Chapter 289: ~ 288
Chapter 288
~Franklin~
"Where the hell is my daughter?!"
The words tore out of my throat, my forearm pressing so brutally against Flynn’s windpipe that his heels actually lifted a fraction of an inch off the hospital floor.
His bloodshot eyes bulged. For a split second, I expected the characteristic smirk, the arrogant, defiance he had on since the day he stepped onto my property. Instead, his entire face crumpled into an expression of raw, unadulterated shock.
"What?" he choked out, a wet, desperate gasp escaping his lips as his left hand, locked in its cast, clawed uselessly at my wrist. "Franklin... Franklin, stop...what do you mean daughter?"
"Don’t play with me!" I roared, my vision vibrating with a volatile, blinding crimson. "The sensors were dropped from an internal bypass. The northern wing feeds were wiped. She’s gone, Flynn! A newborn baby!"
"I didn’t know!" Flynn shrieked, the sheer, frantic terror in his voice cracking. He wasn’t acting. A man acting doesn’t leak that kind of cold, primal sweat. "Oh God—no, no, no, Franklin, I swear to Christ I didn’t know! I swear on my life! Take me back—take me back to the house right now! I’ll tell you everything! Put me in the car, Franklin, please!"
I didn’t give him the dignity of a gentle exit. I gripped the collar of his stained hospital gown, dragging his battered, limping frame down the corridor, entirely ignoring the shouted warnings of the charge nurses and the blaring sirens of the IV monitors he had ripped from his veins. I shoved him into the passenger seat of my SUV, locked the child doors, and tore out of the trauma bay like a man possessed.
The ten-minute drive back to the Flemington estate was a silent, suffocating descent into hell. My knuckles were bone-white against the leather steering wheel, my jaw locked so tight my molars physically ached. Beside me, Flynn sat curled against the passenger door, his good hand clutching his fractured arm, weeping in short, ragged, hyperventilating gasps.
My mind was everywhere. Every passing second on the digital dashboard clock wasn’t just a number; it was a unit of oxygen my newborn daughter was spending out in the freezing night without her mother.
When I opened the doors, the air inside felt less like a home and more like an office.
The grand foyer was dead quiet. Standing at the base of the staircase was Octavia.
The sight of my wife nearly brought me to my knees. Her dark hair was wildly disheveled, her skin an asymmetric, translucent shade of grey. She stood completely frozen, her trembling arms wrapped tightly around the empty pink fleece blanket, pressing the fabric to her nose just to catch the lingering scent of our stolen child.
Grandpa Frederick sat slumped on the stone bench beside her, his head bowed over his cane, while Olga stood weeping into a cloth.
The moment Octavia’s hollow, bloodshot eyes shifted past my shoulder and landed on Flynn limping into the foyer, a terrifying, primal transformation took over her features. The devastating grief vanished, instantly replaced by the lethal, maternal fury of a mother robbed of her young.
"You," Octavia breathed, her voice dropping into a jagged, vibrating whisper. She dropped the blanket to the floor, her bare feet slapping against the marble as she lunged toward him. "You monster! Where did you put her?!"
I caught her around the waist just before her hands reached his face, pulling her securely against my chest. "Octavia, hold on. Listen to me...look at him."
Flynn didn’t try to defend himself. His knees buckled completely. He crashed down onto the hard floor right at Octavia’s feet, his cast hitting the stone with a dull, heavy thud. He didn’t get up. He just stayed there on his knees, his forehead pressing against the cold tile as great, wracking sobs tore out of his chest.
"I’m sorry," Flynn choked out, his voice a broken, wet rasp vibrating against the floor. "Octavia, I am so sorry. I didn’t know she would take the baby. I thought...I thought it was just the company. I thought it was just harmless."
"Get up," I rumbled coldly, stepping between him and my wife. "Talk."
Flynn slowly pushed himself up onto his knees, his chest heaving as he looked up at the three of us through a mask of cold sweat and dried blood from his forehead laceration.
"My mother is sick, Franklin," he whispered, his voice shaking with a lifetime of buried, rotting childhood trauma. "You think you know what she is? You have no idea. Growing up in that house... it wasn’t a home. It was a prison cell. Every single day of my life, she drilled your father’s name into my skull. If I got a bad grade, it was ’Franklin wouldn’t fail.’ If I cried, it was my twin’s boy is sitting in the empire that belongs to you.’ She forced me to wear his exact cologne when I turned sixteen just so she could look at me."
A sharp, horrified gasp escaped Olga’s throat. Octavia went entirely rigid against my side, her hand flying to her mouth as the, perverse psychological sickness of Maria’s reality bled into the open air.
"She made me come here," Flynn wept, his shoulders shaking violently. "She mapped out the whole reconciliation lie. But the truth... the absolute truth, Franklin? I wanted to come. I jumped at the chance to get on that plane because I thought coming to America was my only ticket out from under her boots. I thought if I played along, I could finally breathe an ocean away from her voice."
"Then why did you play her game?!" I barked, the rage still boiling dangerously in my veins. "Why sit at my table and feed us lies if you wanted out?!"
"Because she had a hold of threat on Victoria!" Flynn screamed back, his head snapping up, his bloodshot eyes filled with a desperate, agonizing heartbreak.
The grand foyer fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
"Victoria," Flynn choked out, a fresh torrent of tears spilling over his bruised cheeks. "You all thought I dumped her. I loved her! I wanted to marry her! But Victoria’s family... are not wealthy. They are okay but not luxury type. My mother found out I was planning to propose, and she threatened me."
My jaw locked. A cold, suffocating ice began to creep through my chest.
"She told me if I didn’t break Victoria’s heart and get on the plane to New York, Victoria’s father’s workplace would burn down with him inside it," Flynn confessed, his voice dropping into a hollow, dead monotone. "She holds the leash to everything I care about. So I came. I smiled at your breakfasts. I asked for the car keys this morning because she told me to drive to that clinic."
He paused, his glassy eyes fixing directly on mine as the horrifying math finally clicked together in his own concussed skull.
"The car," Flynn whispered, his breathing turning shallow. "I am sure it was her."
Octavia let out a small, terrified whimper against my ribs.
"She didn’t care if I died at that intersection," Flynn said, his voice cracking into a sound of pure, hollow devastation. "She just needed your details and distraction. She used her own son to step her plans."
He slowly lifted his head, looking straight into my dark, frozen eyes.
"She’s not in Europe, Franklin," Flynn whispered. "My mother is right here in this city."