The Rise Of The Betrayed Luna (Amorah and Holmes) novel Chapter 199

Chapter 199

Chapter 199

The Kane Manor felt like a house holding its breath.

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Two days since the kidnapping. Two days of police coming and going, phones ringing at all hours, Alexander’s team spread across the city chasing leads that dissolved into nothing. Two days of Lucia sitting in rooms without knowing she’d walked into them, of Lucas staring at walls, of the whole house moving at half speed through a grief too large to process.

Ria found Lucas in the kitchen at six in the morning, both of them unable to sleep, both of them staring at nothing.

“I want to go to him,” Ria said. No preamble. No explanation needed.

Lucas looked at her across the kitchen table. “Mom and Dad said no.”

“I know what they said.” Ria wrapped both hands around her mug. “I also know the police questioned him and got nowhere. I know Mom confronted him and got nowhere. I know two days have passed and Monica and Lena are still gone.” She looked at Lucas. “We’re his biological children. We’re different from everyone else who’s walked through that door.”

Lucas was quiet for a long moment. He thought about Monica. About the way she laughed with her whole face. About the self–portrait she’d painted in therapy, the one with scars and flowers growing from them. About the fact that somewhere right now she was in a dark room with rope around her wrists because someone had decided to use her as a weapon.

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“We go together,” he said. “And we tell no one until we’re already there.”

They left while Alexander was on a call and Lucia was asleep for the first time in forty hours. Lucas drove. Neither of them spoke much. The city outside the windows was ordinary and indifferent, people going to work, buying coffee, living the normal Tuesday morning that felt like an insult.

Marco’s car was in the driveway. Lucas parked behind it and they/sat for a moment, both of them looking at the house.

“Whatever he says,” Ria said quietly, “we don’t leave until we get something.”

Lucas nodded and got out of the car.

Marco answered the door himself. He looked nothing like the composed man Lucia had described from the police station two days ago. His shirt was untucked and wrinkled like he’d slept in it. Dark circles pressed deep under his eyes. He hadn’t shaved. He looked like a man being quietly destroyed from the inside, and for just a moment, looking at her father’s ruined face, Ria almost felt something soften in her chest.

Then she thought about Monica tied to a chair and the feeling went away.

“Ria.” Marco’s voice came out hoarse. His eyes moved to Lucas. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk to you,” Ria said. “Just us. No lawyers. No police. No Mom or Alexander.”

Marco looked at them for a long moment, then stepped aside.

They followed him into the living room. Margaret wasn’t there. The house was very quiet. Marco sat down heavily on the couch and looked at his two eldest children standing in the middle of his living room and something in his face seemed to give way slightly.

“Two days,” Lucas said. “Monica and Lena have been gone for two days.”

“I know.” Marco’s voice was rough.

“Do you know what Monica does when she’s frightened?” Ria’s voice stayed controlled. “She hurts herself. When she can’t

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Chapter 199

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handle the fear, she finds ways to make the inside pain become outside pain because it’s the only thing that makes her feel like she can cope.” Ria’s jaw tightened. “She’s been in therapy for a year learning how not to do that. And right now she’s tied to a chair in a room we can’t find, and she is absolutely terrified.”

Marco pressed his hand over his mouth. His eyes went bright.

“Monica is thirteen years old.” Lucas stepped forward. “She still sleeps with the light on sometimes. She still asks Mom to sit with her when she has bad dreams. She is a little girl, and wherever she is right now, she is calling for people who aren’t coming.”

“I didn’t take them.” Marco’s voice came out thick. “I swear to you both, I didn’t arrange this.”

“Then tell us who did.” Ria’s voice was not a request.

“I don’t know.” Marco stood up, pacing to the window, turning his back to them. His shoulders were rigid. “I don’t know who did this. I’ve been trying to think. I’ve been going over every conversation, every person I’ve spoken to in the past months, trying to find something that connects.”

“And?” Lucas asked.

“Nothing.” The word fell out of him like a confession. “I have nothing.”

Ria looked at her brother. Lucas looked back at her. Then she did something she hadn’t planned to do when they left the house this morning.

She went to her knees.

Not slowly. She just dropped, both knees on Marco’s living room floor, and looked up at the man who had given her his eyes and his stubbornness and seventeen years of complicated, damaging, real fatherhood.

“Please.” Her voice came out as barely a sound. “If you know anything, if there is one single piece of information anywhere in your head that could help us find them, please give it to us. Please. Monica is your daughter too. She has your blood in her. Whatever has happened between you and Mom, whatever has happened between you and us, she is still your child and she needs you to help bring her home.”

Lucas came down beside her without hesitation, both of them on their knees in front of Marco, and the sight of it seemed to hit Marco somewhere below where defenses lived.

“Get up.” His voice cracked. “Please, get up.”

“Not until you give us something.” Lucas kept his voice steady even as tears ran freely down his face. “Not until you tell us something true.”

C

Marco turned from the window. His face was completely undone. He looked at his son and daughter kneeling on his floor and made a sound low in his throat that he immediately pressed his fist against to stop.

He sat down on the edge of the coffee table in front of them, close enough that Ria could see his hands shaking.

“I don’t know who took them,” he said again, but this time it sounded different. This time it sounded like a man saying the most helpless words he had ever spoken. “I genuinely don’t know. And I have been sitting in this house for two days unable to stop thinking about Monica.” His voice broke on her name. “She was just a baby when she said her first word. I was the one who heard it. Lucia was in the other room and Monica looked at me and said Dada and I nearly cried right there in the

kitchen.”

Ria’s tears came then, finally, the ones she’d been holding back since they walked through the door.

“She doesn’t call me that anymore.” Marco’s voice came out stripped and quiet. “She has no reason to. I gave her no reason

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Chapter 199

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But she’s still mine. Whatever I’ve done or failed to do, she is still my child and the thought of her being hurt somewhere because of something connected to me is-” He stopped. His jaw locked. He stared at the floor.

“Then help us find her.” Lucas voice came urgent. “Help us find both of them. Stop sitting in this house defending yourself and actually help.”

Marco looked at his son for a long moment

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