Seventeen Times She Came, Once I Stopped Caring Chapter 06

Seventeen Times She Came, Once I Stopped Caring Chapter 06

Ethan didn’t hear any of that.

He drove to the city apartment.

He pushed the door open. It was quiet.

Everything looked the same, but something was missing.

“Leah?” he called.

No answer.

“Leah, where are you?”

He called her phone. It went straight to voicemail.

He was blocked.

“This is crazy!” He stormed into the bedroom to change, but when he opened the closet—

All of Leah’s clothes were gone.

That wasn’t normal.

First blocked, then moved out. If this was a tantrum, it was a big one.

Now the panic hit.

He called mutual friends.

One of them answered with a snide tone. “Oh, look who finally remembers Leah exists. Don’t you have a little assistant to go hunt down her brother?”

Ethan cut him off. “I don’t have time for your crap. Where is Leah?”

“Not your business.” Click.

Ethan realized then—he’d been so consumed with work and Megan’s search that Leah had handled all their friendships.

Somewhere along the way, the friends had become closer to her than to him.

He ran his hands through his hair, thinking of places she might go.

He grabbed his keys.

Then his email chimed.

A scheduled message. From Leah.

His heart lurched. He smiled. “She’s mad now, but she’ll still come crawling back.”

He opened it.

And his blood ran cold.

His hands trembled. He couldn’t process what he was seeing.

Megan Hayes’s full file.

Her birth records. Proof she was an only child. Her cosmetic surgery history. Her altered age.

This seemingly innocent twenty-something had been married before. Had three abortions.

She’d offended a wealthy man’s wife, changed her face, and assumed a new identity.

She never had a brother. She even had a sister who was kind to her—and she and her father sold that sister to an old widower for cash. The sister died within days from abuse.

Ethan stared at the screen, his head spinning.

One word: Unbelievable.

He called his assistant.

“I need you to dig—” His voice cracked. “Find out who Megan really is. Whether she has a brother.”

The assistant paused. “Sir, you don’t have to. I’m sending you a video.”

A moment later, Ethan’s phone buzzed with a clip.

It showed Megan sitting up in a hospital bed, smoking, talking on the phone.

“Dad, stop rushing me. I almost have Ethan wrapped around my finger.”

“He trusts me completely. I made up a brother and he’s been looking for three years—you really think I can’t get him to marry me?”

“His fiancée? Please. She’s a total doormat. I’ve crashed her wedding over and over again and she’s never said a word. I don’t know what Ethan ever saw in her.”

“Relax. Once I marry him, his family’s money is as good as ours.”

“He’s about to walk down the aisle, but all I have to do is pick up the phone, and he’ll come running like a trained dog.”

“Gotta go—his assistant’s bringing me food. Stop calling me so much.”

The timestamp was from just now.

His assistant had arrived, stood outside, and recorded everything.

“Sir, you spent years chasing a ghost and wrecked wedding after wedding for a con artist. I mean this with all due respect—it wasn’t worth it.”