Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
My heart stops, careening to a sudden, hard death that sends me stumbling into the doorframe and gripping it for support.
It’s her.
The girl who haunted my teenage years stares back at me, captured in a moment of unguarded beauty.
Fucking hell, it’s been years. Decades.
Yet I remember her like it was yesterday.
In the photo, she stands alone against the black backdrop of her bedroom window. Her long hair cascades like a dark waterfall, framing a face that embodies the essence of the North. Resilient, captivating, utterly gorgeous.
Her eyes, vast and deeply brown, hold the depth of the night sky, sparkling with the light of a thousand stars that seem to pierce through the faded ink of the photo.
Memories crash in, unbidden. She was the daughter of our live-in maid, three years younger than me, her daily life intertwined with ours, yet always a world apart.
Our age gap…
Three years is nothing compared to the twenty years between me and my wife. But back then? When I was sixteen?
She was forbidden.
Didn’t stop the intensity of my crush, or how her laughter filled the corridors of our frigid, imposing home with warmth and life. I wasn’t alone in my admiration.
Denver was obsessed with her, too. Once she invaded his filthy mind with her irresistible innocence, he was hooked like an addict, which set the stage for a rivalry that simmered until his death.
Our competition for her attention was ruthless.
And futile.
She remained achingly too young and unattainable.
The rivalry with my brother, the intense emotions she evoked, the threats my father made against us if we touched her—everything rushes back like a punch in the heart.
I stare at the photo, remembering that yellow dress, the way it hugged her curves and exposed her cleavage.
The emblem of my first fierce yearning.
Her Inuit heritage, pronounced in the striking contours of her face, draws me into a gaze that feels both familiar and ineffably mysterious.
She must’ve been sixteen when this was taken, still living in this house after I went off to college.
After Denver’s death.
Finding her photo now, amid my father’s secrets, provokes a deep, possessive snarl in the back of my throat.
“Monty?” Sirena reaches out, her touch hovering. “Who is she?”
“Kaya Knowles.” I step back and swipe the photo of Denver off the floor.
A brief glance at his face sends a shiver down my spine. His eyes whisper of intention, of secrets so depraved I can’t look at them.
I pocket the photos, rubbing my head. “What is the date of the first flight in those logs?”
Sirena checks the documents and rattles off a time frame that rules out Denver’s involvement. He couldn’t have been on those flights because he died a year prior.
But Kaya? She was still around. When her mother died from a heart condition, my father took her in, provided her schooling, and gave her a job among his staff.
None of this explains why photos of Denver and Kaya were tucked inside the logs. My father didn’t do anything without calculation and purpose.
“Kaya grew up here.” I meet Sirena’s patient gaze. “Her mother was our maid. They were part of our family.”
“Where is Kaya now?”
“No idea. She moved on when my parents died.”
“You grew up with her but never looked into her whereabouts?”
“I was wrapped up in the investigation of the plane crash. She left in the middle of that. Never reached out to me. Never even told me she was leaving. She was in her early twenties. Beautiful and ambitious. I think she was ready to get out of here and start a new life on her own. I didn’t blame her. Didn’t even know where to look for her. So I let her go.”
“Do you find it strange that photos of her and your brother were buried in a wall with blueprints and flight logs?”
“Of course, it’s fucking strange. But none of this has a goddamn thing to do with my missing wife.”
The pieces are falling everywhere, but the picture they form is unclear.
“Do you want me to find Kaya Knowles?” She tips her head.
Tempting. So fucking tempting.
“Fine.” I expel a breath. “While you’re investigating Alvis Duncan, look for her, too. But—”
“Keep it separate from Frankie. Got it.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll return to the yacht and resume our search along coastlines. Prepare the team.”
I’m ready to put this place behind me.
For two weeks, we walk with the shadows, hunched beneath a sky that weeps snowflakes as sharp as shards of glass. The tundra threatens to swallow us with each step, and exhaustion clings like a second skin.
No matter how many breaks we take, I can’t shake off this fatigue. Frankie doesn’t complain, but the journey has been immensely hard on her.
She moves with a sluggishness that wasn’t there before. Every mile seems to cost her more than the last, her snowshoes dragging against the thick blanket of white.