Chapter 4 - What Lily Heard at Night
Vanessa forced a laugh.
“This is absurd. Their biological mother is meeting them here.”
Ryker looked around the gate.
“Where?”
“She’s late.”
“What’s her name?”
Vanessa hesitated for half a second.
“Rachel.”
Lily’s fingers tightened around Owen’s wrist.
Ryker felt the movement against the back of his coat.
He turned slightly.
“Do you know Rachel?”
Lily shook her head.
Vanessa stepped forward.
“Stop questioning her. She’s confused.”
Ryker moved between them again.
Vanessa’s voice sharpened.
“Lily, come here.”
The child flinched so violently that several nearby passengers fell silent.
Ryker’s jaw tightened.
He crouched again.
“You don’t have to go anywhere,” he said. “But I need you to tell me one thing. Did someone say they were coming to get you?”
Lily stared at Vanessa.
Her chin trembled.
Then she leaned toward Ryker and whispered, “She said we’d disappear today.”
Vanessa’s face changed.
Only for an instant.
But Ryker saw it.
Marco saw it too.
“Children imagine things,” Vanessa said quickly. “Daniel filled their heads with dramatic nonsense.”
Owen suddenly spoke for the first time.
“Daddy said Mr. Ryker would come.”
The words struck the concourse like a dropped glass.
Ryker looked at him.
Owen stared at the initials inside the teddy bear’s paw.
“Daddy showed us your picture,” the boy murmured. “He said if something bad happened, find the man with the silver watch.”
Ryker looked down at his wrist.
Daniel had given him that watch on the day their company signed its first major contract.
Vanessa knew exactly what it meant.
Her panic surfaced in the quick rise of her chest.
“Daniel was paranoid,” she said.
Ryker stood slowly.
“Paranoid about what?”
She did not answer.
The boarding scanner beeped behind her.
A gate employee spoke quietly to Marco.
Then Marco approached Ryker and lowered his voice.
“The reservation was one-way to Zurich.”
Ryker’s gaze moved to Vanessa’s suitcase.
“Traveling alone?”
Marco nodded.
“No return ticket. No reservation for the children.”
Vanessa backed toward the scanner.
Ryker’s voice became dangerously calm.
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“Now tell us who you really planned to leave them with.”
👉 Vanessa claimed a social worker was coming—but the name she gave belonged to someone who had been dead for three years.
