Married to My Ex's Father

Chapter4

Chapter 4: The Man Who Vanished

"He disappeared again."

Victor's voice cut through the room before he'd even fully entered it, and every head turned toward him at once. Adrian rose from his chair slowly, his expression unreadable, while I felt my stomach drop for the second time that day.

"Explain," Adrian said.

"Security reached the gate before boarding closed. The plane never left. Ethan never got on it." Victor paused, glancing between us. "But his passport was scanned. Someone used his identity to check in."

"Then where is he?"

"That's the problem," Victor said. "The man who checked in wasn't Ethan. Different height, different build, security footage confirms it. Whoever it was walked through with Ethan's documents like they belonged to him."

I stared at Victor, waiting for the explanation that would make this make sense, but none came. "Someone impersonated him?"

"Someone wanted us to think he left the country," Victor said. "And it worked, for about six hours."

Adrian said nothing. He crossed to the window, adjusted the cufflink at his left wrist, and stood there long enough that I began to wonder if he'd stopped listening entirely. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, almost distant.

"Someone wants us chasing ghosts."

Silence followed, and I let it sit there for a moment before pushing back. "Ghosts?"

"Whoever did this doesn't need Ethan gone," he said. "They need us occupied. Hours spent chasing an airport lead are hours we're not spending on the real question, which is who wanted this wedding destroyed in the first place."

"Then we need to find him," I said. "Before they do."

Adrian's eyes moved to me, sharp and assessing. "We will. But not you."

"I'm coming with you."

"Amelia—"

"I'm already the most photographed woman in this country," I said, cutting him off before he could finish. "Every reporter in the city knows my face, and if someone wanted to use me against you, they wouldn't need to follow me to Ethan's apartment to do it. Hiding me here doesn't make me safer. It just makes me useless."

Victor exhaled sharply enough that I heard it. "This is exactly why I hate civilians."

"Victor," Adrian said, without even looking at him.

"Yes, sir." Victor's jaw tightened, but he said nothing further, and I got the distinct impression this wasn't the first time Adrian had needed exactly one word to end an argument.

Adrian studied me for a long moment, the same careful scrutiny he'd used since the cathedral, and whatever he found in my expression seemed to settle something for him. "Fine," he said. "But you stay close, and you do exactly what I say."

"I can agree to close," I said. "I'm not promising obedience."

Something flickered at the corner of his mouth, gone before I could be certain I'd seen it. "Noted."

The drive to Ethan's apartment passed mostly in silence, though it wasn't an uncomfortable one. Victor drove, his eyes flicking to the mirrors every few seconds with a vigilance that told me watching for danger had become instinct rather than choice. Adrian sat beside me, his hands folded loosely in his lap, and it was only when we stopped at a red light that I noticed the faint tremor in his fingers, barely visible, gone the moment he registered my glance and pressed his hand flat against his knee.

I said nothing. I only understood, in that small unguarded second, that the composure he wore so effortlessly cost him something the rest of us never saw.

"You should eat something," I said instead, nodding toward the untouched sandwich on the seat beside him. "You haven't eaten since this morning, have you?"

"I don't eat well during crises," he said, without turning from the window. "It's a bad habit."

"You have others?"

"A few." He didn't elaborate, and I didn't push.

Ethan's apartment door was unlocked when we arrived. Victor crouched to examine it first, running a finger along the frame. "No forced entry," he said. "Whoever left didn't need to break anything to get out. Which means they had a key, or they were never worried about being followed."

Inside, Adrian moved straight to the closet, standing before it a moment longer than necessary. "His suitcase is gone," he said. "The good one. Not the one he travels with for short trips."

I wandered toward the small writing desk near the window, drawn by something I couldn't immediately name, and found a stack of papers half-burned in the metal wastebasket beside it. I crouched down and lifted the least damaged piece free, the edges crumbling slightly beneath my fingers, and felt my breath catch when I recognized what remained of it.

A wedding invitation. Our wedding invitation. Most of the names had burned away entirely, but one had survived, curling at the edges, unmistakable.

Mine.

"Adrian," I said quietly, and he crossed the room in three steps, crouching beside me to look at what I'd found.

"Good catch," he said, and something about the simplicity of it settled warm in my chest, because he hadn't said it to comfort me. He'd said it because he meant it.

Victor called us into the small living room a few minutes later, a laptop open on the table displaying grainy security footage from the building's front entrance. "Traffic cam caught the hallway outside his door," he said, rewinding it back several hours. "Watch."

The footage showed Ethan entering the apartment alone, moving quickly, glancing over his shoulder more than once. Then, seconds later, another figure appeared in frame, indistinct, their face angled away from the camera. Just as the figure began to turn toward the lens, the footage froze completely, holding on a single distorted frame before jumping forward several seconds as though nothing had happened.

"That's not a glitch," Victor said slowly. "That's a gap. Someone erased exactly the moment we needed."

Adrian leaned closer to the screen, his expression darkening. "Someone with access to this building's system."

I stepped closer, studying the frozen frame before the gap, and felt recognition settle low in my stomach before reason caught up with it. A bracelet glinted at the visitor's wrist, delicate, silver, with a distinctive clasp shaped like an interlocking knot. My stomach tightened, because I knew I'd seen that bracelet countless times before, at galas, at dinners, catching the light every time its owner gestured while speaking.

I said nothing. Beside me, Adrian's hand moved slowly to his cufflink, adjusting it with deliberate care, and I understood without a single word that he'd recognized it too.

We left the apartment twenty minutes later, riding back toward the city in a silence heavier than before. Adrian sat with his hands folded, staring out the window at the passing lights, until finally he spoke.

"The proposal I made today," he said. "It wasn't enough."

I turned to face him. "What do you mean?"

"I want you to move into Ashford Manor."

For a moment, I only stared at him, and then, before I could stop it, a short, humorless laugh escaped me. "First your son abandoned me at the altar," I said. "Now his father wants to take me home instead. What kind of family am I walking into, Adrian?"

He didn't flinch from the question, though something in his expression sobered further. "The kind that's about to find out exactly what happened to him."

"And if he comes home while I'm living under your roof?"

Adrian looked out the window, his jaw set, his voice perfectly calm when he finally answered.

"Not if I can help it."