by Haley Stuart
I can feel my anger boiling over. Gunshots echo throughout the room, and I am looking at the computer screen that now has holes in it. That is when I realize the gun I am holding is aimed at the computer screen. I’ve shot the screen up in my rage.
“Boss.”
“What!” I look up from the screen in rage at one of my men speaking to me in the doorway. He flinches as I shout at him, but I don’t fucking care.
“We found him …” He trails off.
I immediately walk from behind the computer toward the man, grabbing him by his collar and yanking him so close to me I can feel his hair tickling my forehead.
“Then fucking take me to him.” My voice is deadpan and cold as I grit out my words to him. I let go, and he stumbles away from me with wide eyes.
“I want that desktop brought back with us,” I say to no one in particular. But I know Matteo and Nicolai have heard me. I follow my guy out of the room as he leads me to Alexander.
“Have you found Elise?” My voice echoes off the empty walls. I can tell by his posture and the way he tenses that he hasn’t.
“No, sir.”
He leads me down the hall and to a living room. I can see all my men circled around him, with guns aimed at him. I slowly walk around the couch he is seated on and am shocked, to say the very least, at what I see.
He looks like shit. Actually, he looks like fucking Frankenstein with all the stitches that cover his body. His eyes narrow at me. I stand in front of him, trying my hardest to filter the rage and hatred I have for this man. If I kill him now, I won’t be able to make him pay for everything he has done to Elise.
I motion to everyone in the room. “Leave us. Your top priority is Elise.” As they file out, I grab one by his arm. “Once Matteo gets here, I want you to send him in. Other than that, no one enters this room. Got it?” He nods with wide eyes.
They all close the door behind them, leaving me alone with the bastard that has taken my wife. I can feel nothing but hate as I stare this man down. I want to kill him right now.
“Where is she?” I ask. The room is silent for a moment before a small chuckle escapes his lips.
“That’s the question of the century.”
I clench and unclenched my fist, trying to calm myself. If I kill him now, I will never know where Elise is. I take the knife out of my back pocket, flipping it open.
“You don’t look like you’re in good-enough shape to fight me back, so I suggest you tell me where she is,” I say again. He stares at me in silence, and I can feel my irritation getting the best of me.
“I knew you would come for me sooner or later. I just planned on having her dead body waiting for you when you arrived. Or we’d be long gone by the time you caught on. But she was as stubborn as a mule.” He laughs, as if remembering something. He looks up at me with a sick glint in his eyes. “That was why I had her tied every time I fucked her.”
I can’t control myself. I lunge at him, about to plunge the knife right in his heart when someone grabs ahold of me. I struggle, but both Nicolai and Romelo are holding me down. Matteo is standing on the other side of me. They arrive just in time.
“This is what he wants. He wants you to kill him quickly, and then you’ll have no lead on Elise. Calm down, Luca.” It is Romelo’s voice of reason that calms me out of my haze.
“I’m fine!” I jerk. They sit me in the chair, and Romelo walks closer to Alexander. “How’d you get those stitches?”
He studies them closely, not waiting for a response. He obviously already knows.
“They look fresh. Very thick stitching also. Like someone did that frantically. Not calculated, but in a panic.”
I study the stitching. He is right. The stiches look horrid. Like something a two-year-old will scribble on a paper. The scabs underneath the stitches are dragged as well. As if someone is frantic. He hasn’t gotten those stitches from a professional.
“We found these in that car down the road.” Romelo pulls out a set of keys, dangling them in the air. He points to a button. “Along with some blood in the seat.”
“This works the garage. I’m assuming these are your keys.” He tosses them at Alexander, who is watching him with anger behind his gaze. We’ve got him.
“Elise isn’t here, is she?”
Alexander doesn’t budge; he still glares at Romelo with all the hate he can muster. I hear shuffling behind me and Matteo’s irritated voice.
“I don’t have time for this.” Matteo stands in front of Alexander, taking a knife and ripping through the stitching across his chest, dragging open the wounds. Alexander cries out in pain and grabs Matteo’s hand, twisting it, and a sickening snap echoes throughout the room. And now Matteo is crying out in pain.
“Fuck!” I jump up, as do Nicolai and Romelo.
Matteo is crying out in pain, and Nicolai grabs him back from Alexander. Romelo immediately goes to look at Matteo’s wrist. I wrap my hand around Alexander’s throat and squeeze as hard as I can, shoving him deeper into the couch he is sitting on. I only mean to restrain him, but as he claws at my hand, I don’t let go, the darkness enveloping me. I squeeze even harder, thinking about all the things I’ve seen him do to Elise on that video. How he has tortured her.
His struggling becomes weaker and weaker. I can feel his pulse underneath my fingers becoming weaker and weaker. Suddenly, my body is jerked backward, and I watch in disappointment as Alexander hunches forward, coughing violently and holding his reopened wounds. He looks at me with hate.
“You know where she is? Dead. She’s fucking dead. I killed her, slowly and painfully, and I made sure to leave nothing behind.” He smiles at me, and I can feel my heart sinking. He has to be lying.
“I will never forget the sound of her screams as she begged me to spare her. Her cries as I ripped her apart slowly and painfully.”
I can’t move. I can’t bring myself to do anything. He is lying. I won’t believe it. I refuse to.
“You should have seen the fear in her eyes. It’s something that will keep me smiling in my dreams for a long time.” And he laughs. He fucking laughs.
Out of nowhere, Romelo’s fist collides with Alexander’s face, knocking him instantly into unconsciousness.
Everyone is quiet. No one dares make a sound. She is not dead. She is not. She can’t be. He is lying. He has to be.
“Luca, don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to get you riled up because he knows she’s alive somewhere. She must have escaped. We’re going to test the blood in the car to see if it’s hers,” he says.
“Go get the maid,” I say. “We’re going to interrogate her until she wishes she were dead.”
They exit the room. I see Matteo still in the corner, cradling his broken wrist. We have to get that set before it starts healing.
I walk toward him in silence, standing over him. He looks up at me, and I stare back. I bring my hand out quickly, striking him across his face. He cries out in pain, and before he can think, I grab his shirt, pulling him close to me.
“If you ever pull some shit like that again, I will send you away to boarding school. You are not a professional, you are not even in this profession. He could have killed you and taken your weapon. You could have killed him before we got information, and you set off a chain of events that could’ve ended badly.” I let go of his shirt, and he stumbles backward.
“We need to get your wrist set.” I step out of the room, not waiting for a response.
I am not entirely convinced if Elise is alive or not, but I hope more than anything that she is.
I step into the hallway and see Nicolai messing with the desktop of the computer.
“I’m going to find another screen to connect this to. There could be more film on Elise. Maybe we’ll find a clue about her whereabouts on film.”
I nod. In my anger, I have shot the screen. Luckily, I haven’t shot the desktop, because we could have been screwed if I have.
I nod as everyone begins setting up shop. We aren’t le
aving here until we have some kind of lead on where my wife is.
Chapter 44
Luca
I look at the woman in front of me. She is older, obviously. I can’t believe this woman has sat there as my wife is tortured and beaten. And she hasn’t said or done anything about it. According to her, so far, she has treated Elise’s wounds. She knows who Elise is, yet she has done nothing to contact me.
“So what exactly happened?” I repeat to her.
She is shaking in the seat and keeps looking back and forth between me and Romelo.
“Don’t look at him. I’m the one you need to worry about right now. Elise was my wife.” I speak to her with cold words, and she flinches at my tone.
“Now, tell me what happened.”
“I … I don’t know. I just found Master Croff in the hallway with blood everywhere. He told me she attacked him with shards from the mirror.”
I stand up, getting in her face. “Then where the fuck is she?” I shout. This bitch is wasting my time, and it is driving me crazy.
“We don’t know, sir, we swear! There was no time to go out and search for her because I had to tend to Master Croff’s wounds! And then the storm rolled in! That’s all I know, I swear!”
I growl in irritation and leave the room, Romelo following closely behind me. After a moment of us walking, I hear a small chuckle from behind me. I immediately stop and turn, looking at Romelo.
“What the fuck is so funny?”
He immediately regains his composure. “I’m sorry, sir, it’s just that she said Elise cut Alexander open like that using shards from the mirror.”
After a moment of silence, a chuckle escapes my lips. I have been so angry in there I don’t even register it. But Elise has done that damage to Alexander. My Elise. My timid and frightened Elise. It is shocking, to say the least, that such a small girl can do so much damage. But what is more shocking to me is that it is Elise that has done that in the first place.
The same girl that has thrown up when we’ve played Russian roulette and begged me not to do certain things to men I have tortured in front of her. The girl that freezes at the first sight of blood has nearly cut Alexander’s organs out of his body.
I turn back and begin my descent to the room that Nicolai is set up in. I open the door, and he is sitting behind the desk with a focused look on his face. He looks up upon my entrance, standing.
“What have you got for me?”
“There were cameras in the bedroom …” He trails off. “I’m still sorting through the footage to see if I can find any clues as to what happened.”
I nod in understanding. He is uncomfortable, so obviously, the videos mostly consist of him fucking my wife. There is no way in hell I am going to watch those videos. So I am going to have to wait until Nicolai comes across something.
My phone begins vibrating in my pocket, and I look at the call log to see Dr. Shotwell calling me. This means he has done the bloodwork. Now it is time to see whose blood is in that car.
“Yeah,” I answer.
He is silent for a moment, as if hesitating. “Sir, the blood is a match.”
My heart begins speeding up. I don’t say anything.
“That’s not all, sir. The blood sample you sent me … well, it seems that … Elise is pregnant.”
“Fuck!” I shout. At the same time, Nicolai jumps away from the screen with wide eyes.
“Oh, fuck,” he whispers. His eyes are darting back and forth frantically between me and the screen.
“Sir, are you still there?”
I ignore Dr. Shotwell as I walk to the computer screen to see what Nicolai is looking at. I look at the screen and see why he is so nervous. Alexander has made Elise wear nothing but lingerie while she has been here. So in the video, clear as day, is a small bump beginning to form around her stomach. She is obviously pregnant.
“Fuck!” I shout, hurling my phone at the wall. It shatters to pieces.
“Everyone fucking out!” I shout.
Everyone doesn’t hesitate as they quickly try to file out. Romelo and Nicolai are among them, trying to leave.
“Not you two!”
They stop right by the door and slowly turn to me. I must look severely pissed off right now, because even they look hesitant to speak to me.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” I shout in anger. I speed around the room, attacking anything and everything in sight. She is fucking pregnant. That bastard has fucking knocked up my fucking wife. I don’t even have the slightest idea of what to do next. This is all my fucking fault.
“Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone!” I shout at them. They flinch at my tone. “I’m going to fucking kill that bastard. I’m going to fucking kill him!” I can feel the rage boiling up beneath my skin. How dare he fucking touch my wife when he knows who the fuck I am! Dammit!
If I ever find Elise, I have to deal with her wanting to keep his child. I will be stuck with forcing her to get rid of it or raising his offspring for the rest of my life. Fuck! How can this fucking happen? Is she even alive? Dr. Shotwell has said that is her blood in that car. Meaning, she has wrecked it. So where the hell could she have gone from there?
“I want this whole mountain scanned by air. Get me a chopper, and I want the nearest houses to that wreck.”
I don’t wait for their response as I walk out of the room, slamming the door behind me. I quickly head up the hallway to the room where we hold that fucking cunt. As soon as I am near the door, I pull my gun out, swinging the door open. I don’t even give her time to comprehend what is going on. I unload my gun in her body.
I turn around, leaving the room and walking toward the front of the house. I run into Romelo.
“I want this place burned to the goddamn ground.” I don’t wait for his response once again.
We do not leave the house until three hours later. I look behind us as the place goes up in flames. I’ve had Alexander shipped to the catacombs already, so he isn’t in there even though I really want him to be.
I send everyone else home besides Romelo and Nicolai. I send Matteo home also. He is of no use with a broken wrist. He will only be in the way. And if there is any more danger lurking, he will be the first one the enemy will aim for. It is now time for us to search the surrounding area for Elise.
Lucky for us, the sun is still up, so we have plenty of time to search. The chopper above us is scanning the area. The voice comes through the coms.
“There’s a cabin about fifteen miles from your current location, but you can’t get there by car. You got to go by foot.”
We follow the chopper’s directions and end up pulling off the road. We stop once we get close to the cabin. Everyone files out of the car, getting their gear on.
We silently trudge near the cabin, the only sound our boots crunching the thick snow. I am nervous as hell. Even though it is negative degrees outside, I am sweating. Seeing Elise on camera is one thing, but seeing her in person—and her stomach is probably bigger now—well, I honestly don’t know how I am going to react to that.
I can see the smoke from the chimney over the trees. I look at Romelo and Nicolai, motioning for them to cover my rear.
We finally exit the trees, and the cabin comes into view. The lights are on, but the curtains are drawn, so I can’t see anything inside. We will just have to play it by ear. If we barge in and Elise isn’t here, we are screwed, but if she is, then barging in may be the thing that will save her.
I take a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. Whatever is beyond this door may change me. I am terrified of what I may find. I haven’t seen Elise since she has left me because I’ve told her about her mother. And now she is pregnant. After she is captured and auctioned off.
I kick in the door and take it all in at once. There is a dog growling at me, with his teeth bared. There is a man with a knife in hand, standing defensively. And dear God, there is Elise behind him. My Elise. My wife. She looks so beautiful as she stares at me in shock. He hair is in long w
aves down her back, and her skin has a healthy glow to it. I look at her arms and see hideous bruises sported across it. There are bandages on each of her hands, gauze wrapped around them. She is wearing baggy clothing.
Romelo and Nicolai are right next to me as we all stare one another down. Her eyes slowly fill with tears, and she steps from around the man. He grabs her arm, and rage immediately flashes to the surface as I take in the sight. Who the fuck is this man? I step forward with my gun at ready. The dog’s growls grow louder, and I am about to put the miserable mutt out of its misery then.
Elise seems to sense the directions of my thoughts, because she murmurs something to the man and pats the dog’s head lightly, getting its attention. Its growls grow quiet as it watches her approach me.
I take in her face and feel so much happiness within me. She is alive. She is alive, and she is safe. I reach out, about to grab her, when I pause. Now that she isn’t hiding behind that man, I can see her more clearly. Including her stomach, which is protruding a little too far from her shirt. I have to wipe my face of emotion. I want to stare at her in disgust, but then I want to kiss her. An inner battle is waging war deep within me.
I reach out to cup her face but immediately let my arm fall at my side. I have never felt so conflicted in my life. To finally have her back. Be with her. But at the same time, I can’t shake the thought that she is pregnant with someone else’s child.
She takes a timid step toward me, her face twisted in confusion, and I immediately step back. I feel sick.
I can feel the stares Nicolai and Romelo are boring into my back. I don’t know how long I have been staring at her. These feelings are overwhelming, and for once in my life, I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. Then my gaze focuses over Elise’s shoulder, and I take notice of the man on the other side of her. I take a step forward, pushing her behind me.
