Chapter 13
“A mor?” My voice carries through the marble foyer as I push the heavy front door shut behind me. “Yara, I’m home.”
Silence.
The wrong kind.
I stand there for a second with my keys in one hand and a bouquet of ivory peonies in the other.
At this hour, there is usually a soft glow spilling from the living room, some show playing low in the background, Yara curled into the corner of the sofa with a cashmere throw over her legs while she waits for me.
But tonight the house is lit from end to end, every lamp throwing warm light across polished marble and clean lines, and the stillness pressing back at me is wrong enough to set my nerves on edge.
It’s just past eight. She should be here. Then again, the last few weeks have been different.
A cold knot pulls tight in my stomach. I’ve been coming home late, burying myself in work, using it as an excuse to stay away from the house and the guilt waiting for me inside it. Meetings, calls, problems that could have waited—I’ve given all of them more of me than I’ve given my wife.
I set the flowers down on the console and head into the living room. “Amor?”
My voice bounces off vaulted ceilings and polished floors.
No answer.
The unease deepens. I tell myself not to be ridiculous. She could be upstairs. In the bath. On the terrace. Asleep. Still angry. Any one of those makes more sense than the thin pulse of dread working its way up the back of my neck.
I shrug out of my suit jacket and loosen my tie, but it does nothing to ease the tightness gathering in my chest.
The television is off. The throw on the sofa is folded neatly. Her book is not on the coffee table. Nothing is out of place.
That unsettles me more than a mess would have.
I cut through the dining room and into the kitchen. The counters gleam. The sink is empty. No glass by the tap. No abandoned mug. No sign that she has spent the evening here at all.
I can’t think straight. The entire day has already been hell, but the dread taking hold of me now is worse.
I sweep a hand through my hair and head for the stairs with a muttered curse, trying to ignore the panic needling at the edges of my mind. Maybe she went upstairs early. Or she is still avoiding me.
The motion lights come alive one after another as I take the stairs two at a time, washing the upper hall in soft gold. My shoes strike the wood hard enough to echo, and the sound seems too loud in the silence wrapped around the house.
Upstairs, I yank open the door to our bedroom. “Yara?”
I stop in the doorway and stare for a beat too long, as if looking harder might change what is in front of me. The bed is made. The blinds are drawn back from the floor-to-ceiling windows, revealing the vast night sky and a silver slice of moon over the Mediterranean, but none of it registers.
The room is empty. Too neat.
My gaze sweeps the room, searching for a clue. That’s when I notice the walk-in closet door left ajar. I stride forward and pull it open. Inside, one of the overhead lights flicks on automatically. Her clothes hang in immaculate rows, color-coded and neat, but there is a gap on one of the racks.
My blood turns to ice.
The weekend suitcase that always sits on the shelf above her dresses is gone. In its place, a faint outline marks where it usually rests.
Cold disbelief moves through me. It can’t be. I leave the room and check the terrace first, then the small sitting room off the east wing where she sometimes reads when she wants to be alone, then the fitness studio where she takes her virtual classes.
Nothing.
No sign of her anywhere.
She’s gone.
Panic flashes hot beneath my skin. Think. Maybe she only went out to clear her head.
But with a suitcase?
No.
I pull my phone from my pocket and call her. One ring. Two. Voicemail. I end the call, leave a message, and send a text. Then another. Neither delivers.
My lungs lock. This has happened before. Once, she went out with Colette and forgot to mention they would be back late. I came home to an empty house and nearly lost my damn mind before I found out where she was.
The list of people I can call is short. Yara doesn’t make friends easily, not since we moved to the Riviera.
Even at galas, she stays at my side or keeps to herself.
She is polite when she has to be, distant when she can be, and never interested in playing the social games the rest of them seem to live for.
Last time, I was seconds away from calling her family when she rang me from Colette’s phone and told me hers had died. She was fine. Just out later than I expected.
Maybe this is that again.
“Dammit.” I spin on my heel and dial Colette as I head back downstairs.
I am halfway down when I nearly run straight into her.
Colette is hovering at the foot of the staircase, her hands twisted together, her face pinched with worry.
“Colette,” I snap, harsher than I mean to. “Why are you here alone? Where is my wife?”
She flinches and steps back.
I don’t care if I was harsh. I need to find my wife.
Colette is the only person in this house Yara speaks to outside of necessity. If anyone knows where she is, it will be her.
She must have seen her leave.
Colette looks up at me with wide, hesitant eyes. She has been with us for years, long enough to know every rhythm of this house. For all her fondness for gossip, she has always known when to keep her mouth shut when it matters.
“Sir… madame left this morning,” she says cautiously.
The words land like a blow to my chest.
“This morning?” My hand clamps around the railing until it trembles beneath my grip. “Did she say where she was going?”
Colette doesn’t answer at once. Her gaze slips from mine, her shoulders drawing in like she already knows whatever she says next will not be enough.
“Speak.”
“No, Mr. Navarro.” She swallows. “She didn’t. I heard the front door slam while I was in the kitchen, and when I came out, madame was already heading for the car with a suitcase.”
“Did Peter take her?”
Colette nods.
My jaw clenches. Yara left with our driver, and no one thought to inform me.
Anger flares, but I force it down before it can take shape. Colette looks close to worrying herself sick. This is not her fault.
It is mine. All of it.
“Thank you, Colette,” I say, struggling to keep my voice composed. “That will be all.”
I walk away before she can utter another word.
How could I have let my own fear blind me to this? I should have been here. Instead, I chose cowardice, and now she’s gone.
I dial Peter’s number and put the call on speaker. My hand is not as still as I want it to be. It rings only once before he picks up.
“Mr. Navarro.” Peter sounds wary, as though he’s been expecting this call.
“Where is my wife?” I ask without preamble. “Where did you take her?”
There’s a brief pause. “To the airport, sir. Nice C?te d’Azur. She caught the 8:30 flight out.”
My breath hisses between my teeth. “Did she say anything to you?”
“Only that she needed to go home.” His words land heavily. We both know home didn’t mean here anymore.
I end the call.
Yara’s family is from Crete. The old villa on her grandmother’s land is the only place she could mean. At least now I know where she’s headed. Relief hits first, then anguish right behind it. Crete. Her grandmother. The island where she grew up, and the place she has avoided for years.
Every time I brought it up, she deflected. An excuse. A distraction. Anything but the truth. Since her parents died, even the thought of going back there has terrified her.
And now, because of me, she has.
I close my eyes. What have I done?
By now, her yiayia must know. She must know what I did to the woman I promised to protect. The woman I swore I would make happy.
I cannot let myself think about the disappointment she must feel.
I fucked up.
I stare up at a photograph mounted on the wall: me and Yara on our wedding day, smiling as if the future could only ever be bright.
Emotion fractures the numb shell around me.
She was radiant that day, all sunlight and laughter.
I promised her the world. Every happiness I could give her.
And what have I given her instead? My secrets.
My lies. My private hell dragged across her life without once giving her the truth.
I have betrayed her trust again and again.
My throat tightens. I turn away before the guilt can swallow me whole. Action. I need action now. Standing here drowning in remorse will not bring her back.
I text flight ops and have the jet readied for immediate departure. Within the hour, I’ll be in the air.
I will find her. I will tell her everything I should have told her from the beginning. And if I have to get on my knees and beg for the chance to make this right, I will.
Losing Yara is not an option. It would be the end of everything.
I’m about to head out when my phone starts ringing. For one stupid second, hope cuts through the panic strangling my chest. Yara.
But one look at the caller ID is enough to kill it.
Unknown number.
The same one that has been hounding me for days.
Until now, it has limited itself to messages. Receipts. Proof that someone out there knows exactly where to put the knife.
It texted again this morning, and as soon as I got to the office, I had Bastien run it down. He handles my security personally. If there had been a trail, he would have found it.
He didn’t.
Neither did the telecom specialists he pulled in after.
No name. No fixed origin. Nothing clean enough to trace.
Just a ghost slipping through every net I cast.
Very few people have this number. Fewer still know enough to use it against me.
Which leaves only two possibilities: someone got close enough to breach my perimeter, or someone already inside it opened the door.
The phone keeps ringing in my hand.
I answer and lift it to my ear. “Speak.”
Static crackles through the line.
My grip tightens. “Who is this?”
When the voice finally comes through, it is low and distorted, blurred just enough to make it impossible to place. Male, I think. But even that could be deliberate.
“You’ve been hard to reach.”
Every muscle in my body goes taut. “I’m not in the mood for games.”
A faint sound comes through the line. Not quite a laugh. Something else. The satisfaction of someone who already knows they have my attention.
“This isn’t a game, Xavier.”
Hearing my name in that voice does something ugly to the air in my lungs.
“What the fuck do you want?”
A beat passes.
Then, almost lazily, “Look at your phone.”
A message alert cuts through the line before I can answer.
I pull the phone away from my ear, and my stomach drops the second I see what came through.
A photo.
I open it.
A man and a woman fill the screen, bodies pressed close enough to pass for an embrace. One of his arms is locked around her, her face tipped up toward him, both of their profiles caught in damning detail.
Mine.
Isabel’s.
I know exactly when this was taken. The day I caught her before she stepped into the path of an oncoming car.
My wedding anniversary.
Another image comes through before I finish processing the first.
This one is worse.
My car is parked by the roadside, the image taken from far enough away that it should not be clear, and yet it is. The inside of the vehicle is dim, but light from the street and passing headlights catches enough through the glass to make out faces.
Isabel is leaning across the seat toward me, her body tipped into my space, her face close enough to make the frame say exactly what it wants to say.
My jaw locks.
A third image arrives: the two of us in my office just hours ago. I’m holding her wrists, and she’s smiling up at me.
Everything around me tilts.
Shit.
My pulse starts hammering so hard it feels violent .
On the other end of the line, the voice lets the silence stretch just long enough to make sure I’ve seen all of it.
“Do you understand now?”
I say nothing. Because I do.
I understand exactly what those images look like.
I understand exactly what they would do in the hands of a woman who has already spent weeks feeling me slip away from her.
My throat goes dry. The house around me is still silent. Too silent. Empty in a way that suddenly feels unbearable.
If Yara saw these before she walked out of this house, then I know exactly what story they told her.
A story I handed to them myself.
My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “If you sent those to my wife—”
“If?” the caller cuts in.
That one word lands clean and deep. Hot dread twists low in my gut.
The voice drops even lower. “You should be asking yourself how much she saw before she decided she’d had enough.”
The line goes dead.
I stay where I am, staring at the screen, my reflection faint over the images.
For the first time since I walked through the door with flowers in my hand like a fucking idiot, panic gives way to something far worse.
Because this is no longer just about Yara leaving.
It is about what finally made her go.