I'm In Love With My Bestfriend's Billionaire Fiance!
Chapter 101: Janet’s Number

Chapter 101: Janet’s Number

(Casey’s POV)

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My heart pounded like a war drum inside my chest—each beat harder, heavier, as if it were trying to shake the truth loose from the depths of my mind. The thought clung to me like a shadow I couldn’t outrun, coiled in the corners of my consciousness.

Kira.

Her name alone made bile rise in my throat. I couldn’t shake it—couldn’t dismiss the nagging, nauseating suspicion that Maven had her. The bastard was always ten steps ahead, pulling strings I didn’t even realize were attached to me. And now... it felt like he was pulling hers. It was as if he had her with him, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I stood frozen in the middle of my office, phone gripped in my trembling hand. My thumb scrolled down my contacts list with manic urgency, the screen blurring as I scoured it for a name I knew had to be there.

Janet.

The housekeeper. The one constant in Kira’s household—the one who always knew who was coming, going, watching. She’d seen more than most, heard more than anyone, and I needed her now more than ever. If anyone knew where Kira had been lately... who she’d seen... whether she was safe... it would be her.

But she wasn’t in my phone.

Not under J. Not under "Housekeeper," "Janet Kira," "JK," or even the random categories I sometimes used like "Kira’s People" or "Miscellaneous." I checked them all. Again. And again.

Nothing.

It was like she had vanished from my digital memory—wiped clean. Or maybe she had never been there to begin with.

"Come on, come on," I muttered, sweat prickling at the base of my neck. I tried searching old texts, call history, voicemails. Still nothing. My hands moved faster, more desperate now, my thumb sliding recklessly over glass. As if I could force her number to appear out of sheer panic.

Nothing.

A cold sweat began to spread down my back. The walls of the room seemed to inch closer, like the pressure in my head was manifesting around me.

And then it hit me like a slap.

I never saved her number.

It hadn’t seemed important. I’d only ever spoken to her through Kira. The number had always been there, buried in a message thread or surfaced in conversation, never saved. Never needed to be.

Until now.

"Fuck!" I yelled, hurling the phone toward the desk. How the hell was I going to get access to her number when I didn’t even have it anywhere close to me?

The phone hit the wood with a dull thud, bouncing once, then spinning lifelessly to a stop. The screen remained on, glowing weakly like a dying pulse. It mirrored how I felt—dimmed, drained, helpless.

But that didn’t make sense. I knew that I had gotten her number in the past, but I just couldn’t remember the details about that.

I planted both hands on the edge of the desk and leaned forward, trying to breathe, trying to think, trying not to lose it completely. The silence in the room was deafening, the kind that eats away at your thoughts and amplifies every worst-case scenario until it’s the only reality that makes sense.

What if Maven did have her?

What if this whole game, ... what if it had been leading up to this? Breaking me down. Distracting me. While he went after the one person I still cared about in a way I hadn’t admitted aloud.

Kira.

Because when you thought about it, there was credence to that line of thought. While Jace and I had been busy chasing Ramon, we had no idea what Maven had done to Kira yesterday. And now, with Jace off on yet another wild goose chase, we still had no idea what kind of trouble exactly that Kira was embroiled in.

And I had no idea where she was. No way to reach anyone close to her. No access to the one person who might’ve given me answers.

Janet’s absence felt like a warning. A missing piece removed intentionally—surgically—by someone who knew how to make you feel isolated without even touching you.

I pushed away from the desk, pacing the room like a caged animal. Each step was jagged, wild. I needed to move. I needed to do something. I couldn’t just stand here while Maven closed in. I couldn’t just do nothing while he probably did unspeakable things to Kira. Nah... I wasn’t going to stand for that at all.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew better than to just make a move without knowing what I was walking into. The last thing I wanted was to do something that was going to put the life and well-being of my best friend in danger. That was why I had to be careful; there was only a little margin for error, and I was trying my best to avoid it entirely.

Still, what choice did I have? Every second I waited, every moment spent trapped in this suffocating uncertainty, felt like one more nail in a coffin I couldn’t see but knew existed. As long as she was out there doing God knows what, she was exposed to whatever madness that Maven had planned. This was a risk, and I was done letting her bear the brunt of it. It needed to come to an end!

I crossed the room and picked up my phone again. The screen had gone dark. I tapped it, and my reflection flickered faintly in the glass—tired eyes, clenched jaw, a face unraveling at the seams.

"Shit..."

The word escaped my lips in a harsh whisper as I slumped back in the chair, the leather groaning beneath my weight. I pressed my fingers against my temples, willing myself to think—to remember. There had to be a way out of this fog. A loose thread I hadn’t pulled yet. Something that I was yet to figure out. It was itching at the back of my mind, just reaching out, and I could feel it. Slipping away with every second that went by.

Janet’s number. That was the key. And at the moment, I wasn’t doing a good job of finding it!

If I could just remember how I got it. One damn moment. One conversation with Kira. One scrap of memory tucked into a drawer I hadn’t opened in months. It was there. I knew it was. I just needed to trace my steps—go back to that moment when Kira first handed it over.

That was it! I had to retrace my steps! Find out how I had gotten the number! If I remember that, it would be easier to find where I stored the number. Or how I stored it.

I snapped upright and reached for my purse, heart pounding faster now, not from fear, but from the flicker of possibility. I unzipped it, not with caution, but desperation, and in one swift motion, turned it upside down.

Everything spilled out in a chaotic cascade—lip gloss, receipts, gum wrappers, pens, tangled earbuds, a half-eaten protein bar I’d long forgotten about. They scattered across the desk like the shattered fragments of my sanity.

I sifted through them with shaking hands, tossing aside lipstick caps and faded post-its. My breath quickened. Somewhere, buried in this wreckage, was the number. I had to believe that.

I dug deeper, fingers rifling through the pages of a tattered leather-bound journal I hadn’t touched in weeks. My nails caught on the frayed edge of a crumpled receipt, and I paused, squinting at the faint ink—but it was nothing. Just an overpriced coffee from a café I couldn’t even remember visiting.

"Come on," I hissed through clenched teeth, the sound sharper than I meant it to be.

I flung open the drawer beneath the desk, pulled out every notebook, every scribbled-upon napkin, every damn envelope that had ever meant something or might mean something now. I scoured their surfaces for strings of numbers, names, anything—anything that could tie back to Janet.

Nothing.

I flipped through an old planner, pages stained with time and smudged ink. My hands moved fast, frantic, as if speed might summon a miracle. A flash of hope surfaced when I saw a familiar blue sticky note pressed between two pages—but it was just a reminder for a doctor’s appointment I’d missed three months ago.

"Damn it!"

I shot up from my seat, shoving the chair backward so hard it collided with the wall behind me. The sound cracked through the room like thunder, but I didn’t care.

I was unraveling.

There had to be some way to reach her. Some overlooked clue. Some faint echo in the dark. I paced, arms crossed tightly against my chest, jaw clenched so hard it ached. The room felt smaller by the second—like the walls were folding in, pressing tighter, demanding I figure it out now or never.

I turned back to the mess on my desk and ran my fingers through my hair, pulling hard at the roots as if pain might jar a memory loose. My eyes scanned the chaos—pages bent and fluttering slightly in the breeze from the ceiling fan above. The sound of paper rustling became almost unbearable, like whispers I couldn’t understand.

Where did Kira give it to me? When?

Just then—my eyes caught the dull glow of my phone, resting there on the desk like an afterthought. It was covered slightly by my journal, but the moment my eyes fell on it, I knew exactly how I was going to find Janet’s number.

It hit me so hard that I couldn’t help but feel foolish for not figuring it out sooner.

Our chats!

That was the answer! Janet’s number was hidden in our chats!!!

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