Eight Years of Maybe One Day of I Do—Bride Swapped Deal With It novel Chapter 89

Chapter 11

Derek walked into an empty house and felt something fundamental break inside him.

He spent the next several weeks doing nothing but looking for Annie.

Work stopped mattering. Family dinners got skipped. He’d realize at ten PM he hadn’t eaten all day and couldn’t bring himself to care.

Most mornings he’d park outside Lily’s building or idle across from Annie’s parents’ gate, watching for any sign of her.

She never appeared.

His team was scattered across every major city now, burning through his money chasing ghosts. Annie had disappeared so thoroughly it was like she’d been erased.

Derek went through two packs of cigarettes a day. He stopped shaving. Stopped sleeping properly. People who saw him started looking worried.

He couldn’t stop trying to pinpoint the exact moment he’d lost her. Which conversation? Which lie? When had she started planning her escape?

And why couldn’t she have just fought with him? Screamed at him? Given him one chance to make it right?

After two weeks of his people finding nothing, Derek grabbed his passport.

He’d retrace their entire history. Every city they’d visited together. Every destination on those plane tickets she’d bought.

He’d search the whole damn planet if that’s what it took.

Months bled into each other after that. London, Tokyo, Paris, Sydney-different airports, same empty hotel rooms, same crushing disappointment when every lead went cold.

No Annie. Anywhere.

Eventually he stopped going back to their house. Being surrounded by her things when she wasn’t there made him feel like he was losing his

mind.

Part of him hated her for doing this.

The rest of him just missed her so badly he couldn’t function.

When he wasn’t actively searching, he drank until he blacked out. It was the only way to get any rest.

Simon barely saw him anymore. The kid was enrolled in school-mission accomplished, right? Wasn’t that supposed to be the whole point?

Victoria had fought him on sending Nina away, but Derek had physically dragged her to the courthouse and filed for divorce himself.

He had to keep his promise to Annie.

If she ever came home, he needed to be able to prove he’d done what he said. That they could get remarried immediately. That nothing would

stand between them.

Everyone told him to snap out of it. Stop destroying himself over someone who’d clearly moved on.

He wasn’t capable of listening.

Even Simon learned to stay quiet-especially after Derek lost it one night and forced the kid to kneel in the hallway until dawn, making him

repeat “Mom, Mom, Mom” until his voice went hoarse. Victoria had a panic attack outside the locked door.

Nina, her pregnancy now obvious, started avoiding Simon entirely. She was terrified Derek would follow through on his threat about the baby. so she just… withdrew.

The morning Simon was finally allowed back to the main estate, he found Nina at the breakfast table, one hand resting on her rounded belly while she scrolled through her phone.

She glanced up when he walked in, gave him a vague smile, then went back to her screen.

No hug. No “I missed you.” No fussing over whether he’d eaten.

That’s when it clicked for Simon.

He wasn’t really hers. Once she had a biological child, he’d be completely replaceable.

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