“You look stressed.” Felix said from his desk as Cassie walked in on Wednesday morning. He was used to seeing bags around his eyes whenever he looked in the mirror but it felt odd seeing them on Cassie. She looked like she deserved to be at a spa or an exotic getaway rather than at work.Cassie grunted in response, barely sparing him a glance. Of course she was stressed. She had already started to feel the effect of working three jobs and taking care of two children. Her shift at The Bean House had been extra difficult the previous night as she, Diana and Austin had had to cater for a group of rowdy frat boys who had been kicked out of a bar and had come to the Bean House seeking oily bacon and enough space to perform terrible renditions of pop songs with the help of the newly installed karaoke machine. Halloween was barely a week away and she hadn’t even bought any decorations and the twins had already started hounding her for potential costumes. The date for Tobias’ trial was gettin
It was late at night before Felix returned home. Recently, he had become aware of just how empty his house had been ever since he had lost Hazel and his twins. And it was all because of the Peters. After the afternoon he had spent at Frozen Treats with Cassie and her siblings, he had suddenly felt reluctant to return home when the Peters had waved him goodbye at their front door. Felix had suddenly realized that he didn’t want to go back to his house. There was nothing waiting for him there. It was just a big building filled with broken dreams and empty rooms.He had wanted to put off going back to his place for as long as possible. But what could he say his reason of wanting to stay was? The clothes that he wasn’t wearing – his tie and jacket – were in the backseat of the car, right beside the pastel baby journal he and Hazel had bought for their twins. Shortly after they had left for the ice cream place, he had turned off his phone and slipped it into his pocket. His mum had figured
When Cassie’s first pay came in, she nearly went into shock. At her interview for her position as Felix’s PA, she had come to an agreement about what her salary should be at the end of every month but when the check came in, she still couldn’t believe the figure. It was probably nowhere as large as what it would have been if she had decided to pursue a career in software engineering but it was a whole lot more than double what she had been earning at The Bean House, Books-A-Plenty and Club Indigo combined. With the money she had gotten, she had been able to pay off her credit card debts (which weren’t that large to begin with), pay off a small fraction of her student debts, stock up on groceries for the month, buy school supplies for the twins and get a plush dog bed for Snowflake who was more than happy to have something comfier than an old limp throw pillow to sleep on. She had even bought a snazzy pant suit to wear to her court appearance at Robert Smith’s trial happening sometime
When Felix pulled up to the Peters’ home, he saw that it had been decorated for Halloween. A trio of small hollowed out pumpkins, each with a unique design, sat on the steps leading to the door. The door itself was adorned with a wreath made of autumn leaves, pinecones and faux spiders. A life-sized skeleton beside the door appeared to be waving to passersby.When Cassie had heard that he had never been trick-or-treating after the twins had invited him to come with them, he had seen the mild shock and pity on her face at his admission. His mother had never allowed him to do so while he had been growing up. Bethany was the kind of mother that had used every possible holiday to either throw or attend lavish parties most of which she would force Felix to attend with her so that she could show him off to her friends. She would state all of Felix’s achievements and dare her friends to even try to make their own children be remotely as good as Felix. It was kind of an ironic gesture as behi
The first thing that popped into Felix’s mind when his lips had met with Cassie’s was that he should have done it a lot sooner. He had been absolutely enamored with the way her soft lips had felt against his, the way their tongues had danced against each other, the way she had raked her hands through his hair and his favorite part, the way she had moaned into his mouth when he had deepened the kiss. Try as he might to dismiss it, he hadn’t been able to get Cassie off his mind. One way or another, his mind always drifted back to her. When he tried thinking of his cousin, Eliza, he thought of how well she and Cassie would have gotten along. When he had seen the girl from Fantasies on his bed, he had sent her back, telling himself and her that he had done so because he wasn’t in the mood. The truth was that Cassie had become such a big presence in his life that even considering sleeping with another woman felt downright disrespectful. He couldn’t even see someone drinking a cup of coffee
“Can you guys please turn that down?” Cassie pleaded from the dining room. It took the twins a couple of minutes to find the remote, but once they did, the television’s volume went down. She and Felix were sitting in the dining room with various documents spread out in front of them.After Felix’s discovery that someone had been stealing from Tech Town, a reminder indicating that he was supposed to be at a meeting with Preston had gone off on his phone seconds later. He had grabbed his jacket and asked Cassie to compile all of the company’s statements of account dating back to the previous year. He had been stuck moving from one meeting to another all throughout the day, so when he got back to his office, it was already closing time. He had requested that they move the investigation to Cassie’s place as he felt more comfortable there and didn’t want to keep her in Tech Town for any longer than he needed to. Cassie, who didn’t know how to react to the fact that he claimed to feel more
Cassie didn’t stir again until it was properly morning and when she did, the first thing that came into view was Felix’s face.“Good morning, sleepy head.” He greeted looking down at her.Granted, Cassie was startled by his close proximity but composed herself and managed to rise from his lap without making a fool of herself.“Good morning.” She said groggily. “What time is it?”Felix shrugged. His phone had died the night before and his laptop had done the same a couple of minutes after he had woken up in the morning. Still, he hadn’t gotten up to charge any of them as he hadn’t wanted to bother Cassie.She stood from the couch and walked down the hallway to the grandfather clock that had lost its chime a while ago but still told the correct time. “Oh my God! It’s past nine.” She screeched from the hallway and ran back inside the room. “I’m late for work. You’re late for work. And you guys are late for school! Hit the showers, you guys.” She demanded, nudging her siblings awake and
It was hard for everyone at the reception to not stare at the group that entered the building. In her leggings, hoodie and sneakers, Isabel wasn’t exactly dressed in business wear. Then there was Felix who was carrying Snowflake in his arms and dressed in yesterday’s clothes. Everyone couldn’t help but wonder what had happened that stopped him from going home to change. Cassie was the least odd person in the group but even she still looked odd as there was also the fact that two children were clinging to her hands.After Big Daddy had left, Isabel and Cassie had taken an Uber to Isabel’s apartment to grab the things that she needed while Felix had stayed with the twins. It was too late for the twins to start heading to school so when Isabel and Cassie had returned, they had waited for Felix’s driver to take them all to the office. “So what’s our game plan?” Cassie asked once all of them where inside the elevator.“Before both of my devices went off, I was able to get in touch with a
"Good morning. I’m Dorothea Sinclair and welcome to today’s session of Under the Spotlight. I am sure that some of you are wondering where I am today and why this background looks different. That’s because, for this interview, I left the studio to conduct this interview in the home of our guest who is no stranger to the spotlight.” Dorothea announced. “Some of you might know her from September last year when she and her best friend, Isabel Gomez, were held hostage by two gunmen who kidnapped them from the club they both worked in. Some of you might also know her from her interview with me on this very show in March where we talked about her revolutionary app, Care Compass which was, and still is, making waves in the medical field. However, some of you might know her from everything that went down two months ago when she was kidnapped from a supermarket and held hostage for a week. Join me to welcome, the very beautiful and very intelligent, Cassie Peters.” She said and signaled to th
The first time Cassie had woken up as a captive, she had thought that that would be the most pain she would ever be in. She remembered how much her head hurt and how she had ached all over. Waking up again, she found that she felt a thousand times worse. She owed the shitty feeling in her entire body to Robert fucking Smith. After she had been caught trying to escape, he dragged her by her hair to the very room that she had escaped from. She had tried to struggle against him but her muscles ached from running around the house and anytime she made any form of movement against him, Robert would pause along the hallway to deliver a series of kicks to her midriff.When they had finally got to the room, he had exerted the second phase of his revenge by reopening the cuts that had been made on her arm earlier that week and adding a couple of new ones with the help of his switchblade. He followed it by wrapping his gangly fingers around her neck and choking her, letting his nails dig into he
When Felix finally awoke, he did so slowly, his vision blurry and his head heavy. Even as he was still half unconscious, he realized that he recognized the environment that he was in. It was all strangely familiar but yet, unsettlingly transformed. He was in a room in the Callahan mansion and judging from the size and layout of the room, he was in his old bedroom. The decor of the room had changed drastically since the last time he had been in the room. All of the posters of superheroes and bands had been taken down and replaced with modern art pieces. The color of the walls had been changed from a baby blue color to a dark gray one. His bedside table which had been formerly crowded with action figures and school books now spotted manila folders, stationery and a small potted cacti.The more Felix observed the room, the more it looked to him like someone had been staying there for a while. The hardwood floors had a few scuff marks on them at the points where the room’s furniture was.
Felix stumbled over the phone as he clumsily tried to pick up the phone. “Cassie. Are you hurt? Do you know where you are?” Felix asked, each word tumbling out of his mouth quicker than a response could possibly be given.He pulled his laptop closer to himself and hurriedly started to launch the software that he had been working on ever since the night of Cassie’s disappearance. He had already set his phone so that whenever Cassie's phone came online, he would be able to track it. It had a lot of flaws but it was the best he could come up with in such short time. He couldn’t just download a regular cell phone locator off the internet to locate Cassie’s phone as she had built a series of safeguards for her phone to ensure that it was heavily guarded. She had everything on it apart from a proper password; it was both ironic and amusing. He had tried launching the app multiple times but the search always came up blank, indicating that her phone had been switched off. Now, it showed that
She startled herself awake the next morning. There was no way for her to tell if anyone had entered the room while she was asleep. As she pulled herself from the ground, she decided that anytime she was going to fall asleep, she would do so with her back to the door so that if anyone were to try to enter the room, she would know. Throughout the entire day, she anxiously waited for someone to open the door but no one did. By the time it was evening, she got into the shower and had her bath again, this time putting on her clean and dry underwear, washing her dress and then hanging it close to the radiator so that it would dry faster. It was already dark out when the dress was dry enough for her to wear and when she left the bathroom, she found another cup of ramen and a bottle of water.She had started to worry that there was a camera in the room that Robert used to determine when she was in the bathroom to come and drop her food. Before she could think about it too much, she realized t
By Cassie’s calculations, she had been Robert’s captive for six days.When she had realized that it had been him that had taken her, she had had a lot of questions, some of which she hadn’t been able to answer. Since when had he gotten out of prison? Was he working in conjunction with Big Daddy? Had he also been a part of her house being set on fire and Isabel getting shot? Would he also be going after Felix and the twins later? Where exactly was this house that he had taken her to?She still found it bizarre that he had had a hand in her kidnapping as she had forgotten all about him after she and Isabel had testified against him in court. She chided herself for not seeing it coming. His exact words to her as they had carted him into the squad car on the day of his arrest had been: I’ll get you for this you stupid bitch! That day, she had thought that his words were just an empty threat of a mad man; she had never expected him to make good on it.Judging by the fact that it had been d
In the week that Cassie had been gone, Felix had felt as if his heart had been violently ripped out from his chest, severely stomped on and then set aflame. When he had gotten home that dark and gloomy Saturday night, he had called Amanda and Isabel to inform them of what had happened. They had both in their own way panicked, but had still managed to assure him that Cassie was fine and would turn up before the next morning. Amanda had volunteered to keep the twins until the next morning so that they wouldn’t bombard him with questions about the whereabouts of their sister. In the end, Felix had had to find a way to break it to them as Cassie had still been missing by the next morning. There had been a lot of tears and visible confusion and it had taken him ages but he had finally managed to calm them down.When he had met with police officers later that week to try to figure out what had happened that night, he found that although they managed to garner some information, it was mostly
Cassie felt as if her head had been shattered into thousands of pieces by a sledgehammer, hastily put back together with hot glue and then a band of tiny people had started to use it as a venue for a rock metal concert. She felt worse than that time in her freshman year of uni when she had attended a series of parties nonstop for an entire week, drinking everything that was handed to her and dancing to every song that the DJ had played. The thing was, this time, she hadn’t been partying. In fact, she had just been… What exactly had she been doing?Cassie tried hard to recall what she had been doing before, straining her brain and ignoring the headache that intensified in her attempt to remember. Her memory came back to her in slow flashes. Riding the Ferris wheel with Felix. Being presented with a stuffed bear. Running in the rain and seeking shelter in a supermarket. Felix let go of her hand so that she could go and get a carton of milk. Try as much as she might, that was where her m
Felix steadied himself against a nearby shelf as he took quick, successive breaths. Cassie was fine. She had to be fine. He started to circle the supermarket again, searching for her amongst the multitude of shoppers. When he didn’t see her, he did it a third time. And then a fourth time. But there was still no sign of Cassie anywhere. If it were Eliza that had disappeared, his first instinct would have been that she was trying to play a cruel prank on him. But Cassie didn’t play pranks. And if she was playing one at the moment by hiding from him, she would have popped out sometime during his first search around the supermarket.He headed back to the check-out section, cutting into the queue and ignoring the people on it who complained and cursed as he shoved past them to get to the front of the line. “Have you seen my girlfriend?”Emily looked at him stunned. “No. You came to the counter without her. I remember that you mentioned her, but I never saw her. Is everything okay?” She ask