She Has His Eyes, and He’s Marrying My Stepsister Chapter 04

Chapter 4: Someone Took Her

Where is she?” I screamed. “Where is my daughter?”

Killian’s face went white.

“Wren. I’ve been in this building with you for ten minutes. Before that, I was on a call with Tokyo for three hour

“The school said-”

“Whoever took her used my name.” His voice dropped to something deadly. “It wasn’t me.”

My knees gave out.

Someone had my baby. And I didn’t know who.

Killian caught me before I hit the floor. His arms were like steel around me, and for one second, I let him hold me up.

Then he had his phone at his ear.

“Marcus. Sunnybrook Elementary. A five-year-old girl, dark curls, yellow backpack, signed out forty-five minutes ago under my name. Pull every traffic camera within two miles. Now.” He paused. “I don’t care what it costs. Find her.”

He hung up and looked at me. “Where would she go? If she was scared. If she got away.”

“I-I don’t-” I couldn’t think. All I could see was her face this morning. Her little arms around my neck.

“Wren. Look at me.” He grabbed my face in both hands. “Breathe. Where does she love to go?”

“The duck pond,” I gasped. “At Miller Park. We go every Sunday.”

“Then we go there first.”

He didn’t drive. He flew. His black car tore through red lights while I gripped the door handle and prayed out loud. His phone kept buzzing. He kept answering in short, cold sentences.

“A gray sedan. Heading east on Fifth.” His knuckles were white on the wheel. “Toward the park.”

Toward the park.

We screeched to a stop at the curb. I was out of the car before it stopped moving.

And there she was,

Sitting on a bench by the pond with a strawberry ice cream cone, swinging her little legs. Next to her was a man in a baseball cap. He was holding something small. A cotton swab. Reaching toward her mouth.

“IVY!”

The man’s head jerked up. He saw me. Then he saw Killian behind me.

He ran.

Killian went after him like a bullet. I didn’t care. I dropped to my knees in the wet grass and pulled my daughter into my arms so hard her ice cream smashed against my shirt.

“Mommy! You’re squishing me!”

“I know. I know, baby. I’m sorry.” I was sobbing. I couldn’t stop. “Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?”

“No. He said you sent him. He said we were gonna play a doctor game.” She frowned. “He bought me ice cream out he was kinda weird.”

Killian came back two minutes later, breathing hard, his jaw bleeding where a fist had clipped him. “He got into a car My men are tracking the plate.” He held up a plastic bag. “He dropped this.”

A DNA swab kit. And a cheap black phone.

Someone wanted proof of who Ivy’s father was. Badly enough to take her.

Ivy looked up at Killian. At the blood on his face. “Did you fight the bad man?”

His face softened in a way I’d never seen. “I did.”

“Did you win?”

“I always win.”

She considered that. “You have eyes like mine.”

Silence.

Killian slowly lowered himself onto the grass beside us. He looked at her the way you look at something you didn’t know you’d lost.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. “I do.”

I couldn’t lie anymore. Not after today.

“She’s yours,” I whispered. “She’s yours, Killian. And you told me to get rid of her.”

His head snapped toward me.

“I never got a single message from you, Wren. Not one.” His eyes were blazing. “So who the hell did you send it to?”