Page 67 of Silver Hills' Christmas Miracle

I nodded.

“And you’re happy about it?”

“Very. We both are.”

“Samuel.” Mom stood as straight as a rod. “You stop this. You stop this right now, you hear me? I don’t give a shit about the money or the lawsuits or the shareholders. You stop this immediately. Give them what they want. Give them the whole estate, for all I care. You stop thisnow.Do you understand?”

Dad didn’t turn around.

“Are you listening to me? Samuel! Our baby is having her own baby, our grandchild! Nothing else matters now. You hear me? Nothing!”

The door suddenly burst open and Anton strode in, flanked by a couple of men. Mom clutched at my hands and moved to step in front of me as my dad cowered at his desk.

“Mr. Mayor.” Anton bowed low. “You ready to sign those papers yet? One little signature and we all go home happy, don’t you think?”

“I won’t,” Dad said stubbornly. “You can’t intimidate me. I am themayor!”

“Ooh,” Anton mocked while his friends laughed. “Really? You won’t do a solid for good old Mother Nature?”

“No.”

My mother whimpered and then all hell broke loose. The three men with Anton surged forward and grabbed me, hauling me up from the couch. I fought to keep ahold of my mom’s hand as she yelled for me, but they roughly dragged us apart. Arms gripped my shoulders and my waist, hauling me backward as my mom cried.

“Where the hell are you going with my daughter?” Dad roared.

“Shoulda signed the papers, man,” Anton snorted before kicking the door shut.

28

ROOK

After Melanie ended the call, I got in my car and drove recklessly to the manor. When she described the person who answered the door, it didn’t match anyone I knew to be working there, so I called Paul.

He didn’t answer.

Not on his work phone or his personal phone.

He never didn’t answer. Even if it was just to snark at me or tell me to piss off.

I wasn’t taking any chances, so once I parked behind the manor, I called the police and gave them a quick rundown of the situation. In a town this small, there were only two officers at the station this late at night, so they would have to call further afield to get enough men to safely check the mayor’s manor.

Luckily, I had experience doing more with much less.

And if Kitty was in danger, then I wasn’t going to wait.

I hopped over the back fence and landed on soft, frost-covered grass. The manor was shrouded in darkness, with only a few lights gleaming along the first floor—not uncommon for this late at night. I glanced at my watch and held my breath, waiting for the regular nightly patrol to pass by. The usualtime for movement arrived and passed without a single person appearing.

The chances of the property patrol being late were slim to none, and it was another clear sign to me that something wasn’t right. Especially since I had just hopped the fence, which should have raised the perimeter alarm that I set up. Had it been turned off?

Kitty had snuck out to see me yesterday. Did she turn it off?

I reasoned that if she had, it would have been turned back on when she returned and the fact that it hadn’t created the haunting suggestion that Kitty had been in danger since the moment she returned.

That was over twenty-four hours ago.

My heart beat slowly and powerfully as I crept toward the manor. I kept to the shadows, moving lightly over the paving stones and around the hedges while keeping a keen eye out for any movement.

I saw nothing other than a shadow pass by one of the closed curtains. I think the room was a bathroom, but from the outside, it was a little trickier to calculate which window belonged to which room.

---