The Billionaire Ex-Wife's Return (Cynthia and Ethan) novel Chapter 272

Chapter 272

Cynthia's POV

If anyone ever asked me if I believed in miracles, I would tell them yes.

Absolutely, without question, yes.

Because what happened in those few seconds defied every law of physics and probability I'd ever learned.

One minute we were driving.

The next, we were flying.

The truck left the ground — actually left the ground — spinning through the air like a toy tossed by an angry child.

Time stretched impossibly thin.

I saw the pavement below us.

Saw the blue sky above.

Saw Miguel's hands frozen on the steering wheel.

Saw Carmen's face, twisted in terror.

And I thought, with absolute certainty, This is it.

This is how I die.

Not in the warehouse.

Not at Grace's hands.

But here, on a Missford street, so close to home I could probably walk there.

The truck completed its rotation — one full, impossible flip — and slammed back down onto the road.

Right side up.

The impact was brutal.

Metal shrieked. Glass shattered. The entire vehicle shuddered violently, the frame groaning like it might collapse in on itself.

But it held.

Somehow, impossibly, it held.

We sat there for a moment in stunned silence, the engine ticking as it cooled, the smell of burnt rubber and hot metal filling the air.

Then Carmen let out a shaky breath.

"¿Estamos vivos?" she whispered.

Are we alive?

"I think so," I said, my voice trembling.

We were getting surrounded by pedestrians who were worried about us involved in what looked like a drastic accident.

Miguel turned the key in the ignition, and I worried for him because it looked like he cared more about his truck than his life.

The truck gave back nothing.

Not even a sputter.

The truck was dead.

Completely, utterly dead.

But we weren't.

We weren't.

I started laughing — a half-hysterical sound that bordered on sobbing.

Because we'd just survived the impossible.

We'd flipped through the air and landed back on the road and none of us were hurt.

Not seriously, anyway.

I had a few cuts from broken glass, my head was throbbing from where I'd hit it earlier, and my entire body ached from being thrown around.

But I was alive.

We were all alive.

"Madre de Dios," Miguel muttered, crossing himself. "Es un milagro."

Mother of God. It's a miracle.

Outside, I could hear voices.

Shouting.

Running footsteps.

The doors of the truck were yanked open, and hands reached in to help us out.

"What?" I whispered.

"Oh my God," the woman said, her eyes going wide. "You are! You're the missing chef! The one who was kidnapped on Christmas!"

Suddenly, everyone was staring at me.

Really staring.

"That's her!" someone else shouted.

"It's Cynthia Laurent!"

"She's alive!"

The crowd surged forward, phones out, everyone talking at once.

"Where have you been?"

"Who took you?"

"Is it true you were kidnapped with Ethan Walker?"

"Where is he? Is he okay?"

I took a stumbling step backward, overwhelmed, my vision blurring.

The questions kept coming, overlapping, bleeding into each other until they were just noise — a wall of sound pressing in from every direction. I realised that my face had been on the news. That somewhere out there, my brothers had been looking for me, Nikolai had been looking for me, my mother had been looking for me. The thought of it cracked something open in my chest that I hadn't even realized I'd been holding shut.

This was real.

People knew I was missing.

My disappearance had made the news.

Carmen appeared beside me, her hand gripping my arm protectively.

"¡Déjenla en paz!" she shouted at the crowd. "Give her space!"

She turned to me, her expression a mixture of shock and understanding.

"No estabas mintiendo," she said quietly. "You weren't lying. About any of it."

"No," I said, tears streaming down my face now. "I wasn't."

One of the road workers was already on his radio, calling for police, calling for an ambulance, his voice urgent.

"We have Cynthia Cynclair," he was saying. "The missing woman. She's here. She's alive."

I sank down onto the curb, my legs finally giving out, my entire body shaking.