Chapter 4 - Cole's Desperate Hunt
At 11:30 the following morning, Cole Whitmore woke up in his master bed on West 85th Street, groggy and hungover. The smell of cheap rose perfume hung heavy on his pillows.
He stretched, a smug grin plastering his face as he recalled his night with Sierra—the twenty-four-year-old socialite daughter of one of his primary real estate investors. He rolled over, expecting Lauren to have left a fresh pot of coffee and his dry-cleaned suit on the valet rack as she always did.
The room was empty. The apartment was dead silent.
"Lauren!" Cole shouted, throwing off the duvet. "Where the hell is my coffee?"
No answer.
Irritated, he pulled on a silk robe and marched into the living room. The Christmas tree lights were off. The nursery door stood wide open.
Cole walked inside the nursery and froze.
The cribs were bare. The drawers were pulled open, completely emptied of clothes and blankets. The closet was cleared out.
Panic, sharp and sudden, pierced through his hangover. He ran into the kitchen. Sitting squarely in the center of the dark marble island was Lauren’s platinum wedding ring. Beneath it lay a crisp white sheet of paper with two handwritten lines:
Merry Christmas, Cole. This time you won't find us. Thanks for watching.
"What the hell is this?" Cole snarled, snatching the ring and the note. "Is this a joke?"
He pulled out his phone and dialed her number.
“The number you have called has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”
"Dammit!" he roared, slamming his fist onto the island. He immediately logged into his banking app. A smirk returned to his face when he saw the automated decline logs from Duane Reade at 4:15 AM.
"She left with no money, no phone, in the middle of a blizzard with two sick kids," Cole muttered to himself, pacing the room. "She won't last twenty-four hours. She'll be begging on her knees by nightfall."
His phone suddenly buzzed in his hand. It was Sierra.
"Babe," Sierra purred through the speaker. "Did you tell her yet? My father is expecting us at the St. Regis for lunch to discuss the $200 million investment for your IPO."
"It's handled, Sierra," Cole lied smoothly, smoothing his hair in the mirror. "Lauren took the kids to visit her mother for the holidays. The apartment is ours."
"Good," Sierra giggled. "Because my dad said if your personal life isn't squeaky clean, the board won't approve the funding."
Cole hung up, a cold sweat breaking out across his neck. His entire $2 billion Whitmore Enterprise IPO—the massive deal that would make him untouchable on Wall Street—relied entirely on his image as a devoted family man and the sole creator of his proprietary trading algorithms.
If the press found out his wife had abandoned him in the middle of the night with infant twins, taking allegations of infidelity with her, his stock would crash before it even listed.
May you like
He grabbed his phone and called his dirty private investigator, a former dirty cop named Vance.
"Vance," Cole barked into the receiver. "My wife took my children. Find her. I don't care if you have to track every shelter, hotel, or bus station in the tri-state area. Pull camera feeds, buy off cab drivers, do whatever it takes. I want her back in this apartment by tomorrow morning—or I’ll make sure you never work in this city again."
