The call from the `Starlight Serenade` producers came the next morning. They were polite, but their message was clear: withdraw gracefully, and they would issue a statement about her needing to step away for personal reasons. The scandal was too much.
Zara took the phone, her voice sharp. “She needs time to think.” She hung up, her eyes blazing. “You don’t have to do this, Lyra. You don’t have to endure this. We can disappear. Go somewhere they can never find you.”
Lyra looked up from the sofa, her eyes clear for the first time in a day. The shock had receded, leaving behind a hard, quiet clarity. She thought of Julian’s message. She thought of the baby growing inside her, a silent witness to this war.
“No,” she said. Her voice was soft, but it held the weight of steel. “I’m done running.”
She looked at Zara, her expression transformed. The victim was gone.
“She took my husband. She took my name,” Lyra stated, each word a stone being laid in a new foundation. “She will not take my story.”
***
An hour later, Lyra made the call herself.
“I will appear on the next live show,” she told the executive producer, her tone leaving no room for argument.
He started to protest, to talk about the network and the sponsors.
“But I have one condition,” Lyra cut in. “I won’t be singing.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. She could almost hear the gears turning in his head. The controversy. The drama. The ratings.
“What will you be doing?” he asked, intrigued.
“I’ll be speaking,” Lyra said.
They agreed.
***
In his safe house, Caspian’s rage had cooled into a diamond-hard focus. The stalled investigation was no longer acceptable. He got his head of security on a secure line.
“Forget the old parameters,” Caspian ordered, his voice clipped and precise. “I want you to re-examine the search for the caregiver, Maria Sanchez. Assume she didn’t just vanish. Assume she’s hiding in plain sight.”
He paced the room, his mind racing. “A caregiver with her experience wouldn’t stop working. She’d just change her environment. Go private. High-end. Where the money is good and the discretion is absolute.”
He stopped. “Cross-reference the name against employment rolls for every high-end private nursing agency in the state. Start with the most exclusive.”
His team went to work. Less than an hour later, his phone rang.
“We’ve got a hit, sir,” his security chief said. “A Maria Sanchez, age and work profile match, is currently employed by a firm called The Nightingale Agency.”
The trail was no longer cold. It was burning hot.
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