Chapter 29
ELLA
The door shut with a heavy sound, like the car itself understood this wasn’t a casual trip. The sky split open the second we pulled away from The Sanctuary.
Rain came down hard and sudden, a violent curtain that erased the clean lines of Paris and turned everything into motion and shadow. Water streaked down the glass in restless rivulets, distorting streetlights into molten gold. Thunder rolled low and close.
It felt like the city was reacting.
Or maybe I was just looking for something outside of myself to blame.
I sat back against the leather seat, Rose’s sweater wrapped tight around my body, Kane’s thigh pressed solid against mine. The contact anchored me. If he hadn’t been there, I might have dissolved into the storm.
The driver navigated the slick streets with professional calm, tires slicing through water, engine steady.
Inside the vehicle, it was warm. Controlled.
Inside my chest, nothing was.
Sabine.
The image of her at the kitchen table that morning came back with brutal clarity. The crayon clutched in her small fingers. The way she’d looked up at me, assessing. Curious. The way she’d stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my legs as if she’d already decided I belonged to her.
Five years old.
I had known her for less than a day.
And somehow it felt like I had failed her.
“I should have gone with him,” I said quietly, staring at the rain racing each other down the window. “I should have been there.”
Kane didn’t immediately respond. He was angled slightly toward the glass, posture alert, eyes scanning reflections in passing cars, intersections, side streets. Even in crisis, he was methodical. Evaluating.
“You couldn’t have predicted this,” he said finally.
“That doesn’t make it feel better.”
Thunder cracked overhead, close enough that the vibration hummed through the chassis of the SUV.
I closed my eyes and let the guilt rise.
I had imagined children for myself one day. A future version of my life where there was noise in the kitchen and small shoes by the door and someone who called me Mom.
I had imagined Rose having children first. Of course, she would. She was the stable one. The careful one. The one who planned.
We were supposed to do it together.
I’d pictured cousins growing up in parallel. Holiday chaos. Inside jokes. Summer trips that turned into traditions. Rose and I standing side by side, watching our children become something neither of us had fully been.
Instead, she had done it alone. And I had arrived just in time to lose her daughter.
The thought lodged deep and sharp.
“She hugged me,” I whispered.
Kane’s gaze shifted to me then.
“She trusted me.”
“You didn’t break that trust,” he said evenly.
“She’s gone.”
His hand covered mine.
“She’s not gone,” he corrected.
The distinction mattered.
Because gone meant permanent. Gone meant the kind of loss that didn’t reverse itself. Gone meant funerals and paperwork and learning how to live around an absence.
Sabine wasn’t gone.
She was somewhere.
The rain intensified, slamming against the windshield so hard the wipers struggled to keep up. The city blurred into streaks of gray and silver. We were moving fast, but it didn’t feel fast enough.
My parents didn’t even know she existed.
The thought landed with a strange, almost unbearable weight.
Charles and Susan Rousseau—careful, composed, predictably cautious Charles and Susan—had a granddaughter.
Five years old.
Dark hair. Rose’s eyes.
And they didn’t know.
If something happened to Sabine—if this spiraled into something irreversible—my parents would never even understand what they’d lost.
My mother would keep setting a place for Rose in her mind, not knowing there had once been a smaller chair at the table she should have pulled out.
My father would continue talking about legacy and lineage and the importance of family continuity without realizing it had already branched without his permission.
They had a granddaughter.
And they might never meet her.
My throat tightened painfully.
My parents could be suffocating in their carefulness. In their need for order. For appearances. For making sure everything aligned with the version of life they believed was correct.
Dad especially.
He had cut off his extended family here in France years ago—some old argument he refused to share with us. He’d decided that distance was cleaner. Safer. That certain branches of the family tree were better left unwatered.
And because he was decisive and confident and convinced he was right, we had followed.
No cousins in France. No messy reunions. No complicated connections.
Just us.
Controlled.
Contained.
But for all their rigidity, for all the times I’d felt boxed in by their expectations, they were not cruel people.
They were not heartless.
They would want to know Sabine.
They would want to hold her. To hear her laugh. To argue about whether she had Rose’s stubbornness or étienne’s calm. My mother would buy her books immediately. My father would pretend to be reserved and then soften the second she took his hand.
They would be stunned.
Hurt.
Confused.
But they would love her.
And right now, they didn’t even know she was missing.
I fumbled for my phone instinctively, the urge to call them rising like panic.
Mom would answer on the first ring. She always did when it was me calling from abroad.
“Ella? Is everything all right?”
How would I even begin?
Hi, Mom. Surprise, you have a granddaughter. She’s five. Rose never told you. And now she’s been taken from school.
The words tangled in my throat before I could even imagine saying them.
There was too much to explain. Too much context missing. I didn’t even fully understand what was happening yet.
Calling them now would only detonate something I couldn’t control from thousands of miles away.
My mother would spiral. My father would try to take command from a continent away. Flights would be booked. Accusations would fly. And if this resolved quickly, it would be chaos for nothing.
I couldn’t afford chaos. Not right now. Not when every ounce of clarity mattered.
I lowered the phone back into my lap.
I would tell them. I would tell them everything. But not until I knew Sabine was safe. Not until I could say the words without my voice breaking.
The rain kept coming, relentless, drumming against the glass.
We were moving fast. But it still didn’t feel fast enough.
Kane’s phone vibrated in his hand.
He glanced at the screen.
Ellsworth.
He answered right away.
“Yes.”
His voice changed when he was speaking to Ellsworth. It became narrower. Focused to a point.
I watched his face while he listened. Watched the shift happen in real time.
His jaw tightened first. Then his eyes sharpened in a way that made my stomach drop.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
My pulse climbed into my throat.
“What?” I demanded, my voice already thin.
He didn’t look at me.
“Understood,” he said quietly.
He ended the call.
The silence in the car felt heavier than the thunder outside.
“Kane.”
He turned to me fully now.
“We’re not going to étienne’s.”
The words didn’t make sense.
“What do you mean?”
“Ellsworth has someone watching Rose’s building.”
Of course, he did.
Of course, this place had layers I still didn’t understand.
“And?”
“A man just showed up.”
My lungs forgot how to work.
“With a child.”
The world tilted.
“Sabine?”
“Maybe.”
The name came out of me like a prayer and a curse at the same time.
“Turn around,” Kane instructed the driver calmly, already bracing himself against the seat as the SUV slowed and pivoted through rain-slick streets.
My thoughts scrambled, colliding.
“A man,” I repeated. “Who?”
Kane held my gaze for a beat longer than necessary.
“We don’t know yet. Ellsworth is working to ID him.”
I swallowed.
“I should call the police,” I said suddenly. “They should meet us at the apartment.”
The word hung there.
Kidnapping.
The driver’s hands tightened slightly on the wheel as we took a sharp turn, tires hissing against wet pavement.
Kane considered my suggestion without dismissing it.
“You can call,” he said evenly. “But once you do, this becomes official. Statements. Reports. Questions about why Rose had two lives.”
“I don’t care about that,” I snapped.
“I know you don’t. But you will care if Sabine is standing in that apartment and sees police surrounding the building. If she hears sirens. If she thinks she did something wrong.”
The image hit hard.
Sabine’s small face. Confused. Scared.
She was five.
“She’s already scared,” I whispered.
“Yes,” Kane agreed quietly. “Which is why we walk in calm first.”
His hand slid over mine again, steady and warm.
The certainty in his tone didn’t feel like bravado. It felt like a promise he had already decided to keep.
I looked at him.
He was focused. Like the storm outside was weather and nothing more.
My stomach twisted as we turned onto the familiar street.
The SUV slowed.
Rose’s building loomed ahead, stone facade slick with rain, windows dark and reflective.
No flashing lights.
No crowd.
Just quiet tension.
My pulse roared in my ears.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I admitted softly.
Kane turned to face me fully.
“You breathe,” he said. “You let me handle the edges.”
The edges.
The parts that cut.
“You focus on her.”
The car came to a stop.
My hand hovered near the door handle, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. Everything looked the same as it had that morning.
Ordinary.
Which felt obscene. Sabine was inside. With a man.
The thought jolted something sharp through me.
“étienne,” I breathed.
Kane was already out of the car, scanning the sidewalk, the parked vehicles, the upper windows. He opened my door and extended a hand without looking at me, instinctive and steady.
I took it.
“Someone needs to call him,” I said quickly, words tumbling over each other. “He thinks she’s missing. He thinks—”
My voice fractured.
He thinks she’s gone.
étienne was probably still at the school. Probably pacing. Probably replaying the moment the administrator told him someone had signed her out.
He would be unraveling.
“She’s here,” I insisted, already fumbling for my phone. “He needs to know she’s here. He needs to know she’s safe.”
Safe.
The word caught in my chest as soon as I said it.
Kane’s hand closed gently but firmly around my wrist before I could unlock the screen.
“We don’t know that yet,” he said.
The calm in his voice didn’t match the violence of my pulse.
“The man came here, to Rose’s apartment,” I argued. “Ellsworth said he had a child. That has to be Sabine.”
“It probably is,” Kane agreed.
Probably.
The word felt like ice water.
“But until we walk through that door and see for ourselves,” he continued evenly, “we don’t confirm anything.”
My throat tightened.
“You think he’d hurt her?”
“I think we don’t assume.”
His eyes held mine, steady and unflinching. Not cruel. Not cold. Just anchored in reality.
“If you call étienne right now and tell him she’s safe,” Kane went on, “and we walk in and the situation is volatile, you’ll have to call him back and say something different.”
The image hit hard.
étienne’s relief collapsing into fresh panic.
Hope yanked away.
I swallowed.
“He deserves to know,” I whispered.
“Yes,” Kane said softly. “He does. And he will.”
A beat.
“But not until we’re certain.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
Every instinct in me wanted to dial. To relieve someone else’s suffering for even a second. To give him something solid to hold onto.
I wanted that for him.
I wanted that for all of us.
But Kane was right.
I didn’t know what was happening inside that apartment.
I didn’t know what state Sabine was in.
“Five minutes,” I said, more to myself than to Kane. “We’ll know in five minutes.”
Kane nodded once.
“Then, you call.”
The rain fell against the hood of the SUV behind us. The street remained still, like it was holding its breath.
My heart was doing the opposite.
It was racing toward the door, toward whatever waited on the other side.
I slid my phone into my coat pocket.
Kane stepped closer, his body angled slightly in front of mine without making it obvious. Protective without spectacle.
“You ready?” he asked quietly.
No.
But I nodded, anyway.