Chapter 19
Ridge
“Have they found her yet?”
It was the same question that always greeted me in the morning when Nancy made her way into my office with a sealed bottle of water for me.
She used to bring me a black coffee every morning until the clever woman picked up on the fact that I wasn’t drinking them.
I explained to her why I refused to drink something another person poured and she had lost all color and then crossed herself.
It was not a fond memory, as the pity came next. I threatened to fire her if she looked at me like that again, and Nancy, being the professional she was, snapped out of it, gave a nod, and then asked, “Have they found the bitch yet?”
“The answer, as always, is no.”
The private detective my lawyer put on Fiona was useless. She had apparently changed her flights, having got off during the layover she had in Los Angeles and made alternative plans rather than seeing her flight all the way through to Atlanta.
From there, she dropped off the face of the Earth.
No one had been able to find her since. Her parents - father and stepmother - were not cooperative.
Her mother was also untraceable. Eventually, she would surface.
I just had to hope that if she had truly been pregnant, and that baby was mine, that it had not come to any harm.
I wanted a kid with my rapist as much as I wanted a bullet-shaped hole in my head.
Still, I wouldn’t relegate any child to her care either, especially one that might share my DNA.
“Damn shame. Maybe she stopped breathing somewhere,” Nancy mumbled. I gave her a look, and she offered a shrug in return. “What? It’s not like that woman was really pregnant. We all know it was fake, that’s why she got out of here the minute you called her out and she hasn’t been seen since.”
A text pinged on my phone. I was surprised to see my cousin’s name pop up.
We were working on repairing our relationship as best we could from this distance, but he hadn’t really ever been the one to initiate contact since he found out that I thought there was something going on between him and my wife.
Moreland: Is it true that you haven’t spoken to Violet since the night of your party?
Ridge: It’s true I don’t remember having a conversation with her that night, either.
Moreland: Fuck, man.
Ridge: ???
Mom: You need to get back home, Ridge.
Ridge (to Mom): Why?
Dad: Son, it’s time to come home. You need to cut the rest of your trip short.
Something was wrong.
Ridge (to Dad): What’s going on?
Aunt Gayle: Have you found her?
“What the fucking hell is going on?” I growled aloud.
“Not sure, but we need to go over this budget before the meeting with the builders today. The extra studio space is going to go way over our initial projections if we don’t get them under control,” Nancy intoned as she set up the conference room.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Right now, my family are all hassling me to get back home for some reason, but no one is mentioning why.”
“Is someone sick or hurt?”
“Not sure, since they won’t say.”
Nancy nodded and continued to set up. “Might not be a bad time to take a break and go home for a bit,” she reassured me.
“You literally just said we have to get the builders under control because the project is going over budget.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to be the one to oversee things here.”
“Are you volunteering to stay?”
“I have all the numbers, the know-how, and my husband came over last week to stay with me for the duration since he retired from his job. I am not needed in the US, but it seems that you are. Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about Fiona, go find Violet, and fix what you broke between you.”
“Easier said than done,” I murmured as another text came in.
Moreland: It’s been six fucking months, and you haven’t spoken to your wife at all? Seriously, there’s time and space and then there’s basically ghosting a person and saying, ‘Fuck you, I never cared about our marriage anyway,’ you jackass!
Aunt Gayle: Hello?
I ignored my aunt and answered my cousin instead.
Ridge (to Moreland): Her mother told me not to contact her. Said that was a direct order from Violet. She was disgusted with me, didn’t want to speak yet, and said her daughter would contact me when she was ready.
Moreland: Dude, I don’t think that was true. Not sure why Vi’s mom would say something like that.
Ridge (to Moreland): I can’t win, no matter what I do.
Moreland: Do you want your woman back?
Ridge (to Moreland): More than anything in this world.
Moreland: How the hell do you plan to accomplish that from the other side of the world when you won’t even speak to her? You fucking idiot!
He had a point, but as that thought settled in, worry tickled my nerves and sent me into a panic.
Ridge (to Moreland): Is there something I should know? Is she seeing someone else?
Moreland: Stop speculating and get home.
Ridge (to Moreland): You do know I’m running a business and trying to expand to another country, right?
Moreland: Is that more important than Violet?
I didn’t bother to answer because fuck no, it was not as important as the only woman I ever loved.
I gave in and looked up my wife’s socials.
I refused to call her my ex, even if she technically was.
I was shocked when I realized there was nothing new since about a week before my birthday.
No pictures, videos, text updates, or shared memes.
Violet had been absent from everything online since the incident.
I swapped to her family’s socials and while her mom had been posting cryptic messages about blessings, new chapters, and joys to come, she had nothing to say about her daughter. That was even stranger than Vi not posting anything.
As a last-ditch effort, I swapped to Duri’s socials.
Surely, Vi’s best friend had something. I needed to see my wife, and I felt damn near desperate at that point.
There was nothing. DD was still posting like normal, at least one post a day to keep her accounts active.
None of them had even a single mention of my wife, let alone a picture.
It was like Violet no longer existed.
Great. Two women seemed to be missing.
Ridge (to Moreland): Have you seen Violet lately?
I waited a few minutes and nothing came in. When the foreman of the crew working on our expansion came in and dropped down into a chair across from me, I figured I’d have to wait to find out until the meeting was over. Then a text notification pinged.
Aunt Gayle: Hello? Are you getting my messages? Maybe this thing doesn’t work across the world.
“Jesus H. Christ,” I muttered. The woman was talking in the text message like she would if I was there in person and she didn’t think I could hear her.
I didn’t have time to answer, not that I planned to.
The room around me filled up and I had to turn my phone off for the duration.
It pained me to do so, but I had already resigned myself to checking into flights back to the states.
My work wasn’t done in Melbourne, but something wasn’t right back home and the steady influx of texts that had come in today wasn’t the first time I thought that.
The meeting was a complete shit show. The foreman was fired on the spot when the builder’s CEO learned we were leaning heavily toward finding another company to finish the project and why.
It meant that there would be another delay due to getting someone else up to speed, but the company promised to get their best on it. I thought we had already been promised their best before, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
When I finally booted my phone back up, there were no new messages waiting, so I texted my mother back again.
Ridge: Have you spoken to Violet recently? I can’t find anything new about her on social media, and I have a bad feeling in my gut.
Mom: It’s not my business to say anything about Violet. If you want to know how she’s doing, you NEED to contact her.
I didn’t like the way Mom emphasized the word need. It felt a little desperate, like when I’d spoken to Moreland earlier.
Mom: How is Fiona doing? The baby?
That was strange as well. My mother never asked for updates about Fiona. Normally, she would listen to an update, if I had one, but otherwise shut down any conversation about the woman or her supposed pregnancy.
Ridge: She had a doc visit here about two months ago and he told her she should head back to the States if she wanted to have her baby there. I haven’t heard from her since she left the next day.
Mom: Imagine that. I guess it could have been her after all.
Ridge: What does that mean?
Mom: Moreland swore he saw that woman outside of a bar last night. He chased after her, but she had too good a head start on him and ducked out of sight somewhere, or maybe into a car. It really upset More and Violet that he had seen her. Vi left not long after.
Ridge: Violet was with you last night? At a bar? What the hell, Mom?
Nothing made sense anymore. What in the hell had Violet been doing out at a bar with my family? And why would Fiona have been there?
Mom: Two things to say to you, son. One - Fiona didn’t look pregnant at all.
If anything, she looked slimmer than before she left here.
Two - You may have stupidly thrown your wife away and treated her like something completely disposable, but the rest of us did not. She will always be a daughter to me.
Ridge: I didn’t throw her away. I love Violet.
Ridge: Mom?
No response came in and the messages said they had been delivered but not opened.
Great. My mom is ignoring me the way I ignore Aunt Gayle.
Since my mom wouldn’t even read my text, I opened up my contacts and dialed Violet’s number.
It rang through to voicemail. I didn’t bother to leave one because I didn’t want the first time she heard from me after all this time to be in a message.
My family was right. It was time to find my way home and get my wife back.