Chapter 383: Chapter 383

"Who’s there? Go find out!" A mysterious female voice echoed softly. However, this did not bring any comfort to Samantha. The voice itself triggered the ting hairs on her body to stand straight, as well as trigger goosebumps. Samantha could feel the blood rush through her, like an adrenalin rush.

She looked left, then right and then finally spotted a small door a few feet from her. She would not have found this on a normal day as it had had the same colour as the pristine walls but had no knob. She was only able to spot it because it had been left slightly ajar but a hair’s margin. Without hesitance, she slipped into it just as the door to the room her mother was in swung open from the inside.

"There’s no one here,"

"Are you sure? I distinctively heard-"

The person stepped out into the corridor and then glanced around casually. The echo of approaching footsteps was what stopped her search.

"Hello, we’re detectives from..."

The person who had opened the door stopped short, wondering where the two people in front of her had come from.

"Detectives? Why are you here?"

"We’d like to have a chat with Madam Aliya Maybach,"

"Ermmmm...." The person hesitated, then looked back into the room as if seeking approval. Getting the needed one, she stood aside for the detectives to enter the room, then glanced back one last time.

"We’d like to know about the accident that looked to have claimed the lives of you and your fiancé. The facts have shown us that he may also be alive somewhere, so every clue you can give us will be very helpful..."

The door swung closed, so Samantha did not hear anything else. In fact, she would also like to know what had happened to her adoptive father as well, but whatever Samantha had heard had plunged into the depths of some disbelief, and her nerves were wrung tight.

Forgetting about her phone, she slipped out of the service room that she had entered and ran along the corridor to the elevator.

Samantha pressed the button frantically while looking over her shoulder in the direction she had just come from. Seeing that it was taking so long, she pushed open the opposite door that led to the stairwell and a flood of lights met her. She ran down a few of them before slumping down into one dark corner underneath one of the flights of stairs. She squatted down and wrapped her arms around herself tightly.

Before she realized, cold tear trails marred her cheeks. Samantha’s shoulders shook so hard as she tried to clamp her hand over her mouth to muffle the sounds. Soon, the lights dimmed and went off, giving her that shroud of darkness that she needed. Samantha coiled into a corner and cried her heart out.

The hurt she felt was so bad that she did not want to ever leave the place. At that moment, Samantha wanted her new mother, Shelby, but she had no way of contacting her as her phone was still back in that room. At the same time, she did not want to meet any other person. Shelby had a way of making Samantha feel at ease in her heart and that was the only thing that she sought.

She had no idea how long she had sat in that cold and dark corner, but Samantha did not care, and neither did she want to think or talk about what she had heard. She still could not believe those words.

’How could she say that? She is supposed to be my mother and saviour! The one who took me from the orphanage and gave me a second life!’

Down the stairs, Murray waited for a long time, but Samantha never showed up. He did not have a link to Samantha as he had with Shelby, so Murray was not able to locate her.

It took hours and almost a twenty-four-hour window before Samantha showed up, riddled with makeup, piercings and dreadlocks. It took almost everyone aback, but no matter what they did, Samantha remained tight-lipped about what had occurred when she had gone back for her phone. A phone that she still did not have!

In the hospital room that day, the detectives were there for a long while but could get nothing out of Aliya. She just did not remember anything from the day of her accident. There wasn’t much they could do if the victim could not remember what had happened.

Within the days that had followed that, lots of people close to this took particular interest in it, and Ian was no different from it. In the Thornston estate and about a week before Aliya’s visit, Ian sat in the cold room with Murray, Currey and Shelby too.

"Have you found anything since then?" Ian asked, keen eyes resting on the two. Unlike before, Shelby had taken a seat a little farther away from him than she usually did. The couple seemed great in all they did, but Shelby knew that Ian truly cherished her, however... what she felt could not be put into words.

Ian sighed and did not bother asking her to come to him as he would have usually done. He stood up from where he was, walked up to her and scooped her right out of her seat, then he walked back to his gigantic one, sat down and placed her on his lap.

She shouted, glaring at him, but he only bent down and kissed her on the lips. Shelby gave up, and the two assistants smiled.

"Anything?" Ian asked again when he saw that the two were overly enjoying his display of affection with his wife and not answering the question posed.

"Sorry, Your Highness!" Currey quickly bowed as this question was directed at him.

"It’s strange that after all this time, I am unable to find anything substantial on that accident or especially on Tyler too...."

Ian wrapped one arm around Shelby and used the other to draw small circles on her back, making her relax into his embrace.

"Let’s start from the top. What do we know about this so far...."

Ian had a slight pained expression when he said this because he still partially blamed himself for not being there for Aliya when she really needed it. This guilt had lessened since she had come back alive, but a small part of Ian still held on to this subconsciously.

Since Ian had decided to be very transparent with his emotions to Shelby, she could feel this from him too and she could not help but let her mind travel back to the initial days and especially on one of the days that Ian had fallen sick in his locked room.

She had witnessed Ian trash around on his bed in his delirium while mumbling out, ’"I c-ouldn’t s-ave her! Al-iya is gone forever! I pr-omised to pro-tect her and I cou-ldn’t! I couldn’t!"’ with tears seeping out. She could still remember that day so clear in her mind.

"The two went out that day, and their vehicle fell off a cliff. None of their bodies were ever retrieved!" Currey summed up the whole treacherous ordeal in a single sentence. There was no need to go into the details. The two had been presumed dead but that was all to the story. The questioned remained, ’If Aliya was alive, then what of Tyler?’

Ian stiffened slightly when Currey said these but he still asked, "What of the other task I had asked?"

"We still can’t find much but my educated guess is that, if Aliya was in a coma for that long, it confirms our analogy that she may have contributed to the human half of Ingrid. We just need to find the one in the shadows, Tyler. Their car went off a cliff and into the rocky and turbulent sea below. That means he is definitely out there!"

The room remained quite as they all digested this information.

"Merfolks do not stay on land permanently. It may also be that he had left and gone back to his folks."

"You forget one thing.... they never leave their offspring behind though," Murray interjected, and Shelby countered,

"They don’t care much about half species though... at least from what I read about them."

They all sunk back into deep thoughts.

"You are getting rusty, Currey. It’s about time that you go back to train.... Ma-"

Currey trembled and dropped to his knees while Murray snickered. The said training was not really a training but a harsh activity that they might as well consider as a punishment. Even Murray himself was baffled as to why his brother could not get more info on this. It had taken weeks! With Currey’s capabilities, only a few hours would have been enough for such a tough case.

"What of Samantha? Do you still need me to keep an eye on her?"

"Leave her be for now. She’ll talk to me when she is ready." Shelby responded to Murray’s query as her mind drifted to the children.

Just like that, a week passed, but within this time, the children never visited Aliya in the hospital, and neither did the couple. That name ’Aliya’ was somehow taboo in the Thornston estate till that fateful morning when Suzie announced that the person was there.

Shelby and Ian walked into the main receiving room and took their seat. Ian pulled Shelby before she could take another seat. Shelby shook her head when he wrapped his arms around her. He liked it when she sat in between his legs, but Shelby was not so sure that the person they were expecting would scene.

Alex and Geneva also came out to join after getting the news. In fact, everyone in the family came, wanting to see this Aliya person.

After a little while, Suzie walked in briskly, followed by a dark-haired young woman who looked thin and pale. However, it was not her physique that brought a frown onto most of the faces there. It was the fact that the workers who followed her had a packed bag in their hands!

Aliya nearly dashed into the room, her voice leading the way, "Prince Ian!"

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