I love her. God. I am in love with her. She had told me she loved me one time after a session of passionate love making and I cowardly avoided the topic. Till now. Till this. And now I don't know if I am ever going to see her again. I glare at the sunlight forcing itself into the den, splashing across my face, the alcohol has numbed me to a stupor where nothing matters but Amelia. My head hurts with a terrible migraine and everything makes me sngry. I am painfully aware of the fact that the more hours that passed, the more danger she might be in. The more volatile the situation becomes. And it is all my fault. I don't know if I will ever forgive myself if anything happens to Amelia. Hernandez walks into the den from somewhere beyond my limited line of sight and I eye him angrily. It is good that he is a top professional, else I don't know how he put up with my violent outbursts. I would be embarrassed if I wasn't too drunk. "Mr. Dmitri. Good morning." He says, taking his seat on t
"12:20p.m." He says without glancing at his wristwatch. It takes me a moment to understand what that means. I jump off the couch, but it is too much motion for my hungover brain, and I sway on the balls of my feet for a moment. I run a hand through my hair, and shut my eyes for a couple of seconds. Till the world stops swaying beneath my feet. "Report on what I asked you to do." I say firmly after a moment where I catch my head. I need an aspirin. But I will go get it later. "She is here." Hernandez says coolly, I nod and look at my phone, no missed calls from any unknown numbers. I check the answering machine, nothing. "Okay, good. Send her in in ten minutes." I say and turn around, heading upstairs to my room. I need to put myself together. Enough of this show of weakness. I think I have an odd idea of what this is about and whilst I would hate to confirm it, it is inevitable. I always knew my past would come back to bite me in the ass in some way over the years and I looked fo
She glares at me from her seat across the den, I open my mouth to reply her but just then a vibration goes off in my pants pocket. It is my phone. I grab it, and looking at the screen, it is an unsaved number. Unknown. I look at the hot glare on Sheryl's face as she watches me with palpable hatred. Hernandez bursts into the room, he has set up a makeshift investigation room in the guestroom adjacent to the den, and he tracks my phone for every single call. He must have seen the call come in. Abbie is behind him and a third guy who is with Hernandez, whose name I have not bothered to know in the chaos since yesterday. Sheryl looks behind her and I see the panic cross her eyes for a second. "That would be him, right?" I point the ringing phone to Hernandez. "Should be. It is almost twenty four hours after." He says coolly. Abbie nods at me and the third guy pulls out a recording device with earpieces which he passes around to Hernandez and Abbie. Then he walks out of the room back to
Amelia POV:"Mom?" Tyler's face falls, and his tone goes from the anger of a few seconds ago to confusion. He turns away so I can't see his face, though the phone speaker is still loud, he wanted me to hear him taunt Linc and when I heard his voice, though dominating and resonant like I remember him to be, it broke my heart into a million pieces. I imagined that this would be the last time I hear his voice and if Tyler didn't have me gagged with a dirty piece of rag, I would have screamed my lungs out so Linc can hear me on the other side. "Tyler! What is this? What are you doing? Why...?" The woman's voice breaks out into a loud sob. I cringe from the heartwrenching sound. "Mom, what the fuck are you doing there? Did Linc bring you here? Why are you here? What the fuck is going on?" Tyler huffs down the line. His neck gets splotchy when he is angry, it is currently turning a shade of violent red. I try to make myself invisible in the high ceilinged room so he doesn't turn this an
With the morning light, I am able to see that he brought us to an abandoned warehouse. It is huge and feels almost cavernous. The windows are high and off to the far end of the space, there are tall stacks of long forgotten boxes containing God knows what."Mom?" Tyler calls, his mother has gone silent on the other end. We hear only her breathing. I know Linc is with her and I strain against the gag in my throat, it is futile. I can't make a sound. I know I shouldn't but I feel desperate. I don't want to die without hearing Linc's voice one more time. I don't want to leave him without speaking to him one last time. I don't know where the death thoughts come from, but listening to unstable Tyler talk to his mother and the awful suspicious silence on her end, I get a bad feeling in the pits of my stomach. "Tyler, honey, we need to talk about that again. But please you will have to let Amelia go first. I am so sorry, I think I might have misled you." Her quiet regretful sob choked voic
"Our history didn't end well and I was bitter." Sheryl says, her voice shaky, she looks out the window as Hernandez drives smoothly, following the midnight black car in front of us, expertly weaving through the midday traffic of the city. It is bright outside but in my head, it could be midnight. "That was over twenty years ago, Sheryl. You cheated on me and you are still mad I didn't take you back?" I ask incredulously. She refuses to look at me. It is true that I and Sheryl dated for a couple of months during our freshman year in college. It was intense as young love usually was. We were young and wild. She was clingy and needy, the perfect Nineteen year old girlfriend for a twenty year old boy. We believed ourselves to be soulmates. I don't credit our fallout to just Sheryl alone, I played a part, I have come to accept that over the years. I wasn't in the best of headspace in those days. Maybe I should have listened to her. Maybe I could handled it more maturely than I did. All
Amelia's POV:"Hello, Amelia," the smooth baritone says over the phone, and my eyes go wide immediately. My pulse quickens as my brain produces a face to match the voice almost instantly. It is the one face I had tried so much to get over - the one face that makes my heart beat erratically and my thighs tingle shamelessly. My treacherous body and heart cloud my common sense when it comes to this one man."Who is this?" I say, unable to keep the trembling out of my voice as I woefully pretend not to recognize his voice. I clear my throat, but my heart is still beating like a wild, untamed animal trying to break free in my chest."Tsk tsk tsk. You don't recognize my voice? That's too bad, Amelia," he says. I can hear the disappointment and slight amusement in his low, smooth baritone. It makes my pulse jump. It makes my mouth dry, even as I moisten my lips with my tongue.Ashley, my roommate and best friend, is watching me with her brows furrowed into a question mark across the room.
I snap myself to reality when I realize I have started trailing off into memories I have tagged forbidden. this"So, what do you want now, stepfather?"I hear his light chuckle, and I can't help the flutter in my chest from absorbing the rich sound. I can almost smell him. I remember what he smelled like. God! it's imprinted in my brain.It is embarrassing, but I can admit that I look for that scent in every man I have gone out with since, but to no success. It belonged to Linc Tanner alone. Just like my stupid, stupid heart. Mint, dark coffee, something dark and mysterious thrown in the mix and a whiff of something floral and yet overwhelmingly masculine. I used to smell him in the house before he even got to the room I was in, with my mom on his arm, dark onyx eyes seeking mine like a storm."I kind of prefer Mr. Tanner to that stepfather title. Makes me feel old, and the way you say it adds a perverted undertone to it," he says after a moment. His tone is light; it is a rebuff he h