Beast Tamer's Rebirth National Treasure Edition novel Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Shawn took Natalie back to her apartment near the studio so she could rest.

He was a busy star himself, but he’d pushed his own work aside so Natalie could try this life.

Now he had to rush back to his own responsibilities, or pay the price.

They stood talking at her door for a while.

The moment Shawn turned toward the elevator, the soft look on Natalie’s face vanished.

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She picked up her phone and typed a message, a slow smile spreading across her face. “You’ll pay for this, Sierra. Every single bit of it,” she muttered to herself.

*****

At the airport, Vivian held Sierra’s hand a moment longer. “Sierra; all I ever heard was bad stories about you. I thought you’d be hard to like.

“But after these last few weeks, I knew how wrong I was. I genuinely like you. You should come over for dinner soon. I’d like to introduce you to some friends in the business.”

The truth was, Sierra was leaving the business for good once her contract was over.

But looking at Vivian’s earnest kindness now, she couldn’t bring it up. “I’d love to join you,” Sierra said instead, offering a quiet nod.

Vivian’s face brightened, her gaze softening with unmistakable warmth. “If you ever need anything, you come to me. I’ll help you sort it out.”

Her tone then shifted to one of quiet outrage. “Your family is something else. They don’t even know what you studied. My boy got into a trade school, and I was just happy he had a path.

“If he’d gotten into a top-tier university like yours, I’d have told the world. So when the Sterlings come to their senses one day and beg you to come back, you remember this conversation and walk away.”

Sierra simply watched her, momentarily taken aback by the complete transformation in Vivian’s demeanor.

Sierra couldn’t believe this was the same Vivian she’d seen on the show.

“It’s all an act,” Vivian explained, seeing Sierra’s surprise. “I kept making waves on set before. My manager told me to play the quiet type for the cameras. Honestly, I’m pretty relaxed.”

She paused, her expression softening with a hint of worry. “You won’t think less of me now, will you?”

“Never,” Sierra said softly. “I always know you mean well.”

Vivian offered her driver to take Sierra home.

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Chapter 36

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Sierra thought about Payton, who’d been at training for two weeks and was probably mad, so she accepted, hoping to reach it sooner.

She was just about to call the school when her phone rang. It was Payton’s trainer.

The voice on the other end was frantic. “Ms. Sterling, it’s about Payton. When we came to take it out this morning, its kennel was empty. The cameras show someone took it after sedating it. We’re at the police station now.”

The words hit Sierra like a physical blow, leaving her mind momentarily empty.

Next to her, Vivian noticed the color drain from Sierra’s face and the tremor in her hands. “Sierra? What is it?” she asked, her voice full of worry.

She had to shake Sierra gently to bring her back.

Sierra blinked hard, took a sharp breath to steady herself, and then lifted the phone again.

“I’m going straight to the station from the airport,” she said, her voice tight. “Send me the footage. Now.”

On the other end, the kennel worker kept apologizing, her voice thick with remorse.

Sierra pushed her anger down. Assigning blame could come later.

She pulled up the video on her phone. It showed a man slipping into the kennel after midnight. He moved from one enclosure to the next, checking his phone until he found the right one and stopped in front of Payton’s pen.

It was clear he knew exactly what he was looking for.

Payton struggled, but the man was ready with a drugged cloth. His face stayed hidden under a baseball cap as he smothered the muzzle.

On the screen, Payton struggled a moment, and then stopped moving.

Suddenly, Sierra hit pause, her eyes fixed on the man in the footage, whose face was half hidden.

Vivian told the driver to step on it, and they raced to the police station.

The staff and the owner were already there. They started apologizing as soon as Sierra walked in.

She ignored them and went to an officer, showing him a screenshot on her phone. “I know him. He’s Charles Ford, a rich student at Northbel University.”

She then gave them everything about Charles, saving the police a lot of time on their investigation.

What she didn’t say was that, this time around, she wasn’t supposed to know Charles at all.

She recognized him at once. In her previous life, Charles had been a client who tried to assault her after getting her drunk.

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Chapter 36

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She had woken just in time. In a desperate move, she broke a cup, cut her own leg, and stood by the open window, threatening to take her own life to make him back away.

When he refused to leave, she made the choice to jump, breaking her leg in the fall. She was only saved because a passerby saw her and called for help.

By the time she got out of the hospital, he had already cleared the evidence and taken his story to the press. He told them she had made the first move, and then used the headlines to publicly confess his feelings for Natalie.

The story took off. Online, people were quick to call Sierra a homewrecker and a slut.

After Sierra died, Natalie came to her grave just to gloat. That was how Sierra learned it had all been a setup.

Charles had known Natalie for years and was obsessed with her. A few careful words from Natalie were all it took to send him after Sierra.

The memory brought a cold, sharp clarity to Sierra’s eyes. She had nearly buried the memory of Charles. Now, it seemed he had come looking for trouble himself.

If Payton was harmed, she wouldn’t stop with Charles. She would bring ruin to everyone who bore his name.

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14:52 Sat, Jan