Page 92 of Tangled Trust

I’m not going to tell him that he should be on alert in case someone has kidnapped Ella for ransom. Moore is a billionaire. That status comes with all sorts of problems. One of which is chancers looking to score an easy buck.

"Alright. But, please, Detective, keep me posted."

"Of course."

Moore leaves my office.

"Detective," one of my officers says as he pops into my office after the billionaire is gone.

"Yeah, Scott. What is it?"

"We’ve got the video footage from the mall parking lot."

"Did you find anything?"

"Yes, Sir. We’ve got footage of someone parking Miss Parker’s car."

Bingo.

"Can you see who it is?"

"Kind of. The footage is pretty grainy, but it’s a woman."

And, there it is. My instincts are on the money.

"Do me a favor, Scott. Email me a copy of the footage, please."

"Will do, Detective."

I have a feeling I know what happened here. It’s time to take a closer look.

* * *

I can’t believe I’ve been taken for a fool! What the fuck is going on here? Why does Ella look like a deer caught in the headlights? Why isn’t she throwing her arms around me like she said she wanted to do throughout the texts we’ve been exchanging?

I’m so angry, I’m trembling. Now she’s lying on the floor in the living room with blood seeping out of the spot on her head where she connected with the coffee table, and I don’t know whether I should leave her there to die or take her with me and kill her myself.

Think, Seb. Think.

I scoop her up and take her to my car. This isn’t over. This bitch owes me an explanation, damn her.

There’s something different about Ella, I think, while I’m carrying her out to my car. What is it? Then, slowly, it dawns on me. What the…? Is Ella Parker pregnant? No! It can’t be. She wouldn’t dare…

To be fair, Ella’s physical transformation isn't that obvious, but I can tell that she has a baby bump. I know this woman’s body intimately, after all. Of course, I’m going to notice. Her breasts are bigger than usual. That should have been my first clue. They say women are radiant when they’re expecting. That would explain the glow I noticed while staring at her through the window.

A baby! Who the hell is the father? What has Ella been up to? Is it mine? Is it possible? I do the calculations in my head. Ella is a petite girl. It’s possible that she could be quite far along without necessarily showing too much.

No. It can’t be. Ella’s been gone for too long for this baby to be my child.

Fuck! The whore is pregnant with someone else’s kid. I knew it. I knew she couldn’t be trusted. All those times I accused her of cheating, and she flat-out denied it! Yet, here is the fucking proof.

The question now is, What am I going to do with her?

The hotel where I’m staying here in LA has a back entrance. I noticed it when I left this morning. I figure I can smuggle Ella into my room through the back without being noticed and wait until she wakes up so I can find out what the hell she’s been up to.

No one makes a fool out of Sebastian Drake! No one! And definitely not Ella Fucking Parker.

It takes some doing, but I have Ella inside my room in record time. I lie her down on the bed before I pour myself a stiff drink from the minibar. I sit down on the edge of the bed and watch her. The bitch is so beautiful. I wish to hell she wasn’t. It would be so easy to strangle the life out of her while she’s out cold like this, but that would be too easy. I want to know why she’s done this. I want Ella to suffer as much as I have since she ran away like a coward and hid from me.

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