Chapter 42 Find Her
Grace backed out of the empty room, her heart pounding against her ribs. The sterile emptiness felt like a slap, it was confirmation of the abandonment she wasn’t ready to accept, despite everything.
She started moving down the hallway, her steps quick and unsteady. Her eyes darted from door to door, scanning room numbers, looking for any sign that might tell her where they’d gone.
“Excuse me,” Grace stopped a nurse who was emerging from a patient’s room. “Room 307. The patient who was there, Sarah Ainsley, where did she go?”
The nurse looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, I don’t have that information. You’d need to check with the reception.”
Grace didn’t wait for more. She moved to the next nurse she saw, then another, each time getting the same response. Each refusal made the panic in her chest tighten a little more.
They couldn’t just be gone. They couldn’t have just disappeared without any trace.
Despite everything, despite the lies and betrayal and the fact that they’d tried to sell her to Vance, Grace didn’t want Sarah to die. Didn’t want to imagine that frail woman somewhere without proper care, her cancer eating away at her while Grace had been too angry to check on her.
But worse of all… never getting to know the truth.
Grace found herself almost running through the hospital corridors now, her feet carrying her back toward the main floor. The fluorescent lights overhead seemed too bright, making her eyes water. Or maybe those were tears. She couldn’t tell anymore.
When she reached the reception desk, Grace had to take a moment to catch her breath. The woman behind the desk looked up with professional concern.
“Can I help you?”
“Sarah Ainsley,” Grace said, her words coming out rushed. “She was in room 307 but she’s not there anymore. I need to know where she is. Please.”
The receptionist’s fingers moved across her keyboard. “Are you family?”
“Yes… I’m her daughter.” The lie came easier now, even knowing it wasn’t entirely true.
More typing. Grace’s hands gripped the edge of the desk, her knuckles going white.
“Ah, yes. Mrs. Ainsley was transferred to a different ward three days ago. The private room she was in had its funding discontinued, so she was moved to one of our standard care rooms.”
Of course. The room had been paid for by Vance.
Vance had been funding Sarah’s treatment, paying for the private room, probably covering every other cost too. And when Grace had refused to marry him, when she’d disappeared and failed to show up to whatever twisted ceremony he’d planned, he’d pulled all of it.
Vance really was a heartless piece of shit.
Rage flared hot in Grace’s chest. Sarah was dying. Actually dying from cancer that was eating her alive from the inside. And Vance had looked at that suffering woman and decided that Grace’s refusal to be sold meant Sarah didn’t deserve treatment anymore.
But underneath the rage was something else. Something that felt uncomfortably like guilt.
Sarah had been moved from a private room to standard care because of Grace’s choices. Because Grace had run. Because Grace had refused to comply.
‘But I was kidnapped,’ Grace reminded herself fiercely. ‘Nearly sold to slavers. I almost died.’
The wedding was formerly scheduled for the time she was taken. Grace had missed it because she’d been unconscious in the back of a truck, not because she’d chosen to run away.
Not that she would have shown up anyway. Not that she would have willingly walked into that trap.
But at least with the matter having been completely out of her hands, Grace’s conscience could rest a little easier. She hadn’t chosen to abandon Sarah to worse care. It had been taken out of her control entirely.
Wow…
She was truly such a coward, making excuses at every chance she got just to avoid shouldering responsibilities and consequences.
“What room is she in now?” Grace asked.
The receptionist gave her directions to a different wing, a different floor. Grace thanked her and hurried away, following the signs through corridors that seemed to stretch on forever.
This wing was different from where Sarah had been before. The walls were the same sterile white but more scuffed, more worn. There were more people in the hallways, more noise. The rooms were smaller, most with multiple beds separated by thin curtains that offered the illusion of privacy without any of the reality.
Grace found the room number she’d been given and stood outside for a moment. Her hand hovered over the door handle as she tried to steady her breathing, tried to organize the chaos of thoughts and emotions swirling through her mind.
Then she pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The room was small and cramped with two beds separated by a flimsy curtain. Sarah was in the bed nearest the window, her small frame looking even more fragile than Grace remembered. Tubes and wires connected her to machines that beeped softly, monitoring vitals that were probably declining with each passing day.
And sitting in a plastic chair beside the bed was Grant.
He looked terrible. His skin had a grayish pallor that made him look corpse-like in the harsh fluorescent lighting. Dark shadows circled his eyes, so deep they looked like bruises. His shoulders were hunched, his whole body curved inward like he was trying to make himself smaller.
For a moment, seeing him like that, seeing Sarah lying there so still and pale, Grace forgot everything she’d come here to say.
Forgot the blood test results, the eighteen years of lies. She forgot the anger and betrayal and confusion.
All she could see were two people who looked broken. Defeated. Like they’d already lost whatever battle they’d been fighting.
But then Grace remembered why she was here, she remembered the paper in her bag that proved they’d been lying to her since birth. Remembered that she deserved answers.
The anger came rushing back.
“Who are my real parents?”
The words came out louder than Grace had intended. They seemed to echo in the small room, bouncing off the walls.
Grant didn’t turn to look at her. He just sat there, staring at Sarah’s sleeping face. His hands were clasped in his lap, fingers twisted together so tightly the knuckles had gone white.
“Why did you raise me as your daughter when I’m not yours? ” Grace demanded, moving further into the room. “Who am I really?”
Grant’s shoulders sagged even further, but he still didn’t turn around. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough and tired, like he’d aged years in the past few days.
“You didn’t marry him.”
The statement caught Grace off guard. “What?”
“Vance,” Grant said, his voice flat and emotionless. “The wedding was two days ago. You never showed up.”
Grace felt her jaw clench. “I was kidnapped. By werewolves who wanted to sell me. So no, I didn’t exactly make it to the ceremony.”
Grant made a sound that might have been a laugh but came out more like a wheeze. “Sarah might die now. Because you weren’t there. Because Vance pulled his funding when you didn’t show. I can’t afford the bills…”
The guilt hit Grace harder now. It felt like someone had reached into her ribcage and squeezed her heart.
“We might not have been your real parents,” Grant continued, finally turning to look at her. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken, staring at her with an intensity that made Grace want to take a step back. “But we raised you for eighteen years. We put food on your table. We kept a roof over your head. We worked ourselves to the bone to make sure you had everything you needed.”
He stood up slowly, like his joints hurt, and faced her fully. “We protected you when people came looking. We lied for you, we risked everything we had to keep you safe. Don’t we deserve some credit for that? Some acknowledgment? Even if you’re not ours by blood, we were still your family. We gave you everything.”
Grace’s fists clenched at her sides so tightly her nails bit into her palms. She could taste blood where she’d bitten down on her lip without realizing it.
‘Don’t let him guilt-trip you. Don’t let him make this your fault.’
“You tried to sell me,” Grace said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “You took Vance’s money and agreed to drug me so he could do whatever he wanted while I was unconscious. You sold your so-called daughter to pay your debts. So don’t stand there acting like you deserve gratitude for raising me. You threw that all away!”
Grant’s expression didn’t change. “We were trying to protect you.”
“By selling me to a rapist?” Grace’s voice rose despite her efforts to control it. “That’s your idea of protection?”
“You don’t understand what’s out there,” Grant said, and there was something desperate in his voice now. “You don’t know what’s hunting you. What will happen when they find you? Vance would have kept you safe. Would have claimed you as his. That would have protected you from the others.”
“Is Vance also—“
“No.” He cut her question off abruptly.
“Well, I never asked for his protection,” Grace said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t want any of it. And you never gave me a choice. Just decided to hand me over and hoped I’d be too drugged to fight.”
“Grace—”
She cut him off, “Did you ever consider, that maybe, just maybe, I— we would have been fine if I was told the truth?”
“We did what we had to do,” Grant said quietly.
“No,” Grace said. “You did what was easiest for you. What solved your problems without caring what it cost me.”
Silence fell between them and Grace could hear the machines monitoring Sarah’s vitals, could hear her own heart pounding in her ears.
“Who are my real parents?” Grace asked again, her voice quieter now but no less firm. “Tell me. I deserve to know.”
Grant stared at her for a long moment. Then he sank back into his chair, all the fight seeming to drain out of him.
“I only know your mother,” he said finally.
Grace waited, her whole body tense.
“And there’s only one way to find her,” Grant continued, not looking at Grace anymore. His eyes had gone back to Sarah’s sleeping form. “With the necklace.”
Grace’s blood ran cold. “The necklace I broke?”
Grant finally turned to look at her again, and there was something in his expression that might have been pity or might have been resignation.
“The necklace you broke,” he confirmed. “Yes.”