Chapter 703

Nicks POV

'When we stepped out of the barrel cellar, the late afternoon air hit my face like I'd just come up from underwater. Bella was in my arms, clinging to me the way children cling when the world turns dangerous. Her face was pressed into my neck, her small hands fisted in my shirt like I was a wall. I didn't have the strength to ask her to let go. I didn't want to. In the courtyard, the lights were already on. The sun had fully dropped, leaving that last stretch of day that looks like the end of a movie.

Except no movie ends with paperwork waiting in the middle of your property. The police were still there. Two men with the posture of people who do this every day. Clipboards. Phones. Authority filling the space. When they saw me, both moved at the same time.

"Mr. Valemont," the older one said. His tone was neutral. Not aggressive. Not kind.

"Is the child all right?"

"She is," I answered. Bella lifted her face just enough to glance at them, then buried it in me again. The officer nodded and looked toward Gwen. She stood beside me, half a step back.

"We need to understand how she was located," the officer continued, already writing.

is that my daughter disappeared and I almost lost my mind. I swallowed it. Gwen spoke

camera footage and arrival times," she said, clear

requested the school recordings. Then I looked for witnesses near the

"Witnesses?" the officer asked. "A gelato vendor,"

to have one with her father." The officer wrote it down. The second one wrote it too, but with that expression of someone jotting down gelato vendor and thinking, of course, why not. My stomach tightened. "and then?" the

to go together," she said. "And you found the child there?" the

Gwen replied. I felt the pause settle over

belong in reports. It doesn't belong in authority. It doesn't belong in a world that prefers clean

skepticism. The expression that says: convenient. Convenient. Like I'd chosen tonight to

I did. Her eyes were steady and alert, saying the same thing I was thinking: they're going to try to force a triangle into a circle. I turned back to

the

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