Chapter 179
Finally, Aydan stopped before a hotel. “Lucille, do you want to get a room? Clean up and rest? I’ll buy you some fresh clothes.”
Lucille had just survived a kidnapping. When the knife pressed against her face, it wasn’t calmness but numb despair that took hold. Yet fear lingered–not of death, but of what might happen to her grandmother if she didn’t make it.
Now safe, the delayed shock set in. Her hands trembled faintly as she nodded. Where Aydan had gripped her wrist, angry red marks still tingled with pain.
“How did you find me?” Lucille asked.
It turned out Aydan had gone picking fresh berries in the neighboring province–his mother’s favorite. With modern logistics and her wealth, Mrs. Hurley could easily get anything delivered. But this was Aydan’s personal tradition: handpicking the freshest berries for her each year.
He’d returned to Seaston that morning with the pre–dawn harvest, booked a noon flight back to Capital City, and de- cided to drop two boxes at Lucille’s place since he was nearby. But calls to her apartment went unanswered.
As he carried the berries inside, two men wheeled a large appliance box out of the elevator. He knew roughly which floor Lucille lived on. Though showing up unannounced felt awkward, fresh berries spoiled quickly–even leaving them with her housekeeper would do.
But the elevator required keycard access. A kid returning to a floor two levels below Lucille’s swiped him up. Aydan took the stairs the rest of the way.
Emerging from the stairwell, he kept calling. Lucille’s phone rang inside her apartment–he could hear it. Her door stood ajar. No one answered his shouts. Strange.
Then he noticed the untouched food delivery at her doorstep. Something felt off–one of the men carrying that large box earlier wore a delivery uniform.
He bolted downstairs, giving chase.
But he was too late. The men and their box had vanished.
When asking shop owners outside the residential area, one remembered seeing a delivery driver loading a large box into a vehicle before driving off.
The shop had surveillance footage. He pleaded with the owner and offered payment to check the license plate and track the vehicle’s direction. Judging by the departure time on the recording–likely delayed by the heavy box–they hadn’t gotten far.
“I chased them right away. They only made it two intersections before I spotted their car. I tailed them all the way
here.”
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Aydan explained, “Still too slow. They’d already gone upstairs. I called the police, then found rigging ropes and old safety nets set up on the construction site. Only after securing everything did I dare call you.”
He used the word “call.”
A rather special way to “call,” indeed.
Lucille had actually spotted Aydan while being hauled up by the yellow–suited man–a flash of him dangling upside- down outside the twelfth floor.
That’s why she’d bolted toward the window, earning a threat from her captor.
She recognized Aydan’s hand signal–a coded gesture only their dance troupe understood: “Lift 1.”
It was their own numbering system, not taught in class. Any male lead who’d performed the Romantic Ballet Duet with her knew it.
Years later, even if she’d forgotten Aydan the understudy, those movements remained etched in her muscles.
So she clasped her hands behind her back and returned the signal: Message received.
Later, after Cedrick exchanged words with the thugs and Maricela was shoved toward him—just as the captors re- laxed–Aydan flashed the signal again. Ready.
Lucille leaped backward, arms outstretched.
Aydan, still inverted, seized her wrists.
Guided by his momentum, she executed a mid–air flip. Clumsy after all these years, but flawless coordination. She landed squarely on his back.