Chapter 188

“What do you mean Adam is in the hospital? He was supposed to be in prison!” Sir Robert Collins slammed a clenched fist against the polished surface of his desk, his voice a low growl of fury as the report crackled through the phone.
This was unacceptable. They had been assigned two simple tasks. Two! And yet both had been botched beyond recognition. First, they were supposed to find the boy and arrange for it to be brought to him. And second was to eliminate Saira and frame both Adam and Melanie for her murder. That part had, at least on the surface, gone according to plan. Saira was dead. But the second part of the task- the one that mattered most to him- had ended in utter failure.
The boy was still missing, vanished without a trace, and no one could tell him how or why.
And now this-this absurdity! Adam wasn’t rotting in a cell where he belonged. He was lying half-dead in some hospital bed.
His chest tightened with rage. He couldn’t understand how things had unraveled so quickly, so completely.
“How the hell did this happen?” he snapped, voice rising. “Who dared to attack Adam? Who even had the nerve? Tell me now! I had given very clear instructions that Adam should have the kinfe in his hand! How did it end up in his stomach?”
There was silence on the other end as the man had no answers. Sir Robert Collins slammed his hands on the table again and bit into the phone,” Find out how this happened! And make sure that Adam doesn’t die but also does not wake up! And if this time there is a mistake, I will kill your entire family!”
He slammed the phone on the desk and then sat down on his chair with a frown on his face as he thought back to all the thoughts.
According to Saira’s original plan, everything was supposed to unfold like clockwork. Adam would arrive at the hotel, believing he was rescuing the boy. In the process, he would be caught in a perfectly orchestrated scene that made it look like he had attempted to murder Saira. That accusation alone would be enough to have him arrested and thrown into prison.
And once Adam was behind bars, Melanie legally bound by the conditions of the will would be forced to cut ties with him. With Adam labeled a criminal, the legitimacy of any relationship between them would be destroyed, and the will that had so inconveniently worked in their favor would be rendered null and void.
But he,Sir Robert Collins, had never been one to settle for half-measures. He saw Saira’s plan for what it was—clever, but far too cautious. It was just something to appease him and had the chances of failing. An attempted murder charge? That was a weak leash, easily shaken off with a good lawyer and some media sympathy. Adam was resourceful. He could wriggle his way out of that.
No, Sir Robert needed something ironclad. Something irreversible. Something fatal.
So he’d quietly altered the plan.
He let Saira carry on with her performance, carefully setting the stage. But instead of stopping at an attempted murder, he nudged the story toward something far more effective: an actual murder. Saira, he had already decided, would serve her final purpose best in death.
According to this new version, Adam would arrive in a fury, driven by rage and they would fight… Then he would go into the room to rescue the child but before he could, Saira would arrive. And then, later Saira would be found dead with the knife in Adam’s hand.
The recent press conference had made it public knowledge that Saira had intentionally harmed him in the past. Public opinion already painted her as unstable, vindictive. The fight and Saira’s goading would have already made it clear that Adamw as on the edge. So, the emotional groundwork was in place. It wouldn’t be hard to convince people that Adam had snapped and murdered Saira in his rage.
And to make the scene airtight—something no judge or jury could dispute—Sir Robert had instructed Saira to really lock the boy in the bathroom just before Adam arrived, instead of using a recording of the child crying like she had originally planned. That way, the child would be hidden during the act, spared the actual violence but perfectly placed to serve as a witness and of course then later taken in by him, just like he wanted.
The moment Adam entered, the trap had been sprung. He’d find Saira waiting—provoking, manipulating—until the confrontation turned deadly. And as soon as the boy emerged from the bathroom, he would find Saira’s lifeless body and Adam near her, knife in hand. A perfect visual. One no child would forget. One no court would question.
After that, the boy could be collected and brought directly to Sir Robert, where he belonged.
Everything had been so carefully designed. Every variable accounted for. So how had it all gone so horribly wrong? Just how did the boy disappear between the time Saira locked him in the bathroom and went down to set the scene and the killer entering the room to do the deed?
He’d even sent the killer back to make sure to open the bathroom door so that the child could walk out but there had been no child1 However, in his last communication with Saira, she had already informed him that the child was indeed locked and crying. So, how did the child disappear? There was only one answer. There was someone else in the room.
And that someone else was a witness to what had happened with Saira and also the one who might have stabbed Adam. But who? The adoptive parents of the child? Or someone else. Either way, his people had been unable to find anything about the boy… Which was troublesome in itself. It was as if the other person could predict his moves.
He glanced at his phone that rang again and answered with a sigh,” Yes?”
“I have news. A call was made from the room while Saira went down. It was from those gps watches…”
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