My Bestie's Dad Likes Me Wet-Chapter 70 Red Lights

NOVA POV

The sound of the monitor wouldn’t stop. That flat, endless beep was a sound that doesn’t belong in real life, not in my type of life, it belongs in nightmares.

"LENA!"

I screamed, but someone caught me before I could reach her door. My fists hit a chest, solid and annoyingly unmovable. I didn’t even have to look up to know it was Grant. His arms were around me, and its strength was, holding me back while I kicked, screamed, clawed at him to let me go.

"Let me go, Grant! Please! That’s Lena—she’s—"

My voice broke into sobs I couldn’t swallow.

Through the glass, I saw flashes of doctors moving fast, someone pumping her chest, a syringe, then another. Her body jolted but it looked lifeless, then fell still again.

I pressed my forehead to the glass, whispering prayers I didn’t even believe in. Please, please, not her. I can’t bear having another blood on my conscience.

Grant’s voice rumbled low behind me, but I couldn’t hear him. Not really. Everything sounded distant, the shouting, the footsteps, the chaos. Like I was underwater, drowning in sound and silence all at once.

Then I heard a single, merciful beep from the monitor. Then another. Relief flowed through me as my knees gave out, and Grant caught me before I hit the floor. His grip was too firm and steady for someone who’d just watched his daughter almost die.

"How—how did this happen?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"They’ll find out," he said, too calm but I could sense the panic and buried emotions. "Someone wanted this to happen."

I turned to him, wiping my tears with the back of my shaking hand. "Someone wanted her dead, Grant. And you’re just standing here?"

His eyes flicked to mine, sharp and distantly cold. "I’m not standing. I’m thinking."

"Thinking?" I almost laughed. "Your daughter almost died, and you’re thinking?"

He didn’t answer immediately. His gaze had gone somewhere else, it looked distant and void of any warmth. I knew that look. That was the same look he had when he said ’handled’. The same look he had when he called people collateral damage.

And that terrified me more than the alarms.

"Grant," I whispered, "what did you do? Or what do you plan to do?"

He didn’t look at me. "Whatever it takes."

I took a step back. "No. Don’t do that. Don’t shut down now."

He finally turned toward me, eyes cutting like knives. "If someone touched my daughter, Nova, there won’t be a rock left unturned in this city."

"Then what happens next?" My voice cracked. "How many more people have to die before you feel like you’ve won?"

He didn’t answer me but I had a feeling if we don’t cut our losses and move on this might turn into a messy bloodshed.

The doctors came out of Lena’s room, one of them barking orders for blood tests and IVs. I caught a glimpse of Lena looking pale, unmoving except for the small rise and fall of her chest, her lifeless body was a huge contrast to her personality in real life.

One of the nurses murmured something about a wrong dosage that was too high and could have killed Lena.

Grant’s head snapped toward the sound. Seems he heard the same thing I did. His body went still.

And then he moved.

"Stay here," he told me, already walking away.

"Grant—"

He didn’t even look back. "Stay with her, Nymph."

And just like that, he was storming down the hallway, trailed by two other men in black I hadn’t noticed earlier. I watched him go, that dark determination in his shoulders making my stomach twist.

Katie joined me a few minutes later, face swollen and blotchy from crying. Her eyes were red, hair a tangle of chaos, hands trembling as she clutched her phone like it could anchor her.

"I saw Lena’s dad rush out," she whispered. "What happened?"

I took a shaky breath and told her everything that had happened since she left. How Lena had flatlined. How they brought her back. How the monitor still echoed in my skull.

Katie broke again. Her sobs came raw and painful , and I pulled her close. We held each other in that cold corridor, two girls trying to be strong but falling apart in the same breath.

Someone had called Tyler’s family already; no one had heard back. And Sandy, no one knew where she was or what state she was in. The waiting hurt more than anything else.

When Katie’s tears slowed into shallow breaths, I gently eased her against my shoulder, pretending to scroll through my phone just to calm my shaking fingers. My screen was filled with unanswered messages to Grant. I typed again, deleted, typed again. I didn’t want Katie to see.

Finally, after what felt like forever, my phone buzzed.

One message from my man

Grant: Luca is out of the country. His cousin will be the scapegoat.

My throat tightened at the word scapegoat. The word alone chilled me. I knew Grant could be ruthless, but this, I feel like this was crossing into something darker. Luca had done wrong, but if they both kept clawing at each other like this, someone innocent would pay.

I wanted to call him, to yell, to shake him out of that void he called control. My thumbs hovered over the screen, trembling, when my phone lit up again.

It was a call from my Godmother.

The last time she called, it was to warn me about a stalker. I sighed, thinking she probably needed another handout to fund her pills or whiskey.

I swiped the green icon and pressed the phone to my ear.

"So if I never reach out, you won’t reach out?" Her voice was loud enough to make me flinch. Sharp and angry as usual. "Is that how you treat the woman who gave you a warm roof and food in your stomach?"

The corner of my lip twitched. We both knew that was a lie.

I eased a drowsy Katie off my shoulder before I stood, and walked down the hallway until I found an empty corner behind a giant flower vase and the rails.

She wasn’t done. "You don’t care for anyone, Nova. Not for me, not for yourself. Not even for the memory of your dead parents."

The words hit deep, and being who she was she knew exactly where and how to hurt me. She always did.

I swallowed hard, gripping the phone tighter until the edges bit into my skin. I forced my voice steady hoping to deflect the ticking bomb. "It’s nice to hear from you too."

She hissed loudly. I had to distance my ear from the phone speaker. She hated it when I didn’t take her bait.

"I’ve had nothing to eat for three days," she said. "A few dollars would go a long way."

I bit back the bitter laugh clawing at my throat. "Same here," I lied softly. "Classes haven’t resumed. No allowance yet."

"That’s a lie," she snapped. "Word on the street is you’re shagging billionaires now."

The world tilted for a second, I forgot how to breathe. My back hit the wall for support. "Ma?"

"Oh, don’t sound so shocked." Her tone turned gleefully cruel. "A nice man comes here every week with pictures of you wrapped in the arms of two different men. One of them is your best friend’s Daddy and honestly I didn’t know you had that in you."

The blood drained from my face. I gripped the railing in front of me until my knuckles went white. Pictures?

She kept going. "The men you’re spreading your legs for are dangerous and till now I still don’t know what they see in a plain Jane like you."

My stomach twisted. I could barely keep up with her words; they tangled together in a ugly chaos of heartbreak.

"The man who drops the pictures off brings some Percs and my favorite supplies," she added, almost smug.

My mouth went dry. Drugs. He was feeding her habits and information about me.

Whoever was doing this was playing a power game, and I was the pawn.

She laughed again, the sound grating on my already fragile nerves.

"Just wanted to hear your lying ass voice. You’d probably pretend to be broke again. Fucking your best friend’s dad, getting her boyfriend killed—"

My knees gave way. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold linoleum, tears breaking loose despite my efforts to swallow them down.

My godmother was the worst person to have this kind of ammunition. She’d sell the story for a fix, then retell it for years like she witnessed it firsthand. There was no containing this now.

I should’ve hung up. I should’ve thrown the phone. But something in me froze when her tone shifted, turning almost playful.

"He said to tell you to come back to the countryside to visit me one of these days," she said, mock-sweet. "He wants to see what’s so special about your pussy. I told him you were just a regular slut, but he insists that if you want Lena—the bitch you are fucking her dad—to stay alive, you’ll come before the end of the week."

She laughed long and shrill, before the line went dead and for a moment, the world stopped moving.

The woman who is supposed to be my legal guardian, my godmother, is selling me off for coke and a handful of dirty bills.

I sat there with the phone still pressed to my ear, praying she’d call back and say it was all a joke. But she didn’t. The only thing I heard was the hum of the vending machine and the thud of my heartbeat in my ears.

The tears pooling in my eyes came fast now, blurring the corridor lights into streaks of white and red. I hugged my knees while trying to breathe through the nausea crawling up my throat.

Somewhere distant, I heard my name but it sounded faint and distant. "Nova!"

Once, then again, it sounds closer. I’m sure it was a man’s voice but I couldn’t comprehend anything. Not in the state I was in.

My body wouldn’t move, my chest tightened like it was being squeezed together by an unseen force. The edges of my vision darkened, and I felt like I was being dragged underwater but I didn’t fight it.

I let the darkness pull me under.