"Vanessa threw Mia’s school backpack into the koi pond on her first day of school. Then she dragged the little girl down by the hair and forced her to say she didn’t belong. But when Adrian opened the soaked backpack, the papers inside made Vanessa beg."

The days that followed were a blur of activity. Evelyn remained in custody, formally charged with attempted kidnapping, conspiracy, and accessory to fraud. The medical examiner had reopened Grace’s case, and the preliminary findings were grim — the medication found in Grace’s system matched the traces found in Evelyn’s possession. The charge of murder was being prepared.

But Vanessa was still missing.

The police had traced her phone, her bank cards, her known associates. She had vanished completely. No withdrawals. No calls. No credit card use. She had simply disappeared.

I moved Mia and myself into a secure suite at the family hotel downtown. Security surrounded the building. Guards stood at every entrance. Mia was homeschooled temporarily, with tutors coming to her under supervision. I did not let her leave the building unless I was with her — and even then, only in armored vehicles with a full detail.

She did not complain. She accepted the new rules with a quiet seriousness that broke my heart. She had grown up too fast in a single morning.

Every evening, after her lessons, we sat together. I read to her. We drew pictures. We talked about everything except what had happened. But I saw the way she looked at the door. The way she checked the locks. The way she jumped at every sound.

One evening, she looked up from her drawing and said, “Daddy, do you think Vanessa is hiding somewhere watching us right now?”

I pulled her close. “Let her watch. She will never touch you again.”

But privately, I wondered. She had vanished too perfectly. She had known exactly which roads to take, exactly where to disappear. She had help. Which meant Evelyn was not the only one still working with her.

I turned my attention back to Grace’s journal. I had read it cover to cover three times. Every entry. Every sketch. Every note in the margins. Grace had written about everything — her childhood, our courtship, Mia’s first steps. And then — nothing. The final pages were missing.

I flipped to the back of the book. The pages had been torn out, roughly, leaving jagged edges.

My heart sank. Evelyn had them. Or Vanessa. They had taken the most important pages — the ones that held the answers about Mia’s origins.

I stood up and paced the room. They had the missing pages. They knew what Grace had written. Which meant they knew the secret.

And they were still hunting for something else. Something the journal did not contain.

I called David. “I need everything. Every document. Every file. Every box from Grace’s study. Everything from the safe. If there is anything about Mia — anything at all — I need to see it.”

“Adrian,” David said gently, “I’ve been through everything. There is no adoption paper. No alternate birth certificate. Grace filed standard forms. Mia is legally your daughter. There is nothing suspicious in the records.”

“Grace would not have lied about something like this unless she had to,” I said. “She said there were papers. Find them.”

David sighed. “I will look again. But I need you to be prepared — maybe she meant something else. Maybe the papers were never filed. Maybe they were destroyed.”

“Or maybe,” I said quietly, “they were taken. Just like the journal pages.”

I hung up and walked to the window. The city stretched out below, lights twinkling in the dusk. Somewhere out there, Vanessa was waiting. And somewhere, she held the missing pages.

Three days later, the breakthrough came from an unexpected source.