MARRIED TO THE DEVIL CEO

CHAPTER THREE

Chapter Three: No Trace

Nobody says the word kidnapping out loud.

But I can see it sitting behind everyone’s eyes.

Security men spread out through the house in pairs. Radios crackle against the quiet sound of string music that no one has thought to stop. It feels wrong that the violinist is still playing in the garden while my sister is missing.

“Turn that off,” I say to no one in particular.

Someone does.

The silence after that is worse.

Damien has not moved from the doorway of the bridal suite. His hands stay in his pockets. He watches his own security team walk through the house like he is watching the weather change, not like his own wedding just fell apart.

“You should be looking for her,” I say before I can stop myself.

He looks at me for the first time since he asked what happened.

“I am.”

“You’re standing in a doorway.”

“I’m watching. People who panic miss things. I would rather see what’s really here.”

“And what’s really here?”

His eyes move once to the dressing table. The ring. The blank paper, now inside a plastic bag one of his men is holding, like it’s proof of something.

“No struggle,” he says quietly. “No broken lock. The door was locked from the inside.”

My stomach drops again.

“You think she left on her own.”

“I think we don’t know anything yet,” he says. “So we stop guessing and start finding facts.”

I hate that he might be right. I hate more that some small part of me feels calmer just standing near him, even now.

By the time the police come, the garden looks the same as before, but it feels nothing like a wedding anymore. Officers walk down the same white rose path the guests walked an hour ago. Notebooks instead of champagne glasses.

They ask my mother the same questions in different ways. Did Amelia seem upset. Did she mention anyone new. Did she ever talk about not wanting to get married.

My mother’s hands twist together in her lap.

“She was happy,” she says. “She loved him.”

I don’t argue with her, even though I could. Amelia’s happy face has always been loud and easy to see. I hadn’t seen much of it these last few weeks. I told myself it was wedding stress. Now that thought sits heavy in my chest.

No one calls asking for money.

There is no note, only the blank paper.

The security cameras show Amelia walking into the room alone at 11:42. They never show her walking out. There is only one door, and it’s the one we broke open. There is a window too, but it’s a long drop onto stone, and the detective tells us gently that no one climbed out of it.

“So she’s still in the house,” I say.

“Or she didn’t leave through the window,” the detective says. That is not the same thing, and we both know it.

I find Damien on the terrace an hour later. He has a phone pressed to his ear, his voice low and sharp enough that I feel sorry for whoever is on the other end.

“I don’t care what the board thinks today. Cancel the noon meeting.” A pause. “I said cancel it.” He hangs up before they can argue back.

“Trouble at the office,” I say. “On your wedding day.”

“The office doesn’t stop just because my life is falling apart.” He says it plainly, not angrily, like a fact he stopped being upset about a long time ago.

“Neither does the crowd downstairs, it seems.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means three hundred people are still here. Half of them are investors. The other half are reporters pretending they’re not. Every one of them is deciding what story to tell about today.” He finally looks at me properly. “Whatever story spreads by tonight is the one people will believe. I would like some say in what that story is.”

I stare at him.

“My sister is missing, and you’re thinking about a story?”

Something moves across his face. Not anger. More like he is holding himself back from something.

“I am thinking about the same thing you are,” he says slowly. “I’m just not allowed to fall apart while I do it. It seems neither are you.” His eyes drop to my hands. I realize I have been holding myself together this whole time, arms wrapped around my own ribs, nails pressed hard enough to leave marks. “You haven’t cried yet.”

“I don’t have time to cry.”

“No,” he says. “You don’t.”

He doesn’t say it in a cruel way. It’s the first thing all day that makes me feel like he actually sees me, not just the mess around me.

The lawyers come before dinner. Two of them, dark suits, the kind of quiet that makes a room feel smaller. They ask to speak to my father, Damien, and after a short pause where they clearly think about whether I should be there too, me.

We sit in Damien’s study. The shelves are full of books he probably has not had time to read. The older lawyer opens a folder like he is about to tell us bad news from a doctor.

“The deal between Hart Logistics and Blackwood Holdings depends on this marriage happening today,” he says. “As written in the agreement.”

“We know that,” my father says, his voice tight.

“What you may not know is the penalty. If the wedding does not happen by midnight, Hart Logistics loses its shares in the deal. All of them.” He looks up. “That is not a delay, Mr. Hart. That is the end of it.”

My father’s face goes pale in a way I have never seen before. Not even at my grandmother’s funeral.

“There has to be some room here,” he says. “Amelia is missing. Surely that changes something.”

“The agreement does not allow for that,” the lawyer says, sounding almost sorry. Almost. “It was written this way on purpose, so no one could stall it.”

I understand then, in one cold moment, why no one downstairs has cancelled the wedding.

It was never going to be that easy.

I look at Damien. Some part of me hopes he will say something that makes this feel less impossible. He doesn’t. He watches the lawyer with the same still face he had while watching the search team, like he is already three steps ahead of a conversation the rest of us have not caught up to yet.

“There is a way through this,” he says finally.

Everyone turns to look at him.

“There is one part of the agreement. It protects the deal no matter which Hart daughter stands at the altar.”

The room goes quiet.

I feel it before he even finishes the sentence. I already know what he means.

“You mean me,” I say. My voice comes out flat. I don’t even sound scared. I just sound tired.

“Yes,” he says.

I laugh, but it is not a real laugh. It just comes out because I don’t know what else to do.

“No,” I say.

My father starts to speak. “Ava, listen to me.”

“No.” I say it louder this time. “My sister might be hurt. She might be scared somewhere right now. And all of you want me to put on her wedding dress and marry a man I met an hour ago?”

No one answers me.

That silence says enough.

I look at Damien. I want him to say something. I don’t even know what I want him to say. Maybe that this is all a joke. Maybe that there is another way out.

He says neither of those things.

“I’m not doing it,” I say, and I walk out of the room before anyone can stop me.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​