Nine Months of Deception: The CEO's Hidden Heir

Chapter 7

Sebastian's Point of View

The sound of rain pounding against the glass windows of the fiftieth floor had become the sole soundtrack of my existence.

Four weeks had passed. Twenty-eight damned days since Gianna vanished.

During that time, Volkov Industries had operated with its usual mechanical coldness, but I had become a ticking time bomb.

I fired three executives for minuscule mistakes, canceled two mergers out of sheer boredom, and turned the office into a minefield where no one dared breathe too deeply.

My life had been reduced to a single burning need.

I wanted her back.

I was standing in front of the immense window, watching the blurred lights of Manhattan, when the doors to my office burst open.

No one, absolutely no one, entered my office without knocking.

I turned slowly, my muscles tense, ready to tear apart the i***t who had dared to interrupt me, but the words died in my throat when I saw Elias.

The young computer programmer was breathing heavily, his hair disheveled, and he was clutching his laptop to his chest as if it were the Holy Grail.

He wasn't trembling. For the first time in a month, there was a gleam of absolute triumph in his eyes behind his glasses.

"I got it," he said, breathless.

The whole world seemed to stop.

The constant hum of the city, the furious thump of my own blood, the storm outside... everything fell silent.

I closed the distance between us in three strides and snatched the laptop from his hands. Elias didn't even protest; he simply stepped aside and pointed at the screen with a trembling finger.

“As you ordered, Mr. Volkov, we purchased access to the private camera networks of every business within a hundred-kilometer radius of Blackwood,” Elias explained, speaking rapidly. “Gas stations, supermarkets, banks. I installed a facial recognition algorithm based on Miss Rossi’s bone structure, to ignore changes in hairstyle or hair color. She’s been living on cash, under the radar, impeccable. But today she made a mistake.”

My gaze was glued to the screen. It was a grainy, black-and-white image, taken from the top angle of a security camera at the entrance of a small rural clinic. The recording date was that very morning.

In the image, a woman walked out of the glass door, opening a dark umbrella.

She wore loose clothing, a thick wool cardigan that concealed her figure, and her hair, always pinned up in that prison of bobby pins, cascaded over her shoulders in wild, wet waves.

I had glanced up at the gray sky for barely a second to check the rain. It was just an instant, a fraction of a second before the umbrella hid her, but the software had captured and frozen it.

I zoomed in on the image, my fingers brushing the laptop screen.

It was her profile. The exact curve of that jawline I had kissed, the delicate line of her neck where I had buried my face to breathe in her damned vanilla scent.

My heart lurched violently in my chest, a dull, primal thud that left me breathless. It was her. My Gianna.

"The database matched the image ten minutes ago. It's a 100% biometric match, sir," Elias whispered, watching my reaction with a mixture of fascination and utter terror. "The clinic is just outside Blackwood. I checked the reception system. She checked in under the name Anna Smith for a routine appointment and paid in cash."

“Anna,” I murmured, savoring the false name on my lips. A dark, sharp, and merciless smile spread across my face. “How predictable you are, moya malenkaya ptichka (my little bird).”

Adrenaline flooded my veins like liquid fire. The exhaustion of the last four weeks vanished completely, replaced by a lethal energy, the same one a predator felt the instant its jaws snapped shut on its prey’s neck.

I had played well. I had endured nearly a month in the snow, challenging my strength, humbling my intellect, and driving me completely insane.

But the game was over.

I slammed the laptop shut and handed it back to Elias.

“Notify my pilot immediately,” I ordered, heading for the coat rack to grab my black cashmere coat. My voice was no longer a threatening growl; it was pure ice, deadly and calculating. “I want the private jet ready on the Teterboro airstrip in forty minutes. Tell them we flew to the nearest private airfield to Blackwood. I don’t care about the weather, I don’t care about flight restrictions. If anyone asks a single question, buy it or destroy it.”

“Understood, sir. Would you like me to send your security team ahead to secure her?”

I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to look at him. A possessive instinct twisted my gut so violently that I almost growled. Other men touching her? Other men scaring her before I arrived?

“No one touches what’s mine, Elias. No one comes within five kilometers of her,” I hissed, buttoning my coat with precise, mechanical movements. “I’ll go myself.”

As I walked toward the private elevator in my office, I felt it reclaim absolute control of my mind and body. The hunt was over, and the reconquest was beginning. Gianna Rossi was about to learn that running from me wasn’t an act of liberation, but simply a prolongation of the inevitable end: her, back in my arms, surrendering to the evidence that she belonged to me, body and soul.

The elevator doors closed, reflecting my tense face and my gray eyes, darkened by an unbreakable promise. Get ready, Gianna. The real storm was just about to begin.