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“Will do,” he replies before leaping from the car and meeting the rest of the group in a huddle. When they break apart and head in the direction of the run-down warehouse, my throat sinks into my chest.
“They’re coming, baby girl. I’ll see you soon,” I whisper into the universe, praying that she can hear me through it. “Love you. Come back to me.”
Seconds drag into minutes as I sit in the darkened silence—crickets and grasshoppers are my only companions. I pass the time by counting the stars and watching birds fly to their nests. My legs begin bouncing as I wait for the radio to crackle. For the millionth time, I look down at my watch.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I chant.
Patience isn’t my most valuable quality, and I’ve proven that time and time again. What’s only been fifteen minutes feels like fifteen hours. I begin bouncing my head off the seat’s padded headrest, hitting it hard enough to keep me from spiraling into bleak thoughts that have no room in my mind.
“Aris. We’re going in now. Give us five minutes then head this way,” Kayson’s voice says through the headphones.
“Yes!” I start the timer on my phone and make sure the temperature in the car is neither too hot nor too cold. Once it’s room temp, I look at how long has passed. Needing to do something other than sit here considering it’s only been two minutes since the call came in, I start creeping my way backward.
At least if the car is facing the right way, it’ll ease some of that restlessness inside of me.
When the alarm blares on my phone’s stopwatch, I hit the gas like I’m a race car hopeful and speed to my destination.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
BERLYNN
Flashes of noisein the background invade the peacefulness that the darkness brings me and tries to pull me back into the light. But since I’m keenly aware of what’s waiting for me once my eyes open, I keep them clamped closed and maintain my breathing by keeping it even and steady.
“What are we going to do now, Marcus!” My mother’s screeching voice hits me like nails on a chalkboard as she shouts at my father.
“We find everyone on that list,” my dad exclaims. What good that’d do him I don’t know considering several of those listed things are charities. It’d be implausible to put a hit out on their entire staff—especially since they have silent partners and benefactors that are unlisted on any documentation.
“We can’t logically remove hundreds of people, Marcus!” Mother continues on with her screaming. How adult of her. She always uses her banshee, shrill voice if she doesn’t get her way, and it’s tiresome as well as hard on the eardrums.
“Then what do you suggest, Lucinda? You’re the one who insisted on children, the more the merrier so that our inheritance would be larger,” Dad argues.
I hear my mom stomp her heeled foot onto the ground before grunting, “It was stipulated in the decree. We got an extra five million from my parents and ten from yours for each child we brought into the world. I didn’t know you’d gamble it all away on the thugs you became friends with by financing their illegal activities!”
“Those illegal activities protected us!” Dad roars.
“Against what, Marcus?” Mom asks. “We had a good, upstanding, and fruitful life until you became their patsy!”
“There are things you don’t know, Lucinda,” Dad states. “Things I can’t tell you or you’ll be swimming with the sharks. I made a bad business decision that came back and bit me on the ass and this was the only way to ensure we stayed breathing. That’s all I can tell you without compromising you further.”
“That’s enough, Marcus.” A strange man directs my dad. “You say anything else, and I’ll report you to the bosses.”
The bosses? I’d like them to talk about those people. The more I know, the deeper I can help bury my parents.
I hear an exhaled puff of air before my dad sighs. “I know, and I’m not going to discuss the things I’ve been warned to keep silent on. Believe it or not, I don’t have a death wish.”
Another unfamiliar voice joins the discussion and edicts, “You understand we can’t let her leave here alive, right? She’s seen our faces and can identify us to the police. We have to off her and dispose of the body.”
Fuck. That. Shit.
Aris, where are you? Now would be an outstanding time for you to come in like a white knight and save this damsel in distress.
“You never said she was going to die, Marcus,” my mom chastises. “I would’ve never agreed to this whole charade if that had been brought up. Stop them. Make them go away. I know you’re a cold-hearted bastard, but even you can’t be okay with your own daughter being murdered!”
Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black! Dad’s not the only cruel-hearted one. Has she forgotten all of the things she’s done and said to me?
The floor I’m crouching on begins to shake beneath my splayed body. The room’s occupants become freaked out and begin shouting over one another. Not being able to hide the fact that I’m awake, I flick my lids open and immediately begin searching for a hiding place. I haphazardly begin dragging myself across the concrete slab. The dizziness from lifting my head has everything feeling distorted, kind of like a fuzzy picture on the old television sets when there was an outage.
