Anne “What are those?” I asked, slitting my eyes thoughtfully as I walked into Vincent’s room from the bathroom. I just finished having my bath. I had a towel wrapped around my body and another tied over my head to dry my hair. Vincent had come back from his shift and laid some gadgets on his reading table. I met him standing in front of them with folded sleeves and a hand beneath his jaw. When he heard my voice, he turned to me and waited for me to reach him. When I got closer, he brought out his hand and took my hand, pulling me to stand in front of him with my back against him. He then wrapped his arms around me and placed his jaw on my right shoulder. “What are these?” I asked again, chuckling briefly while raising my hand and caressing his cheeks. “I won’t be with you at all times. You’ve got school and other things going on for you. So!” he said aloud, removing his head from my shoulders, then stretched his hand and grabbed a gadget. “I’ve decided to fortify my fortress,” he
Anne With all the events of the past month, things had been a whole lot stressful physically and mentally. The thing with the paparazzi was taking longer to diminish. Vincent being the heir to Sawyer Memorial plus his other passive income asserts had placed him on the top 10 billionaire bachelors under 30. It was from the press releases that I found out that in his early twenties, he’d taken the money he’d gotten from his trust fund to acquire new and dying companies, both foreign and local, and today, more than half the companies were flourishing wildly. On top of that, Vincent and Andrew had inherited properties worth billions of dollars from their grandparents. This was why the press was still shocked as to why such people would go for a nobody like me. “It’s not a movie…” read one news caption, “It’s life.” Vincent had mentioned his wealth sometime in the past, but he didn’t delve into it. Stupid me was lost in kissing the heck out of him that most of the things he told me were l
Vincent I wanted to call her, but work got in the way. Just like every other day, there was this urge to hear her voice. Today was stronger than usual. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t call her during lunch, but I felt like it’d been ages since I last heard her voice. We conducted three different surgeries today. The first was on a little girl who was the only survivor of a car accident with her parents. The other two were scheduled surgeries. All three surgeries lasted for hours. I was so exhausted. I couldn’t even have a proper lunch. Before the third surgery, which was by 2 pm, I had to bite down on two chocolate bars then heading into a surgery that took 4 hours. By the time I got out, it was already 6 pm. It'd been like this yesterday. I came back home, exhausted and hungry, and had quickly plugged my phone into its charging port, then went straight to the bathroom and had my bath, ate food prepared by Anny, and went to bed. It was in the morning that I realized I hadn’t
Anne The police were already at the address before I arrived. There were two of them, a male and a female, coming out of the five-story building. I rushed towards them, introduced myself as the distress caller, and asked after Jane. It shocked me they weren’t carrying her out of the apartment already. There were no ambulances in the area. People did not gather around as they should at a time like this. ‘A time like what?’ my brain asked me. The two officers told me it was a false lead. That I had given them a wrong address, or I was playing a prank on them. Something that, according to them, had been going on lately. I played the call I recorded to them. After listening, they confirmed that the individual truly sounded like someone in trouble, but could also be acting just to make me believe she was really in danger. Nonetheless, the address she’d given clearly was the wrong one. Just to be sure she’d not confused the buildings, they’d gone to several other houses, inquiring about
Vincent I hated that my time with her felt like an old memory. It felt like years, even though it was just two days since I last set my eyes on her. Two days of hell if you ask me. “Sir.” I couldn’t sleep a wink, and neither did I have the appetite to eat anything. I felt like a ghost living in an alien body. “Sir… sir!” I shot my eyes to the detective standing like an unpaid male model. No offense, but they were beginning to get on my already messed up nerves. My dad highly revered him for all his accomplishments, but all they’ve done since we reported Anne’s case was to ask loads and loads of questions, some of which sounded irrelevant. It might be vital to finding Anne, but I felt we were wasting a whole lot of darn time. Anything could be happening to Anne as we speak. “Sir, we need to ask you a few more questions, if you don’t mind,” said the annoying detective. “Are you serious right now?” I asked, slowly rising from the couch. I could feel my anger boiling inside, ready
Anne “Well, well, well! Who do we have here?” he said, pulling up a chair and sitting on it, then crossed his leg and leaned backward. “If it isn’t the famous Anne.” He let me see him. I knew it was him all along, but for him to make himself known to me didn’t bode well for me. I didn’t let him see the fear I felt. I just stared at his face with what I believed to be a stoic expression. “Are you happy to see me, sweetie?” he asked in a high-pitched grandma voice. I didn’t respond. I just stared at him whilst my mind wheeled, searching for anything that’ll be of help to me. I needn’t act rashly. That’ll be a death sentence. I just needed to wait it out and observe. The whole place was dark with just a single light dangling from a rope at what I guessed to be the centre of the room. From in here, I couldn’t tell what day it was, or how many hours had gone by, but I estimated it to be about six to seven days. The room looked like a dungeon because chains were hanging from diff
Andrew My brother was a mess. I was a mess. Pamela was far from being sane. We were all scared of the same thing. We all had the same thought. Joshua! But the police were being careful, or more like scared of being sued if it turned out that apprehending Joshua was a dead end. Vincent had long since begun conducting his own investigations with my help and a private detective he hired, but strange as it may sound, we were closely watched by the police. They’d come around Vincent’s house and would tell us not to interfere with their investigations. This always drove Vincent crazy and, on several occasions, he had driven himself to the edge and almost attacked the police if I hadn’t been there to stop him. As frustrating as it was, and with countless dead ends, we started seeing results. We knew our target, so we focused on him. He had shown himself in public going about his business from the time Anne got missing, and the Private detective, Henry, had kept a close eye on his movem
Vincent Andrew had wanted to do this as he had recently been involved with Fiona, but I refused. I didn’t want him to jeopardize his relationship with Pamela. I pressed the bell again at Fiona’s penthouse, but got no response. Downstairs, the security had called her up and informed her of a visitor, and she had allowed me up. I didn’t know why she was taking so long to come to the door. For a split second, it had run through my mind that maybe, just maybe, she held Anne captive up her in her penthouse, but sniffled the thought because it was a careless move. Fiona might act all stereotypical blond and empty-headed, but I knew it was all a façade. She had adopted that behavior to fit into her acting career. She was a cunny brainiac. If not anything, the stunt she pulled that day with the sleeping drug would convince all Judases that there was more to her than meets the eye. After what felt like ages, she slowly opened the door. “What a pleasant surprise!” she exclaimed. She had on