My Bestie's Dad Likes Me Wet-Chapter 98 PANICKING

GRANT POV

It had been three days since my nymph disappeared. Three fucking days since I’d seen her, heard her voice, touched her, or had her smile one of those perfect smiles at me.

If my life was in shambles the last time she got kidnapped, now my life was in ruins. And even more so, I regretted not trusting her gut the last time she told me she felt like something bad was about to happen. I’d brushed her words aside and thought she was paranoid, but once again her instinct had proven to be true.

Fuck.

I chose not to numb myself by being depressed or drowning myself in alcohol. No. This time I did everything possible. I started where it all fell apart, their apartment.

Lena opened the door with that smirk I’d once found endearing. Now it made my blood boil.

"Dad." She said it like a challenge, leaning against the doorframe. "What brings you here?"

"Where is she?"

"Who?" The fake innocence in her voice made me want to put my fist through the wall.

"Don’t play games with me, Lena. Where is Nova?"

She shrugged, examining her nails. "I don’t know the whereabouts of your Nova. Last I heard, she dropped out. Shame, really. She had so much potential."

The way she said it was so casual and unbothered, like she hadn’t destroyed someone’s entire life. That’s when I knew. My daughter was involved. My daughter had done this.

"What did you do?" My voice came out low and dangerous.

"Me?" She laughed. "Dad, I didn’t do anything. Nova made her own choices. Fucked her best friend’s dad, let herself get recorded, ruined her own reputation. All I did was help the truth come to light."

I grabbed her by the arm, probably harder than I should have. "What. Did. You. Do?"

For a second, fear flashed in her eyes. Good. She should be scared.

"I showed everyone who she really is," she spat. "A gold-digging slut who was using you—using our family—for money and status. Someone had to protect you from her."

"Protect me?" I released her arm like it burned. "You destroyed an innocent girl because you were jealous."

"Jealous?" Her voice pitched higher. "You replaced me with her! My best friend! And you expect me to just—what? Accept it? Be happy for you?"

"So you ruined her life? Drove her away?" I stepped back, looking at my daughter like I was seeing her for the first time. "You’re just like your mother."

That hit her. I could see it in the way her face crumpled for a second before the mask came back up.

"Get out," she said quietly.

"Gladly. But know this Elena, you are no longer my daughter. Legally, financially, emotionally. You’re dead to me."

I walked away before she could respond. I didn’t care anymore.

I reached out to Professor Hendricks, a man who owed me several favors from when I’d saved his department from budget cuts. He forwarded me the clip within an hour.

Watching it made me sick.

Someone had recorded me. Recorded me having sex with my girlfriend in my own house. Someone had violated our privacy, our intimacy, and then released it to destroy her.

The angle was clear, it was taken from a hidden camera, probably in one of the decorative pieces Nova always admired. The footage was steady and deliberate. This wasn’t an accident. This was planned.

That very day, as soon as I got home, I lined up every member of my staff that slept on the estate grounds overnight during that period. It wasn’t difficult to fish out the culprit.

Maria. A young maid who’d been with us for less than a year. She broke within ten minutes.

"Miss Lena approached me," she sobbed, wringing her hands. "She said Nova was a gold digger. That she was using you. That I’d be doing the family a favor by... by documenting her behavior."

"So you hid a camera in my private space and recorded us." My voice was ice.

"I didn’t think—I didn’t know she’d use it like that. She said it was just for evidence. Just in case. Then after she got the video, she threatened me. Said if I ever told anyone about her involvement, she’d make sure I never worked again."

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all. I knew Lena had much of Bianca in her, but I never knew the toxicity and poison ran this deep. I never knew a child I’d cared for and seen as mine could harm me this way. I thought only an outsider was capable of such things, but just like Bianca had shown me her true colors, Lena had finally shown me hers.

I fired Maria on the spot. Had her escorted off the property. Then I called my lawyer.

Within hours, Lena was being cut off from my shares and will. I started the process to disown her legally and made it clear that she was free to take her mother’s surname, but she’d never get another cent from me. I was done feeding people who wouldn’t hesitate to feed on me.

I would have pressed charges against her, but I had other pressing issues to attend to. Like finding Nova.

Her phone. That was the same thing that had led to us finding her before, so it was automatically my first resort.

It was more difficult to track this time because she wasn’t picking up my calls or replying to any of my messages. I had to go back to where I got the phone and pretend it was stolen so I could track it down.

It was past one in the morning when I finally got to the shitty motel. The Sunset Inn. A place that looked like it catered to people who didn’t want to be found.

I asked the receptionist—an old woman who looked half-asleep—and she gave a vague response that showed she wasn’t paying attention to her guests. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if she was coherent enough to understand what I was talking about with the way she kept staring at me.

When I instructed Ivin and my other men to start checking rooms, she finally spoke in a voice I could have missed if I wasn’t paying extra attention to details.

"Don’t break down any doors. Furniture’s expensive to replace these days." She pushed a container that had seen better days toward me. It was filled with different keys with their room numbers written on the tags.

I shared the keys amongst my men. Minutes later, after an unsuccessful search, I finally opened the last door. Room 12. It looked like it hadn’t been used in days, but when I opened the door and met an empty room, something told me to keep searching.

I went into the bathroom.

And there, glaring at me, was the last thing I expected to see.

Nova’s new phone. And next to it, some used pregnancy test strips.

My hands shook as I picked one up. Two pink lines. Positive.

I checked the others. All positive.

All of them.

Nova was pregnant. With my child.

But there was no Nova.

I sank to the floor of that shitty motel bathroom, phone and tests clutched in my hands, and for the first time in twenty years, I broke down.

She was pregnant. Scared. Alone in an unfamiliar place. And I hadn’t been there.

I stayed on that floor for I don’t know how long. Ivin eventually came in, saw me, and quietly backed out. He understood. This wasn’t something words could fix.

When I finally pulled myself together and walked out of that room, I had the phone and the tests with me as evidence and a proof, a reminder of what I’d lost.

Back at the estate, I immediately started making calls. I reached out to Professor Hendricks again and had him change Nova’s dismissal from rustication to a transfer. I arranged for another school, a better one. Set up an apartment in her name. Paid her tuition for the remaining two years.

All she needed to do was show up.

I hired the best hackers in the world. Within twenty-four hours, every trace of that damning video was being scrubbed from the internet. Twitter, Instagram, porn sites, cloud storage—everything. My nymph’s slate would be clean.

I even drove to her godmother’s house with cash and dope, hoping the old woman would remember something, maybe a family property, a distant relative, anywhere Nova might run to. But the godmother just took the money and the drugs and looked at me with glazed eyes that showed she didn’t care her goddaughter was missing.

I reached out to men who owed me favors. Friends I could count on. Even enemies I had to negotiate with. Luca Vitellio was surprisingly helpful probably because he understood what it felt like to almost lose someone.

My men started checking locations. Small towns, big cities, anywhere within driving distance. There was no plane ticket in her name, I’d already checked. Her car was still missing, which meant she was still mobile.

That was my biggest regret. I’d bought that car with cash and signed it fully over to Nova immediately. No tracker. No way to find it.

I’d wanted to give her freedom. Wanted her to feel like she owned something that was completely hers.

Now that freedom had made her disappear.

Three days felt like three years. I couldn’t function properly. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think about anything except where she might be. If she was safe. If she was still pregnant or if she’d already—

No. I couldn’t think about that.

I sat in my office, staring at the pregnancy tests I’d placed on my desk. Three positive tests. Three pieces of evidence that somewhere out there, the woman I loved was carrying my child.

And I had no idea where she was.

My phone rang. I grabbed it immediately, hoping—

It was just Ivin. "Boss, we checked the neighboring states. No sign of the car. No hotel bookings under her name. Nothing."

"Keep looking," I said, my voice hoarse. "She’s out there somewhere. We just have to find her."

"Yes, sir."

I hung up and stared at those tests again.

Where are you, Nova? Where is our child?

And will I ever get the chance to tell you I’m sorry?

The not knowing was killing me. Not knowing if she was safe. Not knowing if she’d keep the baby. Not knowing if I’d ever see her again.

I’d disowned my daughter and burned bridges just to try to make things right. But what good was any of it if Nova was gone?

My heart broke with every passing hour.

And all I could do was wait. And search. And hope that somehow, some way, I’d find her before it was too late.