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With such an incentive, Loan had no doubt that the detective would do everything in his power to find her, but unfortunately it was not that easy. Six weeks passed, six terrible weeks before there was any news.

Loan traveled to Scotland every Friday, but it seemed as if the family had been swallowed up by the earth.

Finally, one Sunday afternoon he was about to leave for Switzerland when his phone started ringing.

“Hello?” he asked, seeing on the screen that it was the detective.

—Please tell me he hasn’t left yet! —the man said.

—No, I’m still here. Why? —Loan asked, her heart racing.

—I have an address!

Within minutes Loan was driving his car to the address the man had sent him. It was a small town in the south, between Glasgow and Kilmarnock, and Loan arrived late at night. He held back his desperation until the next day and hurried to knock on the door of the house.

It was very small and looked a bit run down, as if no one had done anything to repair or maintain it.

“Ailsa Frasier?” he asked the lady who opened the door.

He and the woman stood looking at each other for a long moment. She was over sixty years old, but her whole expression made her seem much older, as if bitterness had taken over her face.

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“What do you want?” he growled in annoyance.

—I’m looking for Danna… She’s your daughter, right?

Those words were like a blow to her. Her gaze seemed to kill him and Loan stood paralyzed for a few seconds.

—Why are you interested in my daughter? And who are you?

—My name is Loan… I met her at the skating championships a few years ago and I saw that she didn’t show up this year. I want to know if she’s okay —Loan said calmly but without looking away.

Ailsa stared at him for a long time, as if she were going to tear something from him, then parted her lips full of venom.

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—Why do you want to see it? —he asked sourly.

—Well… —Loan took a deep breath. One of her friends told me that she left the team because she was pregnant.

The woman’s face twisted even further and she walked out of the shack defiantly.

“So it was you,” she hissed, looking him up and down with contempt. “The starving man who impregnated my daughter and ruined her life… it was you.”

Loan pressed his lips together, no one had ever called him that before but he understood that the woman was out of her mind.

—I just want to take charge…

“Take charge?!” Ailsa growled. “Take charge of ruining her career? Do you have any idea how many years of my life I invested in her? How hard I had to work to buy her junk, skates, dresses…? I gave her my best years, my youth to make her a world-class skater… and then some wretch like you comes along and gets her pregnant! Take charge of her? It’s me you should be taking charge of! My daughter would have been famous, we would have had everything if you hadn’t gotten in her way, you and that brat!”

By that point Loan no longer cared about the insults, he just wanted the truth.

—That’s a problem between Danna and me! —he said in a firm voice— So please tell me where the hell she is because I won’t ask again!

Ailsa’s mouth twisted into a hideous grimace but she finally responded.

—Danna is dead.

Loan took a step back and shook her head through gritted teeth as her heart desperately fought to deny it.

“I don’t believe you,” she said in a broken voice. “I don’t believe anything you say.”

Ailsa shrugged, as if she had expected that reaction.

“The brat had her dizzy all the time, he did one of the turns wrong and they had to take her to the hospital,” he growled helplessly. “She was there for a few days but she finally lost the pregnancy and she didn’t… she didn’t survive that. The doctors said her heart couldn’t take it… but I know the truth,” he spat with a grimace, “that she was weak, much weaker than I thought.”

Loan clenched his fists as his eyes filled with tears and he cursed the heavens because he had a woman in front of him, because if it had been a man he would have broken every bone in her just for talking about her like that.

He turned his back and walked out. He didn’t want to believe what Ailsa Frasier was saying and he made sure to ask the neighbors, but they all agreed that Ailsa had moved in alone and no one ever came in or out of the house.

Loan was caught in a wave of anguish and sadness, feeling desperate for not knowing what had happened to Danna and the baby. To the point that he decided to leave the company in the hands of a specialized CEO before his distraction led him to make bad decisions.

Weeks passed with everyone trying to comfort him, until one day his sister Chiara approached him.

—I think my friend could help you.

—Your “friend”?

—Well, my personal toy boy, but he has influences and if I ask him maybe he can find out something about what happened — Chiara said hugging him. If what that woman said is true, you at least need some closure.

What Loan felt inside was a ray of hope and the strength to move forward. He met Jhon a few days later, his job as Director of one of the CIA’s specialized divisions definitely putting him in a good position to get information.

Finally, a few weeks later, Jhon put that envelope in his hands.

“Is it true?” Loan asked, seeing the grim expression on her face. “That woman didn’t lie to me? Is it true?”

Jhon nodded sadly as Loan pulled out the death certificate one of his men had obtained.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “Everything seems to indicate that both Danna and the baby died… but I’m not so sure.”

Loan looked at him, tears running down her face that she couldn’t hold back.

—What do you mean…?—he murmured.

—I don’t know, Loan, call it instinct, but if I were you, I would keep looking. There are many things in this story that don’t add up, for starters, the fact that Danna was supposedly cremated but no crematorium could be found that received the body.

The two looked at each other for a long second and Loan stammered:

—Do you think… that this is a lie? Do you think that her mother faked everything…? But why?

—I wouldn’t dare to speculate, but there are so many possibilities that my suggestion is only one: go back there, talk to the last people who saw her, Jhon told him. — A doctor signed that report, but there must have been a whole team around her… Don’t let anyone else tell you what to believe, find her grave, find her ashes, or find her, but find something or else you won’t live peacefully for the rest of your life.

And no matter how broken Loan’s heart was, she knew that Jhon was right.

“Maybe you can start here,” he said, handing her a small card. “It’s the name and number of the only nurse who refused to talk to the agent I sent. And believe me, when someone won’t talk under pressure, it’s because they have good reasons.”

Loan thanked her for her help and an hour later she was saying goodbye to her family. The trip back to Glasgow seemed like an eternity and, in fact, getting that woman to talk promised to be an impossible mission until Loan managed to corner her in a lift.

—I am the father, he told her. The father of the baby Danna was expecting. Please, you have to help me. I have been looking for her for months, now they tell me she is dead but… but I cannot accept that. Please tell me anything! Anything! At least tell me if you saw her die!

The nurse, in her fifties, gulped as she saw the desperation in his eyes.

“I didn’t see her die,” he replied, pressing the elevator button to stop it. I went home one night and the next day when I came back they told me she had collapsed and died.

—At that time…? At that time she had already lost the baby? —Loan asked.

—No, not at all, the initial bleeding was manageable… but I know that his emotional state was very precarious. He had too much pressure on him, so I tried to relieve it by talking about things… about inconsequential things —the woman murmured.

—What kind of things? — Loan persisted. —Did he ever ask you how to escape, tell you he needed money…?

The nurse frowned and nodded.

—Well, yes and no. I remember one day she asked me where was the best place for a single mother to work in Scotland… and I told her that the best thing would be to join the servants in some castle.

Loan was petrified.

—In a castle? Why? —he asked without understanding.

—Well… it’s just that almost all of them are uninhabited, the rich use them as summer homes or just to show off at some event… — she explained—. The pay isn’t good, but it comes with a room, a roof and food, and since it’s empty you don’t have to work too much.

Loan stepped back and tossed his hair, because a hunch told him this was the right path. There were more than three thousand in Scotland, but he couldn’t just go into every one of them for the sake of it.

He took out his cell phone and called the detective who had helped him a few weeks ago.

“I need another job. Find me a real estate agent. The best one there is!” Loan said. “We have a castle to buy.”