“What do you mean our place has been ransacked? Is somebody there?” Chloe questions, a slight panic in her tone. “Tilly? What’s going on?”
Jordan’s lips twist with a sickening smirk, and he lunges before I even have a chance to react, the bat already swinging through the air.
“SHIT. CHLOE. CALL THE POLICE,” I scream, just milliseconds before the bat comes down over my temple like a crack of lightning smacking into the side of my head. My body flies across the destroyed room, and before I’ve even hit the floor, everything turns black.
25
CAESAR
Stepping back, I look over the engine of the 1967 cherry-red Mustang that Zephyr and I have spent the last few years rebuilding. It’s been a passion project, something for us to work on when work or college weren’t kicking our asses, and lately, that seems to be all the time.
This beauty is just about done, and after this past week, she’s seen more work than ever before. She’s been the perfect distraction to keep my mind off a certain little vixen who does nothing but cause me hell.
I think I did the right thing, pushing her away. Had I not, she eventually would have seen me for who I really am, seen the monster hidden within, and she would have run. I meant every fucking word when I told her that she deserved better. As for me, she would have changed my whole fucking world.
This past week, not being able to see her or even text her has fucking killed me. I’ve checked in on her here and there, looking in on the surveillance system I had installed, but for the most part, I’ve tried to give her space. It does me no good watching hercrumble on her couch, throwing chocolate cookies up in the air and trying to catch them in her mouth, only to miss them and eat them directly off the floor.
She’s had a rough week—that much is clear from the snippets of surveillance I’ve checked in on. She didn’t leave the apartment at all, just stayed curled up on that couch, and it damn near killed me knowing that I did that to her. She didn’t even pay attention to her classes, simply watched the online lectures before folding her laptop up and pushing it away.
As I finish up and slam the hood closed, my phone starts ringing from my workbench. I move across the garage, wiping my hands on an old rag before scooping it up and quickly answering it before it goes to voicemail.
“You should see her,” I tell my son, knowing he knows I’m referring to the Mustang. “She’s almost done.”
“Dad, she’s been taken,” Zeph rushes out in a panic, the tone in his voice something I’ve never heard before. “We just dropped her at home, and then she called Chloe saying their apartment had been ransacked, but when she was on the phone—”
“Slow down. What the fuck are you talking about? Who’s been taken?”
“Tilly,” he says as though I should have already plucked her name out of his head. “She’s fucking gone. Someone took her.”
“What?” I shake my head. That’s not possible. I know I haven’t checked in on her today, but surely she’s just been chilling on the couch, or playing with that new T-shirt making thing she got. But her place being ransacked? No. Surely I would have known. “She was taken? By who?”
Pulling my phone away from my ear, I put the call on speakerphone before swiping through the pages of apps clogging my phone until finally finding the Di Rozé surveillance app. I walk inside my home, having no fucking idea where I’m going,only that I need to keep moving as my whole world seems to shut down.
The app goes too fucking slowly despite being the best on the market, and when it finally comes up, I find Chloe and Zeph standing inside the destroyed apartment, Chloe talking on the phone—hopefully to the police.
“Holy fucking shit,” I breathe, taking it all in as I watch Chloe collapse onto the ruined coffee table while Zeph paces, his fists in tight balls.
How did I not know this was happening?
I’ve been too busy working on the fucking car that I didn’t bother checking the notifications that were coming through. I just assumed it was either Chloe or Tilly moving through the apartment as usual.
“How long ago?”
As if knowing that I’m watching, Zeph turns and stares directly up at the camera that looks over both the kitchen and living room. “Maybe ten. Fifteen minutes at the most,” he says. “And Dad. There’s blood in her bedroom. Not a lot, but enough to know that she’s hurt.”
My stomach knots, and I feel as though I’m going to throw up as I flip through the footage, hoping like fuck that my girl is okay. The moment I see a figure dressed in all black and dragging something through the apartment, I press pause.
“FUCK!”
“What?”
“It’s Jordan,” I snap through gritted teeth, my jaw clenched so tight my teeth could crumble under the pressure. I’m going to fucking kill him. Tilly is passed out, blood trickling from a wound at her temple, and I see red.
He drags her limp body through the apartment, pulling her over shattered glass and ramming her legs and head against fallen furniture.
“That fucking—I’m coming with you,” Zeph snaps. “This ends now.”
“The fuck you are,” I say, my heart racing faster than it ever has before as I go further back, watching the moment Tilly arrived at her apartment. She’s looking around with the most heartbroken expression as Jordan watches her from her open bedroom door. She starts walking toward it, and he slips behind it, waiting for her like the sick fucking predator that he is.
