Chapter 75 Children Missing
Eva's heart stopped.
The phone slipped from her hand. She ran, heart pounding, barely aware of her own breath.
The children's wing was quiet, and something about it felt off. The guards who should have been at the door were nowhere to be found. The hallway lights flickered, then went out.
She reached her children's room and flung the door open, breath caught in her throat.
The bed was empty. The sheets were already cold. It had been some time since they left the bed.
A single note sat on the pillow, written in handwriting that was both elegant and cruel.
I told you my patience has limits.
The children are safe just for now.
You have twenty-four hours to make the right choice.
—C
Eva screamed.
Her scream broke the silence, throwing the whole house into chaos.
Adrian was the first to reach her. His face turned pale when he saw the empty bed and the note in Eva's shaking hand.
Daniel came in behind him with his weapon drawn, followed by security staff who rushed through the wing, searching but finding nothing.
"Ethan's room," Eva gasped. "Check Ethan's room—"
But she already knew. The cold certainty had settled into her bones like poison.
Daniel came back a moment later, his face confirming her worst fears. "Both of them are nowhere to be found. There are no signs of struggle, no—"
"How?" Adrian's voice shook with anger. "How did she get past our security? We had twelve people guarding this wing. There were cameras, motion sensors, and biometric locks..."
"They are all disabled." A member of the security team came over, holding a tablet, his face pale. "Sir, the whole system stopped working for about four minutes starting at 2:47 AM. When it started working again, the children were gone."
"Four minutes." Adrian grabbed the tablet and stared at the data, wishing it would show him something else. "She took our children in four minutes."
Eva couldn't speak or breathe. The note crumpled in her fist as her legs gave out, but Adrian caught her before she fell.
Lily. Ethan. Their names echoed in her mind.
Her children. They were her whole world.
And they were gone, just like that.
"Eva. Eva, look at me." Adrian's hands were on her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. "We're going to get them back. Do you hear me? We are going to get them back."
"She has them." Eva's voice sounded empty. "She walked into our home and took our children as if it meant nothing. As if we meant nothing."
"She wants leverage. That means she needs them alive and unharmed." Adrian's jaw tightened. "This is a negotiating tactic. It's brutal, but still..."
"Don't." Eva pulled away from him, cold anger starting to replace her shock. "Don't try to rationalize this. Don't try to make it sound strategic." She held up the crumpled note. "She took my children. She shouldn't have touched my children. That's unacceptable. No strategy makes this acceptable."
"I'm not saying it's acceptable. What I'm saying is we can't fall apart." Eva noticed that Adrian's composure was slipping, his voice rough with suppressed emotion.
Eva stared at Adrian, the partner and love of her life. She caught his gaze; saw her own terror mirrored in his eyes, and rage simmering beneath his attempts at calm.
"If we lose our composure, Chatherine wins. And we can't let her win. Not this time, Eva."
He was right. Falling apart wouldn't bring Lily and Ethan back.
But staying calm while her children were in the hands of a monster?
That might be the hardest thing she would ever have to do.
Within an hour, the entire estate became a command center.
The Fransis and Cavanaugh families used every resource they had. Private security, law enforcement contacts, and intelligence teams all received the same order: find the children.
Marcus Cole arrived in person, leaving behind twenty-three years of hiding, as if it meant nothing.
"I should have guessed this," he said, his face gray with guilt. "I told you to check on the children, but I should have warned you sooner. I should have realized when Catherine showed you the nerve center..."
"Blame yourself later," Eva cut him off. "For now, what we need to focus on is solutions."
Solomon Grant had also come, his innocent face unusually serious. "My network is fully at your disposal. Every contact, every resource, every piece of information I have."
"The same goes for what we have," Eleanor Cavanaugh said. She arrived with a team of Cavanaugh security experts, her expression hard as stone. "No one takes Cavanaugh children. No one."
Richard sat in the corner, silently. He hadn't spoken since hearing the news. His hands were folded tightly in his lap, knuckles white, his gaze fixed on the far wall. There was a heaviness in his eyes—a grief held in check by sheer force of will. Yet his presence reminded everyone that this family had survived many hardships and every enemy before.
So, this time as well, they would survive, too.
They had to. There was no other choice.
"The note said we have twenty-four hours," Daniel said, pulling up a digital clock on the main screen. "That gives us until 3 AM tomorrow to 'make the right choice.' We need to figure out what that means."
"Make the right choice? It means that we surrender," Eva said flatly. "She wants our complete cooperation. We should give her everything she asked for and more."
"Which we can't do," Adrian said quietly.
"Can't we?" Eva turned to face him, and something dangerous flickered in her eyes. "She has our children, Adrian. Our children are somewhere out there, scared, wondering why we haven't come to rescue them. And you want to talk about what we can and can't do?"
"Eva, you are not in your right mindset. Think about it: if we surrender to her, we lose any leverage we have over her. We will become her mindless puppets, completely under her control."
"She will keep our children as permanent hostages." Adrian's voice was tight. "I want them back as much as you do. But giving Catherine everything she wants won't keep them safe. It will just make us all her captives."
"Then what do you suggest? Let the deadline pass and hope she doesn't hurt them?"
"I suggest we find them before the deadline."
Silence fell over the room.
"In less than twenty-four hours?" Leonard spoke up, his legal mind working through the impossibility. "We don't even know where to start looking."
"Yes, we do." Marcus Cole stepped forward and displayed a map on the main screen. "Catherine has only a few places that can safely hold important hostages. I've spent twenty years marking them on maps."
The map was covered in red markers, showing dozens of locations across the country and beyond.
"That's too many," Daniel said. "We can't search all of those in twenty-four hours."
"We don't have to search all of them. We just need to figure out which one she'd use."
"And how do we do that?"