“Bianca,” I said carefully, “even if I wanted to do that, it would take weeks of legal filings, board meetings—”
“Then you’d better be very creative. Because the clock starts now.”
“Wait!” Damon shouted. “Let me talk to Ava again. Please.”
“Of course. Say goodbye to Daddy, sweetheart.”
“Daddy? I heard everything. And I want you to know—I remember now. I remember Mommy reading to me, and singing lullabies, and calling me her little star. Aunt Bianca showed me pictures.”
My heart stopped. Pictures. What pictures?
“I remember the real story,” Ava continued, her young voice steady and clear. “And I know who the liar is.”
The line went dead.
Damon and I stared at each other in the sudden silence.
“She remembers,” he whispered.
“Bianca’s using her. Showing her old photos, probably telling her some version of the truth mixed with lies.”
“But she called you Mom.”
“Because she wants us to know she’s on our side. Our eleven-year-old daughter is trying to help us while she’s being held hostage.” Pride and terror warred in my chest. “She’s so much braver than I was at her age.”
“She gets that from you.”
I looked at him in surprise.
“What? It’s true. I was always the one who played it safe, who worried about appearances. You were the one who took risks, who fought for what you believed in. Until…”
“Until you broke me.”
“Yeah. Until I broke you.” He met my eyes. “I’m sorry, Elise. For all of it. I know it doesn’t change anything, but I need you to know—I was wrong. About everything.”
“Why now? Because we need each other to save Ava?”
“Because I’ve spent five years lying to myself about who was really to blame for our marriage falling apart. And watching you tonight—seeing the woman you’ve become—I finally understand what I lost.”
Before I could respond, my phone buzzed with a text. From Bianca.
Tick tock, sister. 47 hours and 32 minutes. Oh, and don’t bother trying to trace this number. I learned from the best. – B
Attached was a photo: Ava sitting in what looked like a hotel room, holding today’s newspaper, looking directly at the camera. She appeared unharmed but serious.
And in the corner of the photo, barely visible, was something that made my blood freeze.
“Damon, look at this. The window behind her—do you recognize that view?”
He squinted at the phone screen. “That’s… that looks like the view from the Ritz Carlton. The penthouse level.”
“She’s not hiding. She’s flaunting this. She wants us to know exactly where she is.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because it’s a trap.” I stood, my mind racing. “She wants us to come. This whole thing—the kidnapping, the impossible demands, the location reveal—it’s designed to get us there.”
“Then we don’t go.”
“We have to go. She has Ava.”
“Elise, if it’s a trap—”
“Then we spring it on our terms.” I was already moving toward the door. “Call your lawyer. Wake him up. Find out what legal options we have for emergency asset transfers. I need to know if there’s any way to actually meet her demands.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get backup. If Bianca wants to play games with my family, she’s about to learn why I didn’t just survive the last five years—I conquered them.”
I paused at the door and looked back at him.
“Damon? When this is over, when Ava is safe—we’re going to have a very long conversation about the future. All of it. The divorce, custody, everything.”
“I know.”
“But right now, we’re partners. Agreed?”
He stood, and for the first time in years, when he looked at me I saw respect instead of dismissal.
“Agreed. Let’s bring our daughter home.”
As I left the penthouse, my phone was already ringing with calls to my security team, my lawyers, my most trusted advisors. Bianca thought she was playing chess with the desperate wife who’d once begged for scraps of love.
She was about to discover she’d declared war on a woman who’d learned to play for keeps.
And I never lost.
Six floors above us, in the Ritz Carlton penthouse
Ava sat quietly on the hotel room’s sofa, watching the woman who’d once been like a mother to her pace back and forth, muttering to herself.
“Aunt Bianca?” she said softly.
“What, sweetheart?”
“Why did you lie to me about my real mommy?”
Bianca stopped pacing. “I never lied to you.”
“You said she abandoned me. But she didn’t, did she? Daddy sent her away.”
“Your father and I protected you from someone who didn’t want to be a mother.”
“Then why does she have pictures of me on her desk?”
Bianca’s eyes narrowed. “What pictures?”
“In her office. I saw them when Daddy took me there. Pictures of me as a baby, my first steps, my birthday parties. If she didn’t want me, why would she keep pictures?”
“Guilt, probably.”
But Ava was eleven, not six. And she’d inherited her mother’s intelligence and her father’s ability to read people.
“You’re scared of her,” she said quietly. “That’s why you took me. You’re scared of what she became.”
“I’m not scared of anyone.”
“Then why are you shaking?”
Bianca looked down at her hands and quickly clenched them into fists.
“Go to bed, Ava. Tomorrow is going to be a very big day for our family.”
As Bianca disappeared into the bedroom, Ava quietly moved to the window and looked down at the city below. Somewhere out there, her parents were probably working together for the first time in her memory, trying to save her.
She smiled.
Maybe this kidnapping thing wasn’t so bad after all.
But as she turned away from the window, she caught sight of something that made her stomach drop.
On the hotel room desk were detailed blueprints of her mother’s office building.
And a gun.
