Until Her - Ami Van Page 0,60
open, she breathes again.
“Stay by the doorway and keep an ear out,” Tommy whispers to her.
She nods and sees him immediately head to the laptop on the oak desk.
She can feel the beads of sweat rolling down the side of her face as she scans the hallway from left to right. She’s seen Paul on the first floor earlier while they were waiting for him to make his rounds. Knowing his habits, he’ll be in the kitchen, watching porn until Isabella and Cristian come home. Then the ass-kissing begins. How those two can’t see past that, she can’t comprehend. There’s not a loyal bone in Paul’s body. Don Pietro had commented many times that it’s the reason why Paul has been with the family half of his life and is still nothing more than a lowly soldier.
She can’t help but wonder what Adam is doing with Isabella at this moment.
Shit. She can’t help but wonder if Adam already knows of what she is doing at this very moment and how pissed off he might be.
Her fingers tremble at the thought of making him angry. Not because of the fear of losing him but she finds…he’s the first man that she wants to please. The first man who sets her body and her soul on fire, making her feel alive again. Truly alive.
“Come on,” Tommy whispers and startles her out of her thoughts.
He takes her hand again and they meet Brooks in the hallway. Amongst the three of them, Brooks is the biggest, not the tallest but the biggest and the most silent one. They carefully retrace their steps back the way they came, meeting up with James and Jason just right outside of the back door.
Like a unit, they move quietly in the dark of the night.
She grabs a hold of Brooks's arm, stopping him.
“Can…can we please stop at my cottage?” she asks softly. “There are sentimental things that I’d like to retrieve. It’s just right over there,” she says, pointing the way.
“We shouldn’t,” James says with a shake of his head.
“Go,” Jason tells Brooks and then looks at her with a smile. “She might not get to come back here.”
She didn’t even tell them that there’s a good chance that there might be someone else living there to take care of the property with the length of time she’s been gone. If that’s the case, then her belongings are probably long gone. Call her selfish for keeping that to herself but she’s holding onto hope that she can at least retrieve the picture of her mother.
“Fuck,” Tommy whispers through clenched teeth. “Let’s go,” he says, taking her hand again while James and Jason seem to have vanished into the night.
She can feel the tense vibrations permeating off of Brooks. He’s on high alert and it sends her jitters into a frenzy. She clamps down her teeth to keep them from chattering as they move quickly in the shadows to get to the cottage.
She steps up to the door in her excitement and Brooks immediately shoves her to the side.
“Let him go first,” Tommy whispers to her.
She waits for what seems like hours before Brooks steps out and nods for her to go inside.
“Make it quick,” Brooks tells her.
This time, Tommy follows her inside the cottage with Brooks standing guard at the doorway.
It’s small. One bedroom with one bathroom inside. She looks over at the small kitchenette and tears fill her eyes as memories of her and her mother cooking meals together overwhelm her. But other than those memories, everything has changed. All of her belongings, her drawings on the wall, are all gone.
She rushes over to the bedroom. It’s nicely kept with the familiar bed set covering the bed but other than that, nothing else is familiar. Her drawings. Her mother’s photo. All gone.
She didn’t need to check the armoire to know that her clothes and her small jewelry box containing her mother’s locket are no longer there either.
Everything that is her. Gone. As if she never existed. She’d lived here her whole life since the day her mother brought her home from the hospital. Nothing bad ever happened to her in this cottage but it’s housed so many tragic memories. It’s where she came to recover from the beatings. It’s where she came when she’d been too used to face the world.
It’s where she came when they were done with her.
The emotions and memories overwhelm her. The jitters and the cravings crash over her all at once too.