Page 73 of His Obsession
“I’m working on that.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.”
“I couldn’t agree more. But you know nothing is going to stop me from finding her.”
For once, he doesn’t try to argue.
My phone buzzes with the first footage file. I open it, and Nico steps close enough to watch over my shoulder. The doorbell camera shows Gia approaching the porch, half-dressed and annoyed, exactly the way she looks now. The door opens. Val appears inside.
Then motion comes from the left, just outside the main angle. Gia goes down. Val lunges forward. A hand catches her arm. The camera catches Adrian’s profile for less than a second as he drags her out under the porch light. Enough to identify him.
Nico makes a wrecked sound. I close the video before he has to watch Adrian haul her away.
He grabs my wrist. “Show me the rest.”
“No.”
“Sebastian.”
“No.” I meet his eyes. “You don’t need that in your head.”
He looks ready to hit me, and for a moment, I almost let him. Then Gia makes a pained noise from the ambulance, and his attention snaps back to her.
“She needs you here,” I say.
His eyes cut back to mine. “Don’t do that. You’re not going to talk me out of looking for my sister.”
“She has a concussion at minimum. She’s scared, and she shouldn’t be alone.”
“My sister is missing.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t ask me to sit here.”
“I’m not asking because I think you want to. I’m asking because Val would never forgive either of us if Gia was left alone after this.”
That gets him.
He looks toward Gia. The paramedic is trying again to talk her into going to the hospital, and she’s shaking her head like stubbornness is a medical treatment.
Nico curses under his breath. “I hate when you’re right.”
“Take care of her,” I tell him. “That’s your only job right now. I’ll bring Val back. You have my word.”
He nods and walks toward Gia just as my phone buzzes again. Matteo’s name fills the screen.
“Tell me you have something,” I say.
“I have the sedan,” he says. “Traffic camera picked it up four blocks from Val’s house at 12:48, heading east. Plates changed again, but it’s the same car. Sending the route now.”
A map loads on my phone seconds later. The sedan cuts through side streets, avoids main intersections, then disappears near a stretch of older properties tucked into the hills. I zoom in.
“What’s there?” I ask.
“Old estates. Some occupied, most empty. Look at the one I marked.”
The pin sits over an abandoned mansion off a private road. The property is half hidden by trees, purchased three years ago through a holding company I recognize from one of Adrian’s files. I know it before Matteo says another word.
