The Officer's Runaway Wife and Secret Son novel Chapter 473

But the boy's joyful, beaming face from moments ago kept overlapping with the face of the teenager in the photograph.

Those eyes, so much like Rhys’s, had just been sparkling up at her.

He had called her “Aunt Margot.”

Margot’s fingers, suspended in mid-air, curled into a fist before she stiffly pulled her hand back.

She had nothing left.

She relied on handfuls of pills just to maintain a sliver of sanity, suffering through sleepless nights filled with nightmares of a massive truck and a sea of blood.

“Aunt Margot, why are you sad?” Felix suddenly stopped the game and turned to look at her. “Are you not feeling well? My daddy’s not happy when he’s sick either. You have to take your medicine on time.”

Margot shook her head. “It’s nothing. Let’s go play the claw machines.”

Behind a potted plant outside the arcade, Rhys’s young apprentice watched Margot’s every move, a cold sweat breaking out on his back.

“Boss, this woman seems… unstable,” he whispered into his phone. “I thought she was about to do something to the kid. Now they’re heading to the claw machines. There are too many people here. Should I just go in?”

Rhys’s calm voice came through the earpiece.

“Keep following. I’m in the parking garage now.”

The car screeched to a halt in a parking spot on the third basement level. Rhys pulled out the key and pushed his door open.

Clara was even faster, already running for the elevators in her high heels.

With a *ding*, the elevator doors opened.

A text from the apprentice arrived on Rhys’s phone right on time.

[South wing, claw machine aisle.]

Rhys grabbed Clara’s wrist and pulled her through the crowd, striding toward the south wing.

At the end of the aisle, in front of a pink claw machine, Felix was excitedly mashing the buttons on the console.

The mechanical claw slowly descended, grabbed a small stuffed rabbit, and swayed precariously toward the prize chute.

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