“What do you mean by that?” I asked, my brows furrowing in confusion as he raised his hand and handed me the keys to the house. “This is the house I’m gifting to you for our marriage,” he explained. “Oh, I can’t.” I gasped, giving the keys back to him. “You know I can’t take it, Damien. We’re not going to be married for very long. This is too much.” “Lauren, you’re going to take it,” he argued, moving back so that he would not take the keys from me. “If we ever do get divorced later, I don’t want you to start over from a difficult place. You now have a place to stay for the rest of your life with your mother.” “It’s too much. Maybe something smaller could suffice. Besides, I didn’t get you anything,” I admitted. I had not held it in mind that I was supposed to get him something, and the shame of it would not let me take the house. “Lauren.” He held me by the shoulders and shook his head. “You will not reject it.” There was silenc
“I’m coming to get her now,” I said to the kidnapper over the phone the next morning, referring to my mother. Damien had gotten called for a work emergency, so I had asked him to drive me back to the house before he left, where I took a shower and made the call. “You weren’t home throughout yesterday. A little bird told me that you finally got married to that old man of yours. Don’t you think it’s insensitive, getting married to someone when your mother is in the hands of someone who could kill her?” he taunted. “Please, just…” I closed my eyes and shook my head, not ready to have that conversation with anyone, especially the person who took her away from me. “I’ll be there in a while.” “You should be. This is going to be interesting,” he muttered before hanging up the phone. I took a taxi to the address that I was given, my heart going a mile a minute as I thought of the possibilities. What if I did something wrong at the last minute and she
“Katarina?” I stared at her in shock as she stared back with nothing but absolute contempt and murderous intent. The other kidnappers saw my surprise as the perfect opportunity to get me into the van, so they pushed me and sat on either side of me with Katarina getting in last with the gun still aimed at me. “I don’t understand how… You have been a part of it this whole time?” I asked, my eyes narrowed at her as a lump started to grow in my chest and weigh me down. “Not the whole time,” she said as she finally put the gun down when the van started to move. “You almost had her, you know. The first time at the first club, you were so close, but I was closer.” At first, I was confused by her words, and then I realized that the first group of people who had kidnapped her were not the same as Katarina’s people. She laughed when she saw the realization growing on my face and widening my eyes as she confirmed it; “Yes, we took her from the first club
“I don’t understand. What do you want me to tell him when he picks up the phone?” I asked her as she handed the phone to call Damien with. “Tell him that the kidnappers told you something about him that you were shocked to find out about, and let him know that you’re shattered by what you have just found out. Because of the betrayal that you feel, you want to get a divorce from him,” she recited. “That’s not possible. We only got married yesterday,” I protested, shaking my head. “Besides, Damien is never going to believe that I want a divorce just like that.” “Oh, so you now know him more than I do?” she asked me with a glare that said she was daring me to answer to that. Defeated, I took the phone and dialed Damien’s number, placing it against my ear. It didn’t take over two seconds of the phone to ring before Damien picked up the phone. “Lauren, how are you doing? You don’t have to worry about anything. I’m doing everything I can to fi
I never thought I would have second thoughts about getting divorced from Damien at the last possible second, but the minute I took the pen and the papers from Katarina, they suddenly got too heavy to hold. “This does not mean that he’s going to get back together with you, Katarina,” I reminded her, and she laughed at my words. “I’m not necessarily going to get back together with him, even though I have plans to. I’m just trying to let you and him know that if I can’t have him, it’ll be almost impossible for anyone else to. Sign the papers.” I looked down at the paper, not sure what to do with myself except sign the papers just the way she wanted, but I had one more request to make. “You’re going to let me leave here with my mother, alive, and you’re never going to come looking for us if things don’t go your way. Give me your word on that, and I will sign them.” I was most likely going to get out of the area with my mother, probably to another
Damien's POVIt had been a full day since I had last talked to Lauren and she had asked for a divorce. The men that I had gathered to track where the call had been made from were barely doing anything but typing away at computers and telling me that they were getting closer. “What’s the update? Have you managed to track her yet?” I asked them, losing count of just how many times I had asked that question. “It’s only difficult right now because we have been picking signals from different cell phone towers. We’re trying to narrow it down,” they replied. Yes, Lauren had told me that she wanted a divorce, even when I told her to give me a sign to show if she was with the kidnappers or not, but it was still hard for me to come to terms with it. I had a bad feeling about everything. “Mr. Goldberg?” one of the agents walked into the office with a flat, brown envelope. “This came in for you.” I took the envelope and opened it as patiently as my hands would l
Damien's POV “She’s dead,” Katarina said to me after I asked her what had happened to Lauren and where she was, and her tears were flowing freely as she looked at me and gave me a pleading look. I was perfect at detecting lies, but it was hard to know what this one was. One thing I knew was that it couldn’t possibly be true. Lauren could not be dead. Things just didn’t work that way. “Stop messing around, Kate. This is not something you should be joking about. If you think for one second that I’m not going to pull the trigger, then you are surely mistaken,” I informed her, but that was just my way of letting her tell me the truth one more time so that it would sink in as it hadn’t. “None of this would have happened if you truly loved me, Damien,” she sobbed, but I didn’t care about any of that. “I made a small mistake that could have been fixed if we had just talked, but you walked away from me without listening to my side of the story.” “Katarina!” I
The screams that shot out of Katarina’s mouth were enough to deafen me as she held on to her right leg, which I had shot and was now bleeding against the tiles of my living room, but they were enough to assure me that I had hurt her as badly as I had meant to. “That’s not even nearly as close to the pain that you put Lauren through when you did all the things you did to her and her mother. Did you think she died on impact when you hit her with the truck?” I asked. My mind reeled with the images of Lauren struggling to breathe as pain overtook every part of her after being hit by the truck that Katarina had been behind the wheel of. “Ah!” she yelled, shaking her head as tears streamed down her face. “You cannot do this to me! You have to take me to the hospital!” “Tell me one thing, Katarina,” I said through her screams that I no longer wished to hear any more now. “You said you didn’t mean to kill her, and you only wanted to cause her some injuries,