Hired a Gigolo Got a Billionaire (Zoey and Christian) novel Chapter 703

Chapter 703

Nick’s POV

When we stepped out of the barrel cellar, the late afternoon air hit my face like I’d just come up from underwater.

Bella was in my arms, clinging to me the way children cling when the world turns dangerous. Her face was pressed into my neck, her small hands fisted in my shirt like I was a wall.

I didn’t have the strength to ask her to let go.

I didn’t want to.

In the courtyard, the lights were already on. The sun had fully dropped, leaving that last stretch of day that looks like the end of a movie. Except no movie ends with paperwork waiting in the middle of your property.

The police were still there.

Two men with the posture of people who do this every day. Clipboards. Phones. Authority filling the space.

When they saw me, both moved at the same time.

“Mr. Valemont,” the older one said. His tone was neutral. Not aggressive. Not kind. “Is the child all right?”

“She is,” I answered.

Bella lifted her face just enough to glance at them, then buried it in me again.

The officer nodded and looked toward Gwen.

She stood beside me, half a step back.

“We need to understand how she was located,” the officer continued, already writing. “To document the route and rule out other possibilities.”

I wanted to say the route is that my daughter disappeared and I almost lost my mind.

I swallowed it.

Gwen spoke before I could.

“I tracked down camera footage and arrival times,” she said, clear and controlled. “I requested the school recordings. Then I looked for witnesses near the gate.”

“Witnesses?” the officer asked.

“A gelato vendor,” Gwen explained. “He said she bought two and told him she planned to have one with her father.”

The officer wrote it down.

The second one wrote it too, but with that expression of someone jotting down gelato vendor and thinking, of course, why not.

My stomach tightened.

“And then?” the officer prompted.

Gwen hesitated for a fraction of a second, choosing her words.

“When I put the pieces together… I decided to check a place they used to go together,” she said.

“And you found the child there?” the officer asked quickly.

“Not exactly,” Gwen replied.

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I felt the pause settle over the courtyard. Not exactly doesn’t belong in reports. It doesn’t belong in authority. It doesn’t belong, in a world that prefers clean cause and effect.

“The rest was instinct,” she finished.

It was quick, but I saw it.

The younger officer looked up from his notes and made that subtle shift of his mouth that signals skepticism. The expression that says: convenient.

Convenient.

Like I’d chosen tonight to stage a story. Like Gwen had picked the estate to perform heroics. Like my daughter had chosen fear to manipulate adults.

My body went rigid.

Gwen noticed too.

I didn’t need to look at her to know. Still, I did.

Her eyes were steady and alert, saying the same thing I was thinking: they’re going to try to force a triangle into a circle.

I turned back to the officer.

“She was hiding in the cellar,” I said shortly. “She’s alive. She’s here.”

The officer wrote again.

“Mr. Valemont, we also need to understand the reason for the child’s flight,” he said, and this time his tone carried that careful, overly gentle inflection trained professionals use when the topic involves a child.

He crouched slightly, trying to get down to Bella’s level.

“Isabella… why did you leave school?”

Bella tightened her grip on my shirt.

I could feel her heart racing against my chest.

“Bella,” I said softly, more to reassure her than to demand an answer.

She slowly lifted her face.

“I wanted to go back to Daddy,” she said.

The words hit me with a mix of love and guilt I couldn’t hide.

The officer wrote it down.

“And why did you want to go back to your father?” he asked.

Bella went quiet.

Her eyes shifted to Gwen.

Not to me.

To Gwen.

That sent a strange jolt through me. Like my daughter had chosen the safe person for this. Like she understood that some things break if they’re said the wrong way.

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Gwen stepped forward, lowering her voice.

“Excuse me,” she said to the officer. “May I speak with you for a moment?”

She made a small gesture, asking him to step aside.

I held Bella tighter.

I didn’t like the idea of Gwen talking to the police without me hearing.

But I also knew what it was.

Protection.

Not saying certain things in front of Bella.

And maybe… not saying certain things in front of me before I had time to breathe.

The officer hesitated, then followed her.

Gwen walked him a few steps away, near the stone wall at the edge of the courtyard. I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn’t

hear the words.

Until I caught a fragment.

“…strange men… locked in her room…”

I went still

Gwen kept talking, lower now, and I couldn’t make out the rest.

He nodded once.

Then came back to me, his steps firmer.

“Mr. Valemont,” he said, and now his tone carried weight. “Given what has been reported, we will need to involve a social worker to speak with the child before any-”

“No.”

The word came out sharp. No polish. No manners.

The officer blinked.

“With all due respect, Officer,” I continued, forcing my voice to stay steady without giving up an inch, “it’s nighttime. My daughter is scared. We live two hours from here,”

He opened his mouth.

I didn’t let him.

“No one is talking to Bella tonight,” I said, and I felt her grip tighten when she heard her name. “I’m taking her home. To my home.”

“Mr. Valemont-”

“Tomorrow,” I cut in. “Tomorrow you can speak to whoever you need to, at whatever time, with whatever attorney needs to be present. Not tonight.”

I turned my back on them.

It was a simple movement, but it tasted like war.

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I felt their eyes on me.

I felt Gwen hesitate for half a second, like she might say something, then decide not to.

I walked to the car with Bella in my arms.

With every step, guilt tried to drag me back to that courtyard, like I had some obligation to be the perfect, cooperative father.

But I wasn’t perfect.

I was a father.

And my daughter was alive.

That was what mattered.

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