It’s been over fifteen minutes, and Charlotte still hasn’t returned from the restroom. Even Clara is back at her table.
Leaning over to Titus, I let him in on my concern before getting up and heading toward where I last saw her.
“Hey,” Titus catches up to me and his face mirrors the concern I’m feeling. “Have any of our men alerted you to seeing anything suspect?”
“No, but after one of our men betrayed us by ransacking our safe house, I wouldn’t put it past any of them to slip up.”
There’s a cleaning cart right outside the women’s restroom which is concerning. This is a prestigious country club. Any cleaning would presumably be done prior to an event, behind the scenes, or if necessary, discreetly during a function like this wedding.
Off to the left is one of our men, running full speed toward me. “Aiden. I’m so sorry.”
Those four words have my body turning into ice. “What. The. Fuck. Happened?” Each word comes out slow and deliberate as I try to control my temper from releasing a full on shout of rage.
“Charlotte went into the restroom, her sister Clara and another woman both exited but she remained inside. Then a cleaning woman pushing a cart went in.” His hand goes to the back of his neck, kneading it before continuing. “She came out a couple of minutes later and a maintenance man approached her, removing the white laundry bag from her cart and throwing it into a crate.” He shifts on his feet, taking his sweet time in delivering the rest of the information.
“Just spit it out. We don’t have all day and every damn second is crucial.”
“One of our men went to inspect the crate, but before he could get a good look, the man apparently injected him with something. Alex was the one to find him on the ground and has him in a room recovering, but that’s all the information we’ve been able to get out of him. As for our other men, they’re going over surveillance footage, trying to find the woman or man. Charlotte has yet to be seen since having entered the bathroom. It’s our theory that she was in the cart and then transferred to the crate.”
“You think?!” I yell loud enough that people around us stare, but I don’t give a damn. Charlotte is lost. God knows where, and this all happened on my watch. I shouldn’t have let her leave the house, let alone bring her to a public setting like this. “Take me to our man. He has to have something that could clue us in as to who took her.”
Titus’ hand falls on my shoulder, squeezing in reassurance. “We will find her, brother.”
We have to. I’ve just found her and there’s no way in hell I’m letting her go.
Charlotte
A splash of water to the face has me jolting awake. “What the hell?!”
“There she is.” A familiar voice answers. “It’s about damn time.”
Looking around the dark room, I try to find the bitch who drugged me. “Where am I, Michaela?”
I try to move but my hand and feet are tied up in front of me, it’s a miracle I could sit up at all.
“Maybe you don’t know who’s in charge here. In case you haven’t caught on, it’s me, so stop with the sass. It will only make things worse for you.”
Not giving a damn about her threats, I roll my eyes. “Spare me the drama and cut to the chase. What do you want and why did you do this? Is it money?”
“Of course you’d think that.” She laughs in disgust as she steps into the light where a small lamp sits on a desk.
Looking around, I realize we seem to be in an office with very expensive art and furnishings. Are we still at the wedding venue? Trying to distract her, I try to catch my bearings, eying any possible escape routes while continuing this conversation. “So if not money, then what?”
“You blind little bitch. Couldn’t you see how good you had it? You had the man, the title, and the money. But did you appreciate it? No. You just made him worse. He’s useless now. All he does is pine after your stupid ass.” She presses the palms of her hands to her eyes and it’s then I see the gun, the black metal surface glinting off the dim lighting of the room.
Well shit, maybe I shouldn’t be poking the bear. It has a damn gun.
“I’m sorry, who are you talking about?” I have to ask because I’m at a loss for words. She couldn’t be talking about—
“Preston, you fucking twit!” She shouts as I sit there, mouth hanging wide open. “I had him first. We had a good thing going and then you had to come along, the perfect little princess from old money. So prim and proper. The total opposite of me, a girl from Oak Cliff who worked her way up. But no matter how smart or how good I was to him, I was never enough.”
“Michaela, I had no clue. I didn’t know you two were ever a thing.”
“Of course you didn’t. I was the dirty little secret meanwhile, he took one look at you and knew you were going to be his trophy wife.” Her body shudders in revulsion. “I even thought I could change his mind on your sham of a wedding night. But you must have some magical pussy because the four hours he spent with me did absolutely nothing to dissuade him from leaving you.”
“You were with Preston on my wedding night?!” It’s my turn to be disgusted. He’d been missing for a long time, and when he finally showed himself, he’d said it was because of work. Not wanting to fight with my new husband, I did what any obedient little wife would do—I shut up and didn’t question him.
“Yes.” She lets loose a diabolical cackle. “You. Are. So. Dumb. You never suspected a damn thing did you?”
My blood boils, and despite my predicament, I rip into her. “Don’t be foolish, Michaela. Of course, I suspected, I just played the role. Behaved how he wanted me to behave. You’re over here saying you wish you were me.” I laugh hysterically, snorting at the ridiculous irony of this situation. “You wanted to be a puppet? Never having a word in anything, not even the clothes you wear or the friends you associate with. You are telling me that you wanted to cater to a man who beat you repeatedly because he was insecure, and constantly paranoid?”
“Yeah, about that…” Her face contorts, flinching at my words. “That’s the part of the plan that didn’t go as expected.”
I blink slowly, trying to process what she just openly admitted to. “Excuse me?”
“Well, I might as well tell you since you won’t live through this.” My body freezes and the first inkling of real fear courses through me. Oblivious to my shift in demeanor, Michaela continues. “I wanted you to leave him, so I drugged him every damn day, hoping that his mood swings would drive you crazy.”
“Michaela! Those were not mood swings. The man was paranoid and beat the shit out of me. Repeatedly!” I’m yelling so loud my throat stings from the strain on my vocal cords.
“Yea, that’s the part that didn’t go as planned. We had done coke before and it never resulted in violence. He would get paranoid but he never hit me, so I didn’t think he’d do that to you.” She cringes. Is she really trying to justify or apologize for her actions or Preston’s behavior? “So, yeah. Whoops.”
“Whoops? I slipped some coke in his drink, whoops? It’s my fault he’s going crazy and beating his wife, but I’m going to keep drugging him?”
“Oh no, sister. I stopped drugging him once I saw it wasn’t doing a damn thing to make you leave. You’re the stupid one for staying as long as you did. It’s been over a year since I gave him his morning joe with the Michaela special. Everything he’s done since has been because he’s so psycho obsessed with you. I’ve had to live with this shit for so long, only for you to go ahead and ruin what little I had left of him when you left.”
“Are you saying you still had him during our marriage?” My stomach rolls and I’m about to vomit, my mind immediately falling on the baby. The poor innocent baby that doesn’t deserve to die in this office in god knows where. “Look, you can have him. All of him. He’s not mine nor do I want any part of his obsessive abusive personality. Just let me go and I won’t tell a soul.”
Laughing maniacally, Michaela begins to pace in front of me, her face going in and out of the dark like some evil villain in a movie. Fitting.
“You don’t get it. You broke him.” She waves her gun in the air, waving the tip around in a circle. “The man won’t go to work. Won’t shower unless I drag him. Won’t even eat without my having to force feed him. Seems to me like I’m doing your job and getting none of the credit. Meanwhile, you go off gallivanting with your bodyguard, leaving me to clean up your mess.”
“My mess?!” I screech so loud it hurts my own ears, but I can’t help it. “You are delusional. You two had an affair before and during our marriage. You drugged him and stood by watching as he abused me. Then when I finally gather the courage to leave that toxic relationship, you have the balls to kidnap me and blame me for the sick and twisted mess of a relationship you two have.” I close my eyes, shaking my head while rolling in my lips. “Nope. Not it. That craziness is all on the both of you, not me.”
My eyes are still closed when the back of her hand connects with my cheek, sending my head swinging in the opposite direction.
Turning back to look at this lunatic, I see her other hand is raised, the barrel of her gun pointed straight at me. “You don’t get to tell me that, you ungrateful little—”
The window behind Michaela shatters, little pieces of glass flying into the room, shooting around her like a halo of destruction. Like a perfectly orchestrated moment, she pulls the trigger as men fly in through the window.
I try to yell, but my breath catches and my chest burns.
Looking down at my hand, I see crimson liquid seeping through the bodice of my dress and onto my pale skin.
God, no. The baby.
My vision blurs into a white fog as reality slips through my blood-stained fingers.
My baby, my poor baby.
A numbing ache comes over me as wetness falls from my eyes and I lose the last grip of hope I once held.
This is it. This is our end.
