Billionaire, Let's Divorce (Mark and Sydney) novel Chapter 422

ANASTASIA

In just a day, I've had to sit through and listen to so many more interrogations than I have in my entire life.

All the staff in the store and even bystanders were politely questioned. They were all asked if they had happened to come across a woman with a child. They'd ask along with the description of both the woman and Amie, but no one, not even a single person had seen them. It was as if they disappeared through thin air.

I couldn't stop the tears from rolling down my eyes.

Poor Amie. She had just managed to get out of months of being confined to a hospital bed only to get kidnapped by some unfortunate person. It was so unfair to her.

What could they possibly gain from this?

I wondered how she was doing now. Where did they keep her? Has she eaten? Is she thirsty? She must be cold.

I glanced at her medications that still lay untouched on the counter, waiting for its owner to use it. I had spent the night watching them and at some point, even Justin had begun to cry. He must have noticed that his big sister was not around anymore.

Aiden and Dennis were still going around, looking for ways to find her. In a matter of hours, they both had posters with Amie's pictures printed out with a ransom for whoever finds her. They pasted the posters at different locations.

They were surprisingly working fine together and I briefly wondered why it had to be Amie's disappearance that'd bring about this unity.

The store had been nice enough to send us a copy of the footage of the woman walking out. And whenever I wasn't trying to get Justin to stop crying or taking care of him, I was hunched over either my phone or laptop, eyes squinted as I peer at the video, trying to figure out who the woman was.

At some point, I even wondered if it was Clara. Was this another sick way of paying me back? I confided in Dennis. He stared at me for a long while. “Why then will she call me if it was her?“ He finally asked.

I shrugged. “So she doesn't appear as a suspect?“

He ruminated on my response for a while then he shook his head. “Nah, babe. It isn't Clara. I'm sure of it.“

Several hours into the second day of Amie's sudden disappearance, Dennis and I received a video on our respective phones.

I covered my mouth, tears rolling down my eyes as I watched Amie come on the screen.

“Mommy,“ she called softly. There was a tight smile on her lips, but I could tell, everyone of us could tell, that she was scared and she must have cried at some point as her eyes were puffy.

I was slightly relieved that she was doing fine. She had no scratch on her so they hadn't touched her or harmed her.

A few seconds into the video, someone put their face before the camera, blocking Amie from our view.

It was obviously the kidnapper and the kidnapper’s face was obscured and their voice was distorted with some intense edits.

“If you want her to return,“ the electronic voice said slowly, “bring the sum of five million dollars.“