Ava stared at the woman in disbelief, sure that her ears were playing tricks on her, or that the woman was trying to pull a nasty trick on her. The word 'pregnant' sounded like such a foreign word. “Excuse me? That’s not possible.” Ava said. The woman nodded indulgently at Ava’s words, no doubt thinking that this was welcome news, judging by the smile that hadn’t left her face since she told Ava about her suspicion. “Well, you did say you’ve been sexually active recently, and you haven't seen your period in well over a month …” “Yes, I did say all that, but it's just not possible. I mean, I’m on the pill, and we used protection, and also, it’s not the first time I've missed a period, and we'll, um…” Ava trailed off helplessly, aware that she rambling and zoning out as she tried to process what the doctor was telling her. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. How on earth could it be happening? Deep down, though, she knew that the woman was right. The signs were all there, now th
“Expect it to be done in a few days time,” Logan said to Amanda without preamble, walking into her living room and pouring himself a drink like he owned the place.Amanda didn’t mind though. She was in love … true love this time around, and how ironic was it that it was one of the men who was responsible for her mother’s untimely death that she had fallen in love with.Her mother would understand though, after all, it hadn't been Logan’s and the others' intent to have her killed, and besides, Logan was now helping her fulfill her late mother’s wish, so it was all good.He was even talking about marriage and kids, which obviously meant that he loved her just as much as she loved him, and how awesome was that?It had always been her mother’s wish to see her settled and happy, and now that she was in love, her mother would surely be happy wherever she was. Amanda realized that Logan had just said something, but she didn’t even remember what he said because she was too busy admiring
Bugging Ava’s house after receiving her spare key from Steve and making an extra copy of it had been the easiest thing in the world to do.Amanda had had Logan do it and according to him, it was such a seamless operation. For someone with such a high profile baby daddy, Ava sure as hell did not care about her safety.Prior to bugging the house, Logan had had the house monitored and noticed that no one was around for days, which made the whole thing easy enough.By the time Ava got back from wherever it was that she went to, Amanda could listen in on her conversations as much as she wanted.The one thing that absolutely disgusted her to listen to were the horrible sounds that the bitch made whenever she and Derek were going at it … which seemed to be any little spare time that they could get.Good gracious, Ava was one randy being! Amanda wondered how she and Derekalways managed to find time to have sex, considering that they had a little child in the house.However, it was none
"You’re kidding, right?” Steve asked Amanda, staring at her aghast. He had known that she would want something dangerous in return for helping him, but he hadn’t been anticipating something as dangerous as this.“I wish I was, but I'm not. You’re in the best position to do it. Logan, for some weird and stupid reason, refuses to do it. According to him, he doesn’t want anything to do with harming children, which is stupid as fuck, if you ask me. It has to do with his principles, or whatever. The child knows you though, and trusts you, so …”“She used to trust me. She doesn’t trust me anymore. Her stupid father poisoned her mind against me, so no surprise there.”“It doesn’t matter. I'm sure you can find a way to get her to come to you. That’s all you literally need to do. Grab her and bring her to me, and you're no longer indebted to me.”“And how do you propose I go about doing that? Enter into her mother’s house and snatch her under the watchful eyes of her mother or nanny or w
That awful day dawned bright and early. It was such a beautiful morning that belied the tragedies that would unfold later that day. Birds chirped happily, people went about their businesses and everything seemed quite fine.Harper was beside herself with excitement because that day was her friend’s birthday party, and Derek had bought her loads of gifts days ago, which she was to present to the celebrant.Ava had noticed that despite how young Harper was, she enjoyed giving, just like her father, and that was a lovely trait to have.For some reason, despite how normal the morning was, Ava had a deeply unsettling feeling in her gut, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why this was so.Derek had left her place very early this morning so he could fly over for his conference, so it was just her and Harper in the house. Ava couldn’t wait for him to come back so she could know exactly where they stood.Around three in the morning, when he had to leave so he could go to the airpo
Contrary to what Amanda thought, snatching up Ava’s daughter turned out to be a herculean task. She had prepared adequately for the day but definitely didn’t think that it was going to take as much time as doing it took. Logan had had to travel three days before with the guy who he had hired to kill Derek, so it was just her, Steve, and Denise, whom she had told about what she intended to do. They followed Ava’s every move right from when she left her house with her daughter until she dropped off the child at the park where the party was going to be held. That was when Amanda began to realize that snatching the kid wouldn’t be as easy as she had thought it would be. For starters, there were adults who supervised the whole thing everywhere. They didn’t let the kids out of their sight for even a minute, which meant that going close to any of the kids at that point was going to be very obvious and an alarm could be raised, which would not bode well for them. Still, she had anticipate
Harper had broken off from the group of children and was now merrily chasing another little girl who looked to be the same age as her and was the same size as well.As Amanda and her group observed them keenly, the children ran towards the parking lot, where the car that Amanda had rented was parked.They weaved in between the parked cars, enjoying their game of chase with reckless abandon. “Steve, get ready. They may run over to this side soon.” Amanda hissed at Steve.“But there’s two of them. What are we going to do about the other child?”“Well, I don’t know. Grab her as well. They’re just little kids. How hard can it be? Perhaps you should go to the backseat and Denise should come to the front seat so it’ll be easier for you to grab them, and make sure not to fuck this up." Amanda said.Although he was unwilling to do so, Steve did as she asked. By this time, the children had disappeared from sight again."Shit! When next they come around here, you're going to get down fr
Ava had been busy all morning with working on her script despite the fact that nowadays, she constantly felt tired as hell, because of the pregnancy.She certainly didn't remember being this tired during Harper's pregnancy, but maybe that was because she had spent most of her time crying and ruing the day that she met Derek back then.By the time it was afternoon, she decided to take a nap for at least an hour, after which she was going to head over to the park to pick up Harper, who was no doubt having a field day at her friend's birthday party.Derek had called Ava that afternoon to ask how she and Harper were faring.He did that all the time so that it was almost as though they were in a serious relationship, or even married.That, among other things, must have been why she fell for him so fast again after literally hating him for years.Just hearing his voice reminded Ava how much she missed him, even though he had literally only just left.Ava knew that if it turned out that they
He led her back to his room, walked over to a drawer by the side of his bed, opened it, and brought out something from inside it.When he turned towards her and she saw what it was that he brought out of it, Ava gasped out loud.It looked like the black box in which her engagement ring had come several years ago.Derek had always had a taste for good things, and he had the money to support his taste.Thus back then, even when he wasn’t really into her, and was only marrying her out of pity, he had gotten her a beautifully crafted and expensive engagement ring.As he opened the box in his hands now and got down on one knee, she could see that it was the same ring that was inside it.He had kept it even after all these years! Tears sprung to her eyes, filling them as he professed his love to her and asked her to marry him again, promising to treat her right this time around and make up for all the lost years.“Yes, yes, Derek. Of course, I’ll marry you! There’s nothing I want more.” She
Ava wasn’t about to take any chances though. After hugging the living daylights out of Derek, while he hugged her back just as tightly, she insisted that they had to visit the hospital right then.“But it’s already late. Besides, I don’t think there's anything they can do or will have to do. We can wait until tomorrow to go there and celebrate this night instead.” Derek suggested, his voice rife with meaning as he threw a suggestive wink Ava’s way, but she didn't allow herself to be swayed.“No way in hell. We’ve waited too long for you to regain your memory to just take it so lightly now that it has finally happened. We’re going now, and that’s that!”“As Her Royal Highness wishes.” Derek joked, making a small, formal bow that made Ava smile.Yes, he was back. She could see in his eyes that he truly recognized her, but even better, he had the same look in his eyes that he used to have before he went to the conference and everything changed.The look that told her that he was in love
She picked up the papers with the slowness of a very old woman and scanned through them, her hands shaking.She was not surprised to see her name, as well as Derek’s name on the papers because she had recognized the papers the minute they fell out of the book.It was the same ones that Derek had handed to her on that night several years ago, which she had had no choice but to reluctantly sign, while crying her eyes out and swearing never to forgive him for everything that he had done to her.Except that he hadn't really done anything in the sense of the word ... at least, not in the way that she thought.Why on earth were these papers still with him? She had signed them and left that day without giving any thought to what he was going to do with them.Her signature was there on the paper, right where she had signed it haphazardly. In fact, she thought that she could still see a tear mark or two on the papers since she was crying when she signed them, but she couldn’t be sure since th
They walked in companionable silence to Derek’s room. Once they were inside the room, he led her to his walk-in closet where he had stored the journals, making sure to keep a respectable distance between them.Ava knew that it was because she had complained about the scent of his cologne, and now, she wished that she had kept her wide mouth shut.“It’s all in there. Here, let me look for the specific one you asked about.” Derek said, picking it out and handing it to her.“Oh, thank you. Are you sure that you don’t mind me reading it?”“Not in the least bit. I feel like I’d be doing the guy who wrote all that stuff a huge solid by letting you see for yourself all the things that he wanted to say to you for so long but was too chicken to say. He might want to kill me for doing it, but I think he’ll be better for it in the long run.” Derek replied, shrugging.“Okay then,” Ava said happily.Derek, for his part, suddenly became self-conscious. What if she thought that he was a sappy fool a
Several seconds passed, and then Derek rushed in the direction that she had gone.He found her in the restroom adjoining the living room. She was throwing up violently into the toilet bowl.Derek went over to her and moved her hair away from her face, providing support until there was nothing for her to throw up anymore.Once she was done, she slowly turned to face him. It was clear that she was reluctant to turn, andDerek remained immobile for a few more seconds before rushing after Ava.He found her in the restroom adjoining the living room, throwing up violently into the toilet bowl, and rushed towards her.He held her and moved her hair away from her face until there was nothing for her to throw up anymore.Then she slowly and reluctantly turned to face him, a fact that wasn't lost on him. In fact, she seemed to be inching awayfrom him so that there was a little space between them.He figured that it was because she had just finished throwing up the contents of her bowel and did
The next day, Derek arrived home from work with a huge bouquet of flowers for Ava and a smaller one for Harper. The two of them were in the living room, watching Harper’s favorite cartoon and looking all comfy and cozy. Their eyes lit up the moment Derek stepped into the living room, and this filled him with warmth. Harper in her usual fashion, bounded up to run over to him to give him a big hug. Her hugs were one of his favorite things nowadays, and he could never get tired of receiving them for as long as he lived. Ava, on the other hand, was more reserved in her welcome towards him, but she did smile at him in welcome. Her eyes were always cautious around him, which kind of made him sad because that emotion was definitely different from the one he wrote about in his journals after she warmed up to him. “Welcome home. Derek. What have you got there behind you?” Ava asked him. “Thank you. I got you both some flowers.” He replied, and brought forward the hand that was holding th
As the days passed and Derek's memory didn't return, he got more and more frustrated because it felt like things were at a standstill due to the memory loss.On the bright side, catching up with work wasn't difficult for him at all. In fact, it was one of the easiest things he had to deal with and he spent several hours a day at it while Harper was at school and Ava was trying to get back to work.Catching up with the rest of his life was what was difficult though. Nothing made sense, and so he had to go through all of his stuff, trying to find out more about his current than he already knew.He managed to find out a lot just by doing this. He had always been very organized and used to keep journals that documented his daily life.Apparently, he still kept these journals and they were all arranged neatly on a shelf in his library.He went through each and every one of them, trying to catch a glimpse of the man he now was. Going through them made him realize just how different he was f
She smiled at him and slowly came out from behind the chair. Derek had no idea for how long she had been hiding there, but it seemed that it had been quite a while.“Daddy…” She said and without warning, rushed at him and embraced him tightly with more strength than he would have expected a child to have.Derek awkwardly patted her back and embraced her too, not sure if he should pick her up, kiss her cheek, ruffle her hair, or anything like that.“How are you?” He asked her, wincing as soon as the words left his mouth. He sounded like he was having a formal meeting with some board of directors or something like that, not talking to a child.However, Harper didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she made his decision for him by raising her arms, indicating that he should pick her up.“I’m fine, daddy. The bad woman told me that you died, but I didn’t believe her.” Harper told him.Derek immediately did as she wanted and she rested her head on his shoulder in the sweetest gesture ever. To his
A few days later, Derek was set to be discharged from the hospital. Everything felt so strange to him, and he felt a tad lonely.He had spent the last days of his hospital stay catching up on his present life or what it was supposed to be like.Nothing made sense to him, and he tried not to dwell too much on the grief that plagued him anytime he thought about his dad or the fact that the other remaining members of his family had turned out the way they had.Reading and watching all the pieces of news that he could gather about the whole incident, as well as asking tons of questions, made him not hurt as much as he would have at Denise's or Blair's death and Amanda's incarceration.He could not wrap his head around anyone doing what they had done, especially the fact that they kidnapped and tortured two innocent children, one of whom was his own daughter.He still had yet to meet his little girl, but he was going to see her that day when he got home.He was nervous as hell, about the m