Chapter 9

Holden lunged for her.

His fingers grazed her sleeve — a half-second of contact — and then she was gone.

He nearly went over the edge after her. His guards grabbed him from behind, pulling him back with their full weight.

"Sir. Please. She could still be alive — there are rocks at the base, the current runs downriver — but if you go, there'll be no one to search for her. Listen to me."

The words reached him from somewhere distant. He was on his knees. He didn't remember going down.

"Find her." His voice didn't sound like his. "Send everyone. I want her found."

"Alive or — I want her found."

The guards scrambled. Holden stayed kneeling, staring at the place where she'd been standing.

The kidnapper was still there. He was laughing — the full-body, helpless laugh of a man who'd waited years for something and finally seen it.

"Holden Blackwood. Look at you now."

"This is what you deserve."

Holden rose in one movement and crossed the distance in three steps, grabbing the man by the collar. "You did this. Your people did this to her—"

"I told you what I'd do if something happened to her."

"I gave you back a living woman." The man's voice was bright and nasty through his swelling eye. "She chose to jump. You drove her to it. Don't confuse the two."

"They pushed her to it — what they did to her—"

"Did they?" He raised an eyebrow. "Quinn Ashford saved lives for a living. She kept her nerve in situations that would have broken anyone else. A woman like that doesn't throw herself off a cliff because a man she hated assaulted her." He spat blood and smiled. "She does it because she hated you more. She chose death over going back to you."

Holden's hands went slack.

The kidnapper saw it land. He kept going.

"Face it. You threw her away for Serena how many times? Made her watch while her daughter—"

Holden hit him again, a blunt closed-fist blow that knocked him clean to the ground.

"Don't you say one word about my daughter."

The man lay there for a moment, still smiling, blood at the corner of his mouth. "You'll never be without a son, is that right? Still have the boy."

The words came out before Holden thought them: "That's right. I still have Noah."

The kidnapper stared at him.

A long silence.

Then, slowly, he started laughing again — not the wild release from before, but something quieter, more pitying. "All these years I thought you were dangerous. You're just a fool."

Days later.

The study at the Blackwood Estate smelled of liquor and stale air. The assistant knocked twice before the muffled response came from inside.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he found.

The room that Holden Blackwood had always kept in military order was buried under empty bottles. The most powerful man in New York society was sprawled on the rug, suit rumpled beyond recognition, face unshaven, hair unwashed for days.

The assistant knew exactly why.

Quinn Blackwood had gone over the edge of the Hudson cliff, and no one had found her.

Holden had had the kidnapper beaten and handed to the police. He'd sent wave after wave of search teams down the cliff face and along the river. The current was fast and the drop was brutal. His people had followed the water for miles in both directions.

Nothing.

The general opinion — held by everyone, spoken by no one — was that the body had been carried too far to be recovered.

But Holden wouldn't stop searching. He sat in this wreck of a room, sober for just long enough to give orders, and waited.

"What is it?" He'd jerked upright the moment the door opened, still half-drunk, grabbing the assistant's lapels with a grip that left bruises. His eyes were terrifyingly bright. "Did you find her?"

"No, sir—"

The light died. He let go, turned away. "Then don't come back until you have."

The assistant caught his balance on the edge of the desk, heart hammering. He steadied himself and cleared his throat.

"We haven't found Mrs. Blackwood. But — we've uncovered something else. About Miss Thorne. And Noah."

Holden went still.

A fool, the kidnapper had called him.

The assistant took a breath and stepped back before he spoke. "You remember the man who broke into the estate — the one who attacked Miss Thorne with the knife?"

"He never told us who sent him. We used more... persuasive methods recently. He talked."

"He says Noah isn't your son. Never was. He's the biological father."

The silence that followed was absolute.

"That's impossible." Holden's voice was flat. "She had a paternity test. She showed it to me."

"Miss Thorne and you do have a biological child together. That child was born prematurely and didn't survive. Noah is — the child she had with this man, to secure her claim on the Blackwood inheritance."

The assistant laid the DNA report on the desk and backed away.

"He also said — the explosion three years ago. On the bridge over the East River. Miss Thorne reached out to your old enemy herself. She organized it. The purpose was to have Abby killed, so that Noah would be the sole heir to everything."

Holden looked at the report for a long time without moving.

Then he picked it up.

He read every page.

When he set it down, the paper was crumpled in his fist.

Noah wasn't his.

Serena had arranged Abby's murder.

He had given away his daughter. He had given away Quinn.

For what.

"Sir—" The assistant lurched forward. "Sir, you're bleeding—"

Holden touched his mouth. His lip had split — he'd bitten through it without noticing. The blood ran warm and thin over his fingers, and he stared at it like he was seeing it from somewhere very far away.