Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 62994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
My vision starts to go fuzzy around the edges.
“Be gentle with her. Boss wants her alive,” a different voice mutters. “Move.”
I thrash one last time, desperate, wild, terrified for the tiny life inside me. A cloth covers my mouth and nose. The world tilts. The sidewalk blurs. The last thing I hear is the faint sound of my phone hitting the pavement as everything goes black.
23
SAMUIL
Iknow something is wrong before I even reach the penthouse. I can’t explain it, just an instinct deep in my bones. The kind of dread that wakes men up in the middle of the night. First, I realize there are no security guards waiting when I step off the elevator. That isn’t right.
Then I realize Molly isn’t in the apartment. I feel her absence before I confirm she’s actually missing. I walk through the living room slowly, looking for her telltale signs, like a rumpled blanket she forgot to fold, or a half-finished mug of tea. There’s nothing.
I call her name and get no answer. My pulse quickens. I methodically search every room, looking for her, but she’s nowhere to be found. This isn’t good.
When I reach the kitchen, I look for signs she was here at all. I find an unwashed plate in the sink and, in the fridge, a sandwich in the spot where she usually leaves me leftovers. It definitely wasn’t there this morning. At least it gives me the start of a timeline.
I take out my phone and call her. It rings three times before going to voicemail. What the fuck is this?
She didn’t leave me. She couldn’t have. Where the hell is my security team? I call Tomàs, the head of my private security firm.
“Change your mind, boss?” he asks cheerfully.
“Change my mind about what?” I ask, confused.
“You told me to pull back the security detail on your penthouse,” he says slowly, as if I’m the stupid one.
“I did no such thing,” I growl. “Why would you think that?”
“You sent the message this morning,” he says, though now his slow tone sounds hesitant. “It was a text from your private line. I had Rafe confirm the number. You said you were going on a trip and wouldn’t need the penthouse covered.”
“Tomàs, I’m going to say this one time, so listen very carefully,” I say through clenched teeth, my anger simmering under the surface. “I did not send that message. Now my girlfriend is missing.”
I flinch at the word “girlfriend.” It’s not really true anymore, is it? There’s no better way to describe her, though, and I’m far too worried to get into semantics with the fucking idiot who didn’t call me to confirm my wishes.
“If you want to keep your job,” I start, but it doesn’t feel threatening enough. “Hell, if you want to keep your life, you’ll find footage of her right now and send it to me in the next ten minutes.”
“I…” He falters. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll find her.”
True to his word, the video comes in within eighteen minutes, a full five minutes of her walking from various angles. She’s all alone, with no security, not a single bodyguard. I hold my breath as I watch, hoping that I’m just overreacting, that she’s just out on a walk and hasn’t returned yet.
I know in my gut that isn’t true, though, and sure enough, ten minutes later, I watch as she stops in front of a coffee shop a few blocks away. I know that shop. I pass it every day on the way to the office. She stops for a moment, and it’s not entirely clear why. Then I see her pull out a few bills and bend down. I can just make out another person in the frame. She must have stopped to give a homeless person money.
Then, in the blink of an eye, a man is behind her. I can’t see his face. He’s in all black with a hood on, and he covers her face, pulling her backward. There’s a small struggle, and then he throws her into a van.
The van is also black, and the angle doesn’t give me the plates. I call Tomàs right away to see if he can get me a better angle on it. Then I call Davýd. My voice is calm, but he can tell something’s off.
“I’ll be there right away. Just sit tight,” he says calmly.
It’s an impossible ask. Molly’s been taken by someone, and it’s my fault. Just like Lena’s death was my fault. She was right. It’s barely been twenty-four hours since our fight, and she was so fucking right. How could I have missed this?
I pace up and down the length of the kitchen, unable to form any rational thought. All I see is red. I can hardly breathe through the panic, can hardly stay still through the anger.