checking in,” he begins. “The guards think Isabella escaped. They started running around like rats this morning looking for her. The guard they call Sacha put it in their heads she must have escaped sometime in the night.”
I figured Sacha would do exactly that to save his ass. I’m also guessing he might know Isabella was taken. When she promised him she wouldn’t do anything foolish she meant she wouldn’t try to escape. I haven’t watched them long enough or heard them converse long enough, but the fact that he let her out suggests they have a relationship of deep trust. I’m willing to bet money he knows she was taken.
“It’s best they think that for a while,” I answer. “It bides us time.”
“I figured as much. Any luck on Mortimer’s location?”
“Not yet,” I say as if I have some plan up my damn sleeve to get it. I don’t have shit. “What are the guards doing now?”
“Searching. It’s going to be obvious soon enough she was taken though, and that Sacha enabled it by allowing her to leave the house.”
“Don’t worry about that. You just keep watch and let me know if anything changes.”
“All right boss.”
I hang up and gaze out to the deep blue sea. I watch the waves crashing against the rocks and go over everything I can think of that will make Isabella tell me what I need to know.
There has to be something, I just have to find it.
Chapter Twelve
Isabella
Fog swallows my view, filling my surroundings fast. So fast, so thick.
It’s so thick I could cut through it with a knife. The grayness started to rise like smoke, rising like it’s coming from the last of the burning embers and all that is left is ashes.
Then I see it. The stairs. I’m on the stairs again in the house in Russia.
It’s like I’m watching a film of myself now and I know what to do.
Walk.
Walk so that what is to happen next will happen.
I can’t leave this plane of nightmares until I do. So, I walk.
I walk then run when I hear the scream.
Mama…
I stop short when I get to the living room and see my mother lying on the ground. My father is kneeling over her stabbing her in her stomach over and over again.
A scream tears from my lips and I scream again when her head rolls to the side and I see the way her eyes look.
She’s looking at me, but she’s not looking at me like she can see me, and she’s not moving.
Blood is everywhere. On the floor, on my father, everywhere.
“Mama!” I cry and that’s when I see the shadowy figure of someone behind my father.
A shadow … then a face. A face I’d almost forgotten.
It’s a man. As I look closer to see who he is, the fog swallows my surroundings and everything fades to black…
Then out of nowhere a hand grabs my throat and starts squeezing hard, squeezing the life from me. Killing me. Dmitri’s face looms before me. He growls like a wild animal revealing the monster he is. A demon straight from hell.
When he squeezes tighter I see the sledge hammer in his hand. This time he’s not going to use it on Eric. He’s going to use it on me.
He raises it…
I jump out of my sleep and leap off the bed with my hand at my throat. My legs cave and I fall to the ground moving back on my hands. It takes me a moment before I realize Dmitri’s not here.
Here…
I look ahead of me and my gaze lands on the sea crashing against the rocks off in the distance.
My heart is hammering so hard in my chest it could explode, and for a second, I think it might, but a sarcastic laugh falls from my lips.
This is sarcasm and irony at its finest indeed.
No. Dmitri’s not here, but I’ve been kidnapped, and I don’t even know where here is.
It’s another day. Day two. Yesterday was awful. When Tristan came back to badger me again for my father’s location I just kept my mouth shut. Much to his fury.
I thought it was best to say nothing. Just sit still and look at him. Why waste my breath when my answer will fall on deaf ears? The ears of a man who will most likely kill me before the week is out.
God… I prayed I could escape my father, and this is where I ended up. It’s a cruel joke the universe must