Chapter 337-The Last Message

Jaguar:

Theodore and I both looked guilty, while Ragnar’s face carried a strange kind of sadness.

"You promised me," Mr. Gavin Hill said, his voice cracking as tears filled his eyes. "You promised you would protect my daughter."

He wiped at his face, still clutching a large photograph of Gigi in one hand.

"Did it not occur to you that before doing all this, you should have remembered that my daughter has survived an abusive relationship too? That she is a victim as well? Did none of you think about how much stress all of this would put on her?"

His grief quickly turned back into anger.

"I’m not saying you shouldn’t have exposed my son. I’m not saying you should have protected him. But you should have spoken to us. There were other ways to handle this."

His voice rose again.

"This was so dramatic, so public, so humiliating, and neither we nor my daughter were given even the slightest warning. You didn’t even arrange guards to protect her."

He looked directly at Ragnar.

"And now my daughter is missing."

Mrs. Stella Hill cried harder.

"And what makes you so sure she ran away?" she demanded. "What if someone kidnapped her? You know how aggressively people can react in situations like this."

My heart skipped a beat.

Because I knew she wasn’t wrong.

"Please calm down. Come sit over here. We’re worried too," I told Mr. Gavin.

He shook his head and broke down in tears.

But I noticed Mrs. Stella Hill glaring at Theodore and me with such hatred that it almost felt as though we had personally done something to Gigi.

I mean, yes, we had promised to protect her too. But technically, if anyone deserved most of their anger, it should have been Ragnar.

Still, Mrs. Stella Hill seemed angrier with us.

Or maybe I was reading too much into it.

"I’m just terrified that the next time I see my daughter, instead of seeing her smiling face, I’ll be looking at her dead body."

Mrs. Stella Hill’s words silenced all of us.

For several seconds, no one knew what to say.

"I just want to know what happened to my daughter in your house that made her take such a drastic step," Gavin demanded, looking at Ragnar.

Ragnar had gone completely silent.

And I knew exactly where this conversation could lead.

If Ragnar told them that Gigi had sent Verity into the attic and that they had argued because of it, then another issue would inevitably come up.

Why had Ragnar still not properly dealt with the matter of his fated mate?

Why had he allowed the subject to remain unresolved for so long that Gigi had driven herself crazy worrying about it?

The truth was, Ragnar and Gigi should have had that conversation a long time ago and settled the issue between them.

Ragnar had a terrible habit of delaying difficult conversations, and sometimes that habit caused more damage than he expected.

"Did she send either of you any messages?" I asked, stepping in before they could question Ragnar further.

He already looked consumed by guilt, and they were only making the situation worse.

"I don’t know. My phone was switched off," Mrs. Stella Hill replied, finally seeming to realize that this was the time to think clearly rather than argue.

Gaviin showed me his phone.

There were no notifications.

Mrs. Stella Hill quickly pulled hers from her purse and switched it on.

Almost immediately, notifications began pouring in.

"These are Gigi’s messages," she said.

Theodore and I exchanged a look before rushing over to her.

Ragnar didn’t move.

The fact that he remained rooted to the same spot only made it clearer how guilty he felt.

I took the phone from Mrs. Stella Hill so I could read the messages myself, and Theodore stepped beside me.

Most of them were messages Gigi had repeatedly sent to her mother, saying that she felt suffocated and that it seemed as though her life was over.

She had also written that no one loved her anymore and that everyone hated her.

That wasn’t true.

But considering everything she had survived and how deeply traumatized she had been for so long, it wasn’t surprising that her mind had taken her there.

We should have thought more carefully about her mental health.

We had failed her twice.

The realization made me feel sick.

Then I reached the final message.

’I can’t go through the same thing again. Justin tortured me before, and now, because my brother did something so horrible to his sister, people aren’t going to leave me alone either.

I saw the way the reporters looked at me today. I saw the way the warriors looked at me. Even our own driver taunted me and scared me when he started taking me through some secret route.

It felt like he was deliberately trying to frighten me, to make me understand how wrong it is to hurt a woman, as if I don’t already know that.

I can’t live like this.

Please forgive me. I can’t bear seeing hatred in people’s eyes again.

I’m leaving on my own. I’m going far away, maybe so far that I’ll never come back.’

When I finally raised my head, my eyes met Ragnar’s.

There were tears in his eyes.

Then he turned abruptly and strode toward the warriors.

"Get my car ready. I’m going to search those lands myself," he ordered.

Panic and worry strained every word of his voice.

"Theodore, one of us should go after Ragnar," I told my brother.

"I’ll go after him. You go home and make sure the warriors are guarding the area. I don’t want everyone finding out that we’re so distracted we can’t even defend or protect the women and the other people in our house."

I paused, making sure he was listening.

"And go speak to Mr. and Mrs. Bundy. Calm them down and see what you can do for them, okay?"

After giving Theodore the instructions, I left to go after Ragnar.

The reason I left Theodore behind was because I could tell how guilty he felt.

He already seemed devastated, blaming himself for being part of the reason Gigi had left, simply because he hadn’t chosen to stay with her last night.