Chapter 103: They Found Her

>VenzWhen I arrived at Alisha’s company, several men were already waiting for me at the entrance, and judging by the way they immediately straightened when I stepped through the doors, they had clearly been expecting me, but none of them wasted my time with unnecessary questions or explanations because one of them simply gestured for me to follow before leading me through the building, the others falling into step behind him until we finally stopped in front of a closed office door.

"The Madam was waiting for you."

The man said it quietly before turning around, and the others followed him without another word, leaving me standing alone in the corridor.

I stared at the door for a moment, my fingers tightening around the phone still in my hand as Alisha’s voice replayed in my head.

We found something in Eleina’s office.

She had sounded shaken.

That was what bothered me.

Alisha had spent enough years around people like us to know how to keep her composure even when things became ugly, so if she had sounded like that over the phone, then whatever she had found was important enough to make even her hesitate before telling me.

I reached for the doorknob.

My hand was cold, but I didn’t notice it until the metal touched my skin, and for a brief moment I simply stood there with my fingers wrapped around it, my mind running through every possibility of what could be waiting for me on the other side, because after everything that had happened tonight, I had learned better than to expect good news.

I twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

Alisha was sitting at the table at the front of the office, and the bodyguard who was almost always beside her stood behind her with his arms relaxed at his sides, his attention immediately shifting toward me when I entered, but neither of them spoke.

My eyes went straight to the nameplate on the table.

Eleina.

The sight of my wife’s kidnapper’s name sitting there made my jaw tighten.

I had spent days searching for that woman, chasing every lead that surfaced only for it to disappear before I could reach her, and now that we finally had something that could lead us to Mallory, I didn’t have the patience for silence.

"What’s the matter?" I asked as I crossed the room, my footsteps steady as I approached the table. "What’s more important than finding my wife right now?"

I stopped in front of Alisha, looking down at her.

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she stared at me for several seconds, and there was something in her eyes that made me pause, because I had seen Alisha angry before, but this was different, as though she had been carrying something inside her since the moment she discovered it and had spent the entire journey here trying to decide how to tell me.

A single picture was on the table, facedown as she pushed it toward me without a single word, and my brow knitted together as I stared at it for a few seconds before shifting my gaze back to her, trying to understand why she was suddenly acting this way when only moments ago she had been practically begging me to save her sisters as though finding them was the only thing in the world that mattered to her.

"Do you recognize the woman in the picture?" she asked without explaining anything, her eyes remaining fixed on me as though the answer to that one question was all she needed from me at that moment.

I looked at the picture on the table for a few more seconds, contemplating whether I should even pick it up when something about the way she was looking at me told me that whatever was inside it was important, so I finally reached for it and turned it over, only for my brow to furrow the moment my eyes fell upon the photograph, confusion settling across my face as memories I had spent years forcing into the darkest corners of my mind began resurfacing one after another.

I slowly looked at Alisha, my expression hardening as I held the photograph between my fingers.

"Why do you have this?"

In my hand was a picture of me and Trisha, the only photograph we had ever taken together, and one that should not have existed anywhere outside my possession because I had been the only person who ever held a copy of it.

Alisha didn’t answer.

Instead, her eyes remained fixed on the photograph, and it was only then that I noticed the subtle movement of her hands on the table, one hand slowly moving over the other as she clasped them together tightly, as though she were trying to stop them from trembling.

That small movement caught my attention more than her silence did. I knew the kind of woman she is, she would never tremble in front of me out of fear even if I was to put a gun in her head.

Whatever Alisha had discovered had shaken her badly enough that she was struggling to keep herself together.

"Tell me," she finally said, her voice quieter than before as she lifted her eyes toward me. "How did you know her?"

I didn’t answer immediately.

My eyes dropped back to the photograph, my thumb brushing unconsciously against its edge as I stared at Trisha’s face, trying to understand how a photograph that should have been known only to me had somehow ended up in Eleina’s possession and how she was related to Alisha.

"And where is she right now?" Alisha asked.

She still hadn’t answered my question.

My eyes lifted toward her again, and this time I noticed the way her fingers tightened around each other beneath the table, her knuckles slowly paling as she tried to keep them from shaking.

"Please."

That was when the tears finally began to fall down her face, sliding silently over her cheeks as she struggled to keep herself together, and I looked toward her bodyguard, expecting some kind of explanation, but he only looked at her with an expression of quiet understanding, as though he already knew what had brought her to this point.

"Where is she?"

"How did you know her?" I pressed instead of answering her question, my hands slamming against the table hard enough to make the photograph tremble between us. "And what does this have to do with finding my wife?"

"She was..."

Alisha wasn’t able to finish her sentence when my phone suddenly rang, and my heart jumped the moment I saw Kaizer’s name flashing across the screen, making me answer the call before I could even think about what he might have to say.

"I found Mallory’s location!"

He didn’t explain anything beyond those words, but that was all I needed to hear as my pulse quickened and I immediately turned toward Alisha, my grip tightening around the phone.

"They found where my wife is."