TWO

CHAPTER TWO

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Even when Donovan came and wrapped his hand around me, kissing the crown of my head before he drifted into a deep sleep, I still could not bring myself to rest. I was under the same roof with my stalker, and with the way he had stared at me earlier, I was not safe.

—

After my husband’s death, I never thought I’d be stepping foot back into that house. It wasn’t just the home my husband and I had shared; it was the place that had created the most traumatic moments of my life, including my stalking experience and my husband’s brutal murder.

I tried not to recall the gruesome night he was killed in cold blood on that carpet as I stepped inside with my spare key to pack the rest of the belongings I had left behind.

While packing, I heard the door opening and closing, then Martha’s voice echoed, “When is the moving company coming to sort this out?”

I sighed and braced myself for what was to come.

They both paused when I stepped out of the room into the living room.

“How dare you return here, you evil bitch?” Martha, my late husband’s mother, snapped, the wrinkles forming harder around her face.

Jolene, her blonde daughter, eyed me. “You still have the spare key? Let me have it.”

When I didn’t move, she grabbed my handbag, threw my belongings onto the floor, and snatched the key from among them. “Now listen good, you horrible bitch—don’t you ever come here again. If you dare step foot in this place, I’ll cut it off.” She snarled.

“And don’t you even think you’re getting a dime from that will. Do you understand me?” Martha barked.

“As you can see, I never contacted either of you after the funeral. I just came here to take the rest of my belongings.”

“Better. Now leave and never come back.”

I bent down to gather my things when I heard Jolene say, “Raymond told me he suspected you cheated on him. Was it your lover that sent someone to kill him? Is he the one you’re currently married to?”

I finished packing my belongings back into my bag and stood up. “You are mistaken. Raymond was also mistaken and delusional—”

Martha hit me hard across the face and grabbed my hair so that my face was close to hers. “You wicked daughter of the devil, I swear to you, I’ll get to the end of this matter and make sure I arrest both you and that murderer you called a lover.”

—

By the time I stepped outside and hailed a cab, my hair was a mess. I was so enraged that I didn’t even bother to tell the cab driver where I was going and simply climbed in. When I had calmed down a little, I would let him know.

As the cab pulled away, I took a small mirror from my bag—one that had broken when Jolene threw all my belongings onto the floor—to check and rearrange my hair.

However, while fixing my hair, the cab suddenly skidded to a stop, making me jerk forward violently. Before I could raise my head to see what had happened, the cab driver—whom I was only then realizing wore a face mask—turned around, leaned forward, and knocked me out completely until everything went black.

—

I pried my eyes open slowly to find myself in a basement. No—it was more like an underground fighting pit with no ring in sight. Just a chain-link fence, two chairs other than the one I was tied to, and two chains that had cuffs dangling beside each other. It smelled of metal and felt like a place where murder happened. I began panicking. Only my legs and my hands were tied; my mouth wasn’t taped, so I did what any normal person would in that situation: “Somebody help! Anybody out there? Help me!”

I began struggling against the cable wire that bound me to the chair, but it was useless. Whoever had tied it was skilled at this kind of work.

After several failed attempts to free myself from the chair, the silver-iron door jerked open with a noisy scrape, and a man who looked to weigh a solid hundred kilos stepped in—tattooed bald head, stony glare locked on me.  

“Who the hell are you people?” I barked at him.

He said nothing as he stepped inside, but I realized someone trailed behind him, hidden by the bulk of his body. The scent that followed the second person’s entrance made me guess—and I guessed right.

“Storm?” I murmured.

He stepped into view with a slow, deliberate smirk, the kind that said he’d finally cornered a rat that had been scurrying just out of reach for years. Cool, composed, and completely in control.

“What the fuck?” I echoed.

“Sorry if I scared you, love. I know if I had asked nicely, you’d refuse.”

He grabbed a chair, his cross necklace swinging freely as he moved, and nudged his black cargo pants higher with a casual flick of his wrist. His rolex flexed against the thin daylight spilling through the tiny window as he sat, straddling the chair backward, right in front of me, relaxed, like he owned every inch of the room.

“So,” he said, voice low and smooth, “let’s get into it. Why didn’t you return any of the love letters I wrote back then?”

I thought. Love letters? Then I recalled. How he had written love letters to me every Friday and placed them gently on my desk for me to find after class.

I let out a sigh. “Storm, you were barely eighteen and I was what? In my mid-thirties. Why would I acknowledge something like that?” I spoke softly, hoping it would make him listen.

“Miss Leonard,” he said, even softer, adjusting the cuff of the denim jacket he wore over the black tshirt just enough to check the time on his watch, as if he had somewhere more important to be—and the world would simply wait for him. “What makes you think I give a single fuck about what is normal and what isn’t? Hmm?”

I said nothing. Of course he didn’t.

“Now.” He leaned in, the smirk never quite leaving his face. “Here’s why you are here. Find me those letters and bring them to me.”

“What? I don’t have them. I didn’t keep them.”

“Which is why I said ‘find.’ Find them and bring them to me… or else you’d lose a loved one.”

He rose in one fluid motion.

“We are done here.” He started for the door, then muttered to the overweight bouncer without even glancing back, “Let her go without a scratch.”

Then he left the room, the door closing behind him like a final, quiet period on the entire conversation.

The last time I set my eyes on those letters was my last day as a teacher at school—seven, maybe eight years ago. How the hell was I supposed to find them now?