Chapter Three #2
If Elizabeth had been standing right behind the curtain on the terrace... there was no way she wouldn’t have heard every single word.
“Speak!” Arthur barked, slamming his fist on the table again. “What are you hiding?”
Sebastian swallowed hard, looking down at his untouched napkin. “She... she might have found out that this was an arranged marriage.”
Arthur frowned deeply, his grey eyebrows drawing together. “How? How could she possibly find that out?”
“I was chatting with my friends,” Sebastian admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. “Close to the terrace. If she was there, she definitely heard us.”
Arthur stared at him in utter disbelief before erupting in fury. “Stupid! Stupid boy!” the old man roared, half-rising from his chair.
“Don’t you know better than to talk family matters in public? Now everyone thinks you are a murderer because your own damn big mouth drove my daughter away!”
Sebastian detested being called stupid. He was a prodigy, a genius who had built a multi-million-dollar tech firm from nothing. But right now, he couldn’t argue with the old man’s logic.
That had been a unbelievably stupid, reckless move.
And the rest of the things he had said about her that night? The vicious jokes about her weight? The cruel reveal of his vasectomy and his secret sperm bank deposit? Sebastian didn’t dare tell the Murray patriarch about any of that.
He was far too ashamed and he knew that if Arthur ever found out the full extent of what Elizabeth had overheard, the old man would pull a gun and shoot him dead across the dining table.
Arthur sank back into his leather chair, running a hand over his face with a long, heavy exhale. “Now I’m convinced you didn’t kill her,” the old man grumbled.
“She heard you and ran away. She has always been emotional. Don’t worry, I’ll find her.”
The old man promised it with absolute certainty, but over the next two months, nothing turned up.
By the fifth month of her disappearance, law enforcement finally cleared Sebastian of formal murder suspicion due to a total lack of physical evidence or foul-play signs at the condo.
But clearing his name at the police precinct did nothing to quiet the dark whispers circulating through their South Florida social circles.
He was lucky his father-in-law had his back, which helped quiet down the worst of the whispers.
Gradually, certain factions accepted the improbable truth, Elizabeth had simply walked out on him.
His reputation however, had taken a devastating, permanent hit.
PayVault, which had severely struggled amidst the scandal, was quickly regaining its footing, which was a relief.
Night after night, Sebastian found himself sitting alone in his sprawling penthouse, nursing a glass and brooding over his misfortunes.
He wanted her back. He wanted her back so desperately it drove him crazy, if only so he could grab her by the shoulders and bite her head off for the insane, destructive stunt she had pulled.
How dare she ruin his life like this? How dare she ruin his company, drag his name through the mud and turn him into a pariah?
Yet, as the sixth month approached, her agonizing absence exposed a terrifying truth that Sebastian had spent five years denying: Elizabeth was far from insignificant in his life.
The brutal reality was that he missed her.
He missed the faint, soothing scent of lavender and vanilla that used to linger in the hallway after she walked past. He missed her endless, soft chatter about her day, the enthusiastic rambling that he’d once found so deeply annoying, but which now left the penthouse feeling like an icy, lifeless tomb.
Most of all, to his shock and frustration, he greatly missed her body.
He missed having sex with her. He missed the desperate, fiery passion she brought to her bedroom, the way she yielded to him and the way her soft skin felt under his hands in the dark.
Now, every single night, Sebastian slept fitfully in his cold, oversized bed. Every so often, he would jerk awake in the middle of the night, battling a raging, painful erection while sweating buckets from having filthy, explicit, X-rated dreams about her pleasuring him.
He missed her mouth. He missed the way she had always pleasured him so skilfully and so devoted to his satisfaction. And as he lay awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling with his heart hammering in his chest, a deep, bitter regret began to eat away at him.
He regretted how he had treated her. He regretted the coldness, the separate bedrooms and the calculated distance.
But most of all, he regretted why he had been so proud and so stubbornly foolish that he had never once kissed her on the lips.
He had denied himself her mouth out of pure spite and arrogant resentment.
The very first thing he was going to do when she came home, because she had to come home eventually, was grab her and pull her tight against his chest then kiss her senseless until neither of them could breathe.
He vowed, he just had to find her first.
Meanwhile, back in Singapore, Beth was gearing up for her return home.
Before her initial ninety-day tourist pass had expired, she had applied for a ninety-day extension, which was now rapidly drawing to a close.
Unlike three months ago, when the mere thought of returning to Florida made her sick to her stomach, the difference this time was that she was finally ready to head back home.
Beth had worked tirelessly on herself for nearly six months and she was immensely proud of the results. The extra weight was gone, replaced by lean, sculpted muscle, a sharp jawline and a glowing confidence that radiated from within.
She had worked with a professional to refine her makeup and style and the progress was undeniable.
She carefully aligned her grand return with the biggest social event in South Florida: the Michaelson’s’ annual Gala at the Four Seasons, where she and her family had always held a standing, invitation.
She flew in the day before the event and spent the last of Sebastian’s cash on a stunning, form-fitting ruby designer gown. Then, she booked a luxury suite right in the Four Seasons, the exact location where she had staged her disappearance six months prior.
During her time abroad, through subtle online checks, she had come to learn what a complete furore her disappearance had caused. She read about the endless police inquiries, the cancelled stock offering and the heavy toll her vanishing had taken on both her father and her husband.
That last part had come as a total surprise to her; she honestly hadn’t thought Sebastian would even notice her absence, let alone lose sleep over it.
Serves them right, she had concluded with a smirk, shrugging it off before continuing to live her best life in Singapore.
Was it selfish? Yes. But she didn’t care.
And now she was back in Miami, and she intended to make a serious splash.