Chapter 20
A Fly Away Week
A week later and I would have liked to have said things were back to normal.
But the truth was that Lucius had destroyed all chances at normal ever returning home to me.
One of the reasons for this was that my home, now felt more like him.
But let me start from the very beginning, and this was when my first order came from Dante that Lucius thought it best if I was to stay with Wendy for a few more days just to be sure.
Of course, this also meant that Dante too became a more permanent fixture.
Not that Wendy complained at this, for I think she was ready to buy a manlier couch if it just meant that he could stay longer, as it was where he had been sleeping.
Wendy and I had bunked together, something Dante smirked at knowing.
But even if she was secretly happy about this, (about Dante staying not sharing a bed with me) she was still playing the ice queen role to its Oscar worthy performance which Dante, most of the time, just seemed amused by.
However, I hadn’t heard another word from Lucius in the time that I stayed with her and I swear my fingers had itched to text him again.
But, in the end my pride won, that and the fear of rejection playing heavily on my mind, for I remembered what it had the power to do to me the first time…crush me, that was what.
Thankfully, at least I had work to contend with for I went back on Monday to find the room exactly as it was, as if nothing had happened there only forty-eight hours before.
So, I resumed my earlier work before my dad had showed up with that box and my life went from mundane and regular to, as my aunty Pip would say, bat-shit crazy in a heartbeat.
But then, after everything that had happened, I had found my mind constantly going back to the box.
In the end, I was glad to hear that on Tuesday night I was allowed to go back to my apartment with the hope of finding that the pictures I had taken of it were still there.
Unfortunately, everything had happened so quickly that I hadn’t had the time to check before Lucius had ushered me out of the room and sent me on my way, even going as far as packing for me.
Every time I looked down at my new suitcase full of clothes I was reminded of him.
I had so desperately wanted to keep just one part of me safe, but now I couldn’t even be in my own home without seeing him right there amongst all the chaos.
I quickly felt the safe cocoon I had spent years building around my life had piece by piece been peeled away.
And in this I wasn’t only referring to Lucius, but the lies my father had also told me.
And it all started four days ago when I had first been allowed to go back home.
I had decided to take Wendy with me, knowing that I would need that mental support just to see it again.
Oh and of course, help in clearing it out and pretty much starting over again.
I had decided that no matter how long it would take me I still wouldn’t use my father’s credit card to buy stuff.
So, even if I had to sit on folding deck chairs and eat at a plastic table for a few months, then I would.
Or so I thought I would.
“Okay, so I have to warn you, it’s bad, okay.”
I said to her as Dante had already been inside to check that it was safe before leaving for good…or so I had assumed.
“It will be alright, Emmie, we will go through it together, a bit at a time,”
Wendy said, holding my hand and giving it a squeeze.
Then I had taken a deep breath, turned the key and opened the door.
The second we had walked in my mouth fell open and Wendy whistled.
“Wow, what type of burglars were these guys, the interior decorating kind, or just Santa’s elves and if so, did they leave their card?”
she said, looking around in surprise like I was.
Because walking in here and I had expected to find it the way it was before I had left.
In fact, it was what I had been preparing myself for all day.
But what I got was my original flat only better…much, much better.
“But I…I…don’t understand,”
I stammered in astonishment.
It had not only been cleaned, repainted, and refurnished in all top end new pieces but they had also been ones chosen with a particular mind set and this was to try and replicate what had been here originally.
“Oh my God, you even have a new kitchen and that leaky tap you keep bitching about has gone! Holy shit, even your cupboards are full of food and your fridge!”
Wendy said getting excited and now going on a hunt of what else was new.
Just in the kitchen alone she found all new, top of the range appliances, and a new expensive dining set in Stoneware Imperial blue that was in a country style I loved.
All new cooking tools and gadgets, the best pots and pans, stunning glasses all in a matching set, along with mugs matching the plates, bowls and side dishes.
Even the bloody cutlery was fancy and now divided in its own drawer instead of just being grouped together in the old milk jug I had on the side to free up drawer space.
And Kirky had been right, the cupboards had enough dry food in them to last me an apocalyptic event.
Okay, that might have been a slight over exaggeration but still, it was a lot of food, which like she said, included the fridge.
Hell, it was so full that most of it would no doubt go out of date before I had chance to eat it all, that was unless I had a dinner party for ten guests.
But thankfully, I had a snazzy new freezer along with my fridge, both hidden away behind one of my new cupboard doors.
So most of it could be stored away in there and saved for a rainy ‘I have no food in the house’ day.
But even this wasn’t the most shocking part.
No, what was really shocking was the ideas that had gone into my living space and obvious thoughtfulness behind it.
Because it hadn’t just been redecorated without personal thought, which even if it had been, would have still been a blessing I would have been forever grateful for.
However, it was the fact that the couch had been picked so that the material from my old couch would match because with what had survived had been made into cute scatter cushions.
Even my old rug had been used to cover a new footstool in a hexagon shape.
But none of this had been what I had screamed over, as I ran towards my pink Star Fleet cushion my aunty had given me, which was now sat pride of place in my new love chair by the window.
“Oh, hold the papers, Emmie, have you seen your geek shelf?”
Wendy said making me look back at her to see her now outstretched arm pointing to what I hadn’t yet discovered.
My head snapped back around and I gasped before covering the lower part of my face with my trembling hands.
“It’s like the holy grail, Em,”
she said again as I took a few steps towards it and she was right, it was.
There was everything that I had on their before, including my precious Death Star that had been made whole again.
But now it also had a Millennium Falcon, Yoda's Jedi Starfighter, an X-Wing Fighter and a Tie Fighter.
Even Chewie’s head was back on his body and was now stood next to a figure of Han Solo.
Then, there was my Star Trek shelf that held the most expensive models of the different ships, including the original Enterprise NCC-1701, and the Enterprise NCC-1701 D from the Next Generation.
Along with the collectors’ must haves like the Klingon Bird of Prey, the USS Excelsior NCC-2000 from the original movies that Lieutenant Sulu lusted after before one day becoming its captain.
There were also other pieces that had been on my Christmas list in like, forever, which were now sitting on my shelf.
Some of which were the Borg Cube, a Deep Space Nine Space station along with a USS Defiant.
Then there was also a Romulan Warbird, known as the badass evil version of Vulcans. Even my precious signed posters of Spock were there on the wall, taking pride of place.
“Seriously, what did they do, rob a comic book store or just drag the biggest geek off the street that they could find and basically look inside his brain?”
Wendy asked, as she was right, it was every science fiction geek’s wet dream.
There were a few other favorites of mine dotted around, like the Alien vs Predator figures, or the Terminator head, but most of which were my clear favorites on their own shelf.
“Wow, you wanna check out your bedroom!”
Wendy suddenly shouted only now making me realise that she had gone exploring.
I followed in her footsteps and found that the shock just kept on coming.
“Okay, so now its official, I want to marry your boyfriend,”
she said making me jerk my head to the side to look at her.
“Wait, you think he did this?!”
She started laughing and then stopped, saying,
“Oh, you’re seriously asking me that…well yeah, I mean, duh, who else would?”
I frowned wondering if she was right and this wasn’t all just down to my dad after all.
I mean he had been the most logical choice considering he knew my likes and dislikes.
But then again, spending twenty minutes in here even when it was wrecked would have told you what my hobbies and passions were.
“I thought it might have been my dad but now you mention it, maybe it was Lucius.”
“Well, kinda makes sense seeing as he was the one to set up you coming to stay with me and with Captain Inferno as your bodyguard but also packing you a bag full of brand-new clothes…”
Then she looked round and opened the closet that was now full of new clothes too, making me gasp.
“Seems highly likely don’t you think?”
she said sarcastically seeing as all evidence was pointing towards it being Lucius.
I couldn’t help but slump down on the bed, whilst running my fingers along my new handmade comforter at the end of my bed that actually brought a tear to my eye.
It had been made out of all the collection of funny t shirts I had been given over the years and where Lucius had watched me trying in vain to hold the two pieces together he could obviously tell that this stuff had meant a lot to me.
“Oh, honey,”
Wendy had said when seeing me getting upset and she sat down next to me so that she could comfort me with an arm around my shoulder.
“I just don’t understand why…why would he do all this for me?”
I asked in a small voice that felt as though it had echoed off my fragile soul.
“I think that’s obvious, Emmie,”
she replied in a soft voice.
But that was the problem I was having.
It wasn’t obvious.
Because this was Lucius we were talking about here, which meant obvious would have been him taking me in his arms and telling me that he wanted me.
It would have been him staying in London and being in my flat right now to show all of this to me himself.
But instead, he had gone back to Germany with his new puzzle box in hand and he’d done so without me seeing him again before he left. There had been no more funny, flirty messages between us and no more hints at seeing each other again in the future.
So, needless to say, I really didn’t know what or how to feel about this overwhelmingly grand gesture.
Only that I wanted to run into his arms and kiss him, telling him how much I appreciated everything that he had done in saving not only my life but also everything in my little world.
But then the other half of me wanted to get on a plane, fly to Germany and demand he explain himself.
Explain what was going on and why would he ever go to such lengths for securing my happiness and wellbeing.
Unless, of course, it was the biggest question of all and the most heartbreaking,
What if it wasn’t for me at all…
What if it had all been for my mother?
To say that this question plagued me would have been a huge understatement as the rest of the night I couldn’t sleep.
I would just have dreams of Lucius standing watch over me and hushing me back to sleep with a gentle touch to my face, before covering me with a blanket from fear that I would be too cold.
It was a sweet and tender side to Lucius I had never yet seen in real life and to be honest I wasn’t sure it was one he possessed.
But in my dreams, he was as tender and gentle as he was hard and stern.
He was like he had once referred to himself… my Puppet Master.
And this was no more so than in my dreams where I was powerless to stop him.
I was his willing servant to obey his every command, never stopping once to ask myself why.
Why he controlled my dreams the way he did.
Not that he would have any idea that he consumed these thoughts of mine and rendered me his willing slave in all of them. I would find myself sometimes even going to bed early just in the hope of having another one. Because in them, I don’t know, but it was like the only time that I could be free. To let myself be taken care of by someone I could trust with my life and my every decision to be made with my best interests and wellbeing in mind.
But at the very top of all these reasons there was only one constant and a truth that remained no matter what the dream world held for me.
In every single one of them…
He loved me.
Not surprisingly on that first night, I’d woken up and found myself sat at my window, first seeing my reflection in the night sky until seeing myself just slowly fading away in the morning light.
I had my phone nestled in my lap just in case, as I found myself doing every night since that first message.
I had obsessively re-read every single one trying to painstakingly decipher each of their hidden meanings and in the end finding myself with more questions than answers and almost all of them ended or started with why?
Of course, this confusion didn’t help when I opened my door the next morning before leaving for work to find I had a housewarming gift.
I had no idea who had put it there for him as I had it on good authority that he had left for Germany.
Which made me ask myself what the person he’d had deliver it must have thought? Well, it was clear he wouldn’t have given a damn what was thought of him because there I was, now staring at a box of my favorite cereal with a blood red bow tied around it.
I picked it up and read the card, unable to help myself from grinning like an idiot the second I read it.
You’re welcome
Lucius
Now, if I thought my week couldn’t have gotten any weirder then I would have been wrong.
Oh, so wrong in fact, as the first thing to happen had been much later that day, when I had arrived back home to find extra security cameras being installed in the building.
I had thought at first that Lucius might have forced the hand of the landlord who owned the building, as there were only a few flats that had been bought, like mine and Ben’s.
I had thought this was weird at first and only knew it because of overhearing some people arguing about rent and it being cheap for a reason.
Well, this time I was overhearing a strange conversation and it was between the two men that were installing the new security.
They had been talking about being paid double time for getting this stuff installed today as the owner wanted them focused mainly on the front door and on my floor.
Now, this would have been a logical reason if Lucius had made this request to the owner, but then how would that have accounted for what I heard the next day.
The day which finally ended up solving a few puzzles, one of which had been Lucius’ strange comments about the building.
Ones mentioning that ‘he had been right, she hadn’t been as independent as she first thought’.
I had just been about to leave for work yet again when I forgot my phone on the counter, so left my door slightly ajar, meaning that when I went to open it, I heard a voice coming from the staircase below.
Now, I wouldn’t have normally stopped to eavesdrop, but the second I heard that respectful greeting I had grown up hearing, well then, I froze.
“My Lord.”
As quietly as I could I opened the door a little more and placed my ear to the open gap to listen.
“I can assure you, my Lord, that I have been keeping my eye on her as we all have, but as was agreed years ago, this was only when she was to be in the building and that day she was not.”
I sucked in a sharp breath and found myself slamming the door before I heard more because I didn’t need to.
It was clear that my father had been spying on me ever since I moved in here and doing so without telling me!
I was outraged!
So, when I went to work that morning and one of my spying neighbors was still on the phone to my dad, the second he saw me he made a shitty job of pretending that he was on to his friend talking of all things, about the weather.
“Yeah, lovely weather we have been having uh… dude.”
Well, it was the only opportunity he would ever have to call my father ‘dude’ that was for damn sure.
Especially after he was going to be out of a job as my dad’s personal spy in about three seconds, because I couldn’t help myself as when I walked past I said,
“Say hi to my dad for me, as I most certainly won’t be speaking to him for a while.”
Then, just as I grabbed the front door to open it, I turned, seeing now that he had his mouth open in shock and looked as though he was trying desperately for something to say to salvage this.
Something that he soon discovered was pointless the second I said,
“Oh, and it’s raining out, genius.”
Then I let the door swing shut and by the time I got to my bus stop my phone was ringing.
I looked down at the screen knowing whose name I would see flashing up.
I answered it only the once, vowing not to do so again.
“Save it, dad, because I don’t want to hear it this time.”
Then I cut him off just as he was saying my name.
After this, I turned off my phone, something I hadn’t ever done before and definitely not now in case it was Lucius texting me.
But this time I just didn’t care.
I was seething.
So much so that it was lunch time and I still hadn’t turned it back on, something I was trying really hard not to feel guilty about.
But damn it, I was a grown woman and all this time he had been watching me as if I had been a bloody teenager he didn’t trust.
And where had it gotten him? I had still been attacked and my flat had still been broken into.
But then I started to notice something just as I was in the queue to grab a subway when it looked as though someone was watching me.
This, of course, didn’t look good for me considering what had been happening in the past week, so it went without saying that I freaked.
But then freaking out on the inside and trying to seem calm on the outside were two different things.
Because, although I could handle myself against an attacker, that advantage I might have once held over an enemy that was a little thing called ‘assumption’ was now long gone.
So, for all I knew, the two watching me across the way could have been carrying guns.
“Salad?”
The person behind the counter asked me and I nodded telling them what I wanted but still trying to keep a watchful eye over my shoulder.
But then, by the time I had been handed my bag, I still didn’t know what to do.
I would have eaten inside but it was too busy and all the tables were taken, which meant that they would know that I was on to them if I stayed inside much longer.
So, I decided that I had no choice but to try and make it back to the museum without them catching up to me, as at least there I had the security team to fall back on.
This was when I put the meatball sub in my bag and waited for the right moment which was when a group of lads all left at once.
I used this to my advantage, trying to use them to shield myself.
It worked quite well until I looked back at them and saw that the tallest of the two recognized me and nudged the other guy before nodding back at me.
Oh yeah, I was their target alright and this was when I started to really move it.
I weaved in and out of the busy street full of people, but it was when I got stuck behind some Chinese tourists that I really started to panic as this gave them a chance to gain on me.
In the end I shouted a sorry and barged my way through just before I decided to start running.
Now, seeing a woman in panic running down a street you would have thought was cause for some alarm.
But seeing someone running in London was like watching someone running for their flight in an airport.
It was one of the busiest cities in the world and a day didn’t go by when you didn’t see at least one person running to catch a bus, taxi or underground tube.
However, the hardest thing about running around the city wasn’t just trying to get through the mass of people but the busy traffic.
So, just as I ran past a Hilton hotel called the Double Tree I knew that I would need to cross over and the second I saw the lights turning red on the pedestrian crossing, I legged it.
I continued along that straight road, passing a small park and looking back in time to see them both getting caught up by the same road.
Finally, this at least gave me enough time I needed to make it to the museum as it was just continuing straight, and I would be there at the gates.
I was going to make it…
Or so I thought.
That was if a massive van hadn’t shown up and stopped directly in my path.
The doors then swung open and I quickly found myself being grabbed from behind.
I was about to cause a massive ruckus so that people would notice that a woman was being kidnapped in the middle of the street.
But this didn’t happen.
And another thing that didn’t happen was the second I made a break to get away, the move was counter blocked to prevent me from escaping.
I then noticed that four big guys all closed in around me and there was suddenly a man at my back who had covered my mouth to capture my screams for help.
They did this of course so that no one could see the woman at the center who was currently trying to fight for her life.
They had created a barrier of flesh around me so that no one would see anything but a group of guys all stood around a van.
Then, I was picked off my feet as I found myself in a bear hug by someone immensely strong meaning I had no hope of trying to escape.
Which was when the side door was slid back and I found myself gasping in panic as I found the darkness inside coming closer and closer.
I couldn’t believe that after everything I had gone through the last five days that this was how it was all going to end!
I felt so stupid! So helpless and totally moronic knowing now that I should never have switched off my phone.
That way then either Lucius or my father may have been able to track me.
And I knew that once I was inside that thing, then the chances of me getting back out of it again were slim to none.
Especially when I was put in the van and the first face I saw was one I knew.
Mr Inferno…
Dante.