29. Get Rid of Tania

29. Get Rid of Tania

Panic hit her a half second later, terrified of the silence that might follow, and she pushed off the rail and skated away before he could say anything at all, forgetting her shawl on the bench.

Cecile laughed, calling out that she was being ridiculous, and grabbed the shawl to chase after her. She found Tania in the restroom instead, doubled over the sink.

Tania straightened and wiped her mouth. Blood, unmistakable, smeared across her hand.

Cecile went white. “Tania. What is happening to you?”

“Please. Keep this between us.”

Cecile looked like she might refuse outright, then spun and ran for the door instead, already calling for help. Tania started after her, but her phone rang first.

The detective.

“Mrs. Wilson,” he said, his voice strange, somewhere between fear and disbelief. “There are two. No, wait, I need to correct myself. They’re twins.”

 

• • •

 

“Twins,” Tania repeated, her mind racing. “What do you mean, twins? Whose—”

A hand clamped over her mouth from behind before she could finish. The phone slipped from her fingers and clattered against the tile. She fought hard, but whoever had her was stronger, dragging her backward out of the restroom before she could land a single solid hit.

Cecile arrived moments later with Caleb and the others in tow, and found only the shawl, the phone, and an empty room.

“Something’s wrong,” Cecile said, shaking Caleb’s arm hard. “She’s sick, Caleb. Something’s actually wrong with her.”

Ashton and Vivian exchanged a look, both of them clearly rattled.

“We need to find her right now,” Ashton said.

Caleb caught the look between them and filed it away for later, suspicion sharpening underneath the panic already climbing his throat. He left without another word, summoning every security guard in the building to tear the place apart.

No one had seen her leave. The cameras showed nothing at all.

 

• • •

 

Caleb called his bodyguards stationed in the city the moment the search came back empty.

“If it’s the same people who came after her before,” the head bodyguard said carefully, “they’d know how to move without cameras catching them.”

Caleb’s heart wouldn’t settle into any steady rhythm. Cecile’s panic kept looping back through his mind, along with the blood he now remembered seeing more than once on bathroom tile that no one had properly explained to him.

He grabbed his keys without deciding to and drove straight for the outskirts of the city, toward the one man who always seemed to know more than he let on.

He didn’t knock. “Where is Tania?”

 

• • •

 

His grandfather looked up, startled, then irritated. “Why are you asking me about that girl? When did you even arrive in this city?”

“Where is she.”

“I haven’t seen her. I don’t know why you’d think she’s here.” The old man’s irritation flared into something colder. “You’ve been in my city for weeks and didn’t think to visit your own grandfather.”

He launched into the same old grievances, Tania’s mother, the family’s ruin, Caleb’s mother in her grave. Then his voice cracked, unexpectedly, into something closer to grief.

“I thought you were the one good man left in this family,” he said. “My own second son and my own grandson turned on my firstborn. Betrayed him. Killed him. And still, here you are, letting that woman’s daughter into your bed.”

Caleb crossed the room and grabbed the old man’s collar before he’d finished speaking. “She’s pregnant. If anything happens to her, or to that baby, you’ll be joining your son in the ground sooner than you think.”

His grandfather stared at him, stunned, then slapped him hard across the face.

 

• • •

 

Caleb walked out without another word, his cheek still stinging, his mind too full of Tania to spare much thought for the old man’s grief.

The moment the door shut behind him, Mr. Stanton stepped out from the shadows of the hallway where he’d been listening the whole time.

“He’s blind,” Mr. Stanton said quietly. “Love’s made him blind. If you want to save what’s left of this family, there’s only one way left to do it.”

The old man’s eyes were still wet, but they hardened as he looked up.

“Get rid of Tania.”