Lahat ng Kabanata ng Spellbound by Obsession: Kabanata 51 - Kabanata 60

The noise of the door announcing Lara’s arrival was different that late afternoon.It wasn’t the normal tiredness of someone who had worked eight hours serving tables, dealing with rude customers and sore feet. It was something else. An invisible weight, a tension in the shoulders, a way of avoiding my gaze that left me immediately alert.She hung her bag on the hook by the entrance with slow movements, as if each gesture required conscious effort, and her eyes wandered around the room before finding mine.“Mommy!” Aggy ran to her, her bare little feet echoing on the wooden floor, as she did every night. “Today I drew a unicorn!”“How beautiful, love.” Lara replied, and her smile was automatic, her lips curving mechanically while her hand stroked her daughter’s hair. But the smile didn’t reach her eyes. I saw it. I always saw it.I was in the kitchen, finishing preparing dinner — pasta with tomato sauce, the easiest recipe I knew, but Aggy loved it and always asked for more. I observe

The agenda on the wooden table in my hotel room had no work notes, no meeting reminders, no shopping lists. It had schedules, names, addresses and a meticulously built plan over weeks of silent obsession. Each page was a step, each note a piece of a puzzle that only I could see.The seventh page brought what I needed.KinderCare Preschool. 151 Low St, Newburyport, MA 01950, United States. Entry: 7:00 a.m. Exit: 4:00 p.m. Teacher: Olivia Davis. Transporter: Charlotte Martin — 21 years old, blonde hair, white Fiat.“It’s a small school.” Rowan commented, his voice coming through the laptop speaker, while I flipped through the photos he had sent. They were sharp, professional images, showing every angle of the building, every detail of the entrance gate. “Easy to access, hard to go unnoticed.”“You managed it.” I mentioned, running my fingers over the information on the sheet, feeling the texture of the paper under my fingertips.Rowan was efficient. Expensive, but efficient. Every cent

The restaurant was full, as always on Fridays, but my head wasn’t there.I served the customers on autopilot — smiling, taking orders, serving dishes, collecting tips — but my heart was at home, with her. The tightness in my chest started early, right after breakfast, when I said goodbye to Aggy and saw her green eyes shining as she jumped into Charlotte’s car. There was something in that image — my little daughter, confident, waving to me through the window — that made my stomach tighten.“Mom, today we’re going to have paint!” She shouted, the unicorn backpack bouncing on her back as she settled into the seat.“How cool, love. Behave, okay?”“I will!”The car drove away, and the tightness remained. It settled in my chest like a stone, cold and solid, and didn’t leave me for the rest of the day.I asked to leave early. The manager, a middle-aged woman who had always been understanding with me, didn’t argue — I had plenty of hours saved up, and I rarely asked for favors. She just look

The first night was the worst of my life.I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Aggy’s face — her green eyes filled with tears, her mouth opening in a scream I couldn’t hear. I saw her small hands stretched out to me, and me running, running, but never reaching her. I woke up startled, heart racing, hands sweaty, and then reality crashed over me like a blade: she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere.The police from Newburyport arrived twenty minutes after we called that same day. Four patrol cars, a kidnapping investigator, a team that seemed to invade our living room with clipboards and questions and technical terms I could barely process.They searched the park and the surroundings. They turned over every bush, every corner of the park, every inch of the nearby streets. Nothing. No sign of her. No abandoned belongings, no eyewitness besides the girl who saw Aggy leave with “the lady with the sunglasses”.“She left walking with the woman?” The investigator aske

I had my back turned when the silence changed.It wasn’t something I could explain rationally — it was an instinct, the kind that develops when you love someone long enough to know every nuance of their presence.The absence of Lara in the room was like a musical note that suddenly stopped playing. I turned slowly, my eyes scanning the room, and felt the blood run cold when I saw the empty space where she should have been.“Lara?” I called, my voice still controlled.No answer.Detective Morrow kept talking about Sarah’s car, about the cameras, about possible escape routes. His voice was a distant buzz, irrelevant. My eyes were already on the back door, ajar, a crack of light that shouldn’t have been there.That was when I heard the engine.The roar of Lara’s car echoed through the garage, a sound I knew as well as my own breathing. I ran. I crossed the kitchen, knocked over a chair on the way, my legs moving before my brain could fully process what was happening.The garage door was