothing came.

Only silence that made my skin crawl because I knew it wasn’t the peaceful kind. It was the kind that came before something terrible happened.

“Ava.” My head lifted. Nicholas stood a few feet away from me, his expression impossible to read. For a moment, I wondered how long he had been standing there watching me.

He looked exhausted. The perfect billionaire image he always carried with him had disappeared completely. His suit was still wrinkled from earlier, his tie hung loosely around his neck, and his eyes looked darker than they usually did. 

The coldness was still there, but beneath it was something I had never seen from him before. Fear.

Then his gaze dropped to my phone. “What is it?” 

I hesitated. Though I didn’t want to hide it from him, just that, I already knew what he would think. 

“I received a message.” 

His face hardened immediately. “From who?”

“I don’t know. It’s a restricted number.” I walked toward him and handed him the phone.

He read the message without changing his expression, and somehow that was worse. Nicholas Williams was a man who controlled everything around him. His emotions, his company, his reputation. He had built an entire empire by never allowing anyone to see him lose control.

But I noticed the smallest changes. The way his jaw tightened, the way his eyes turned colder, and the way his grip became firmer around my phone.

Someone had touched his children he cared about more than anything else. “What did you tell them?” he asked.

I blinked. “What?”

His eyes lifted from the screen. “What information did you give them?”

My breath caught. “You think I sent this?”

“No.” The answer came so quickly that for a moment, I almost believed him. Relief barely had time to touch my chest before his next words ruined it. “I don’t think you sent it.”

My shoulders relaxed slightly.

“But I think you know more than you’re telling me.” 

The small comfort disappeared. I stared at him, hurt spreading through my chest. “After everything, you still think I’m hiding something?”

His expression didn’t change. “I think my daughters are missing, and everyone connected to this situation needs to answer questions.”

“I am not a suspect.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You don’t have to.” My voice cracked slightly. “It’s written all over your face.”

Before he could respond, one of the detectives entered the living room. “Mr. Williams, we need to discuss the investigation.”

Nicholas looked away from me. That simple movement hurt more than I expected.

The living room had transformed into a command center. Detectives stood near the fireplace studying reports, security officers moved in and out with updates, and lawyers whispered urgently among themselves while phones continued ringing throughout the mansion.

The entire house felt like a movie scene. Nicholas walked toward the center of the room, and everyone immediately turned their attention toward him.

“My daughters have been missing for hours,” he said. His voice was calm, but there was something dangerous under that calmness. “I don’t care who has to answer for this. I don’t care how much money it costs. I don’t care how many people need to be questioned. I want them found.” No one spoke. Then his eyes moved toward me.

My stomach tightened. “Ava.” I froze. “Come here.”

Slowly, I walked toward him. The room became unbearably quiet. “Nicholas…” There was a warning in my voice, but he ignored it.

“You have twelve hours.”

I frowned. “What? You don’t mean that.”

“I do. You’ve got twelve fvcking hours for them to be found.”

My stomach twisted. “What does that mean?”

His expression remained unreadable. “When my daughters come home… we’re done.”

For a moment, I couldn’t process the words because they felt impossible. So after everything I had done, after five years of waking up every night when they cried.

After every fever I stayed awake through. Every scraped knee I cleaned, every bedtime story I read and nightmare they ran to me from. 

After becoming the only mother they had ever known. He could erase my place in their lives with one sentence. “You can’t do that.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “I can.”

“No.” My voice shook. “You don’t get to decide that my entire relationship with them disappears because something happened while I was gone.”

“They are my children.”

“And they are mine too!” The words escaped before I could stop them. The Silence settled over the room, and that moment they left my mouth, regret followed.

They were partially true, but I regretted because I knew exactly what those words meant to Nicholas. For a second, something painful crossed his face, like I had reminded him of something he was trying desperately not to feel.

Then the walls came back up. “Find them, Ava.” His voice lowered. “Then maybe we can talk about what happens next.”

I walked away before he could see the tears gathering in my eyes. I refused to break in front of him.

If he wanted answers, I would find them. And if he wanted proof, I would give it to him. For the next several hours, I retraced everything that had happened before the girls disappeared— the staff, security guards, schedule and every movement inside the mansion. 

Something was bothering me, but I couldn’t explain what it was. I walked into the security control room and stared at the wall of monitors.

The footage had been cut right before the kidnapping. At first, everyone assumed the system had malfunctioned, but something about it didn’t feel right. I studied the logs carefully, my eyes moving across the timeline. Then my brows pulled together. “No…” 

The security officer beside me looked over. “Miss Ava?”

I stepped closer to the screen. “The cameras didn’t fail.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?” I pointed at the timeline. “Look.”

Every monitor went offline at the exact same second. My heartbeat increased. “Someone didn’t damage the system.” I lowered my voice. “Someone controlled it.”

The officer’s expression changed. “That would require access.”

“Exactly.” Before we could continue, Gloria was brought back in for questioning. The poor woman looked like she hadn’t stopped crying since the girls vanished.

“I swear, Miss Ava,” she said, holding my hands tightly. “I only stepped away for a moment.”

“I know, Gloria.” 

She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “I should have protected them.”

I squeezed her hands. “This is not your fault.”

The detective cleared his throat. “Mrs. Gloria, think carefully. Did anything unusual happen before the children disappeared?”

She looked down, searching through her memories. At first, I thought she wouldn’t remember anything.

Then her eyes widened. “The doorbell.”

Everyone turned toward her. “What about the doorbell?” the detective asked.

“It rang.”

“When?”

“Just before I went upstairs.” She swallowed. “I thought it was strange because when I opened the door, nobody was there.”

My eyebrows pulled together. “Someone rang the bell and disappeared?”

She nodded slowly. “At the time, I thought maybe it was children playing a prank.” But now…It didn’t sound like a prank, it sounded like a well planned move.

At least we got a clue. The clock continued ticking. Eleven hours. Ten hours. Nine hours.

Just before midnight, the security room door suddenly opened. A man rushed inside carrying a tablet. “Mr. Williams.”

Nicholas stood immediately. “What?”

The security expert looked nervous. “We found something in the access logs.” Everyone gathered around him.

“What did you find?” Nicholas asked.

The man swallowed. “Someone entered the estate before the cameras went offline.”

My pulse fluttered. “Who?” The man looked between all of us. 

“That’s the problem.” He turned the screen toward us. “The person didn’t break in.”

Silence filled the room. “They used an authorized access card.”