Page 204 of Marrying My Ex's Brother
I move past him and enter the house.
The main hall looks exactly the same as it did this morning. Marble floor. Dark stairs. Tall windows. Staff disappearing into doorways because they can feel what has entered with me.
Her absence is in the room like smoke.
I take the stairs two at a time.
Our bedroom door is open. Her phone sits on the vanity, face up, useless. Her pale dress is thrown over the chair. One drawer is half-open. The bathroom cabinet has been disturbed, towels not quite lined up the way the staff would leave them.
She changed clothes. She planned enough to leave her phone.
My jaw tightens.
I pick it up. Locked.
It doesn’t matter. My thumb moves over the screen, and for one stupid second, I think of her hands holding it at breakfast. Her annoyance. Her father’s messages. The way she pushed the phone away like she could push him out of her life by force.
“Find her father,” I tell Viktor, who has followed me upstairs. “Now.”
He speaks into his phone, then looks back at me. “Already trying.”
“What else?”
He hesitates. I hate hesitation.
“What else?”
“A maid may have seen her near the service corridor.”
“May have?”
“She’s scared.”
“Bring her.”
“No need,” he says carefully. “She says Anya was wearing a scarf. Plain coat. Dark trousers. She moved with the delivery van when the east gate opened.”
My hand closes around Anya’s phone. The screen cracks.
Viktor’s eyes flick down, then back up. “She left willingly,” he says.
I look around the room. Her brush on the vanity. A ribbon near the bed. One of my shirts folded badly on the chair because she never folds anything properly. Her presence is everywhere, and she’s not here.
Why?
Because I said no again?
Because she felt trapped?
I turn toward Viktor. “Her father’s phone.”
“What about it?”
“The messages were from him.”
Viktor’s expression narrows. “I’ll get the records,” he says, “but I checked a few hours ago and he’s where you put him up. He never left.”
Before he can move, my phone buzzes. Unknown number.
