8. Stefano
The business trip was longer than I would have liked because any time away from Lia drives me a little crazy. I need to be with her. She is the moon to my sun, the stars in my darkness. She is everything to me and I need her.
This trip was especially exhausting as I had to spend a very long three days extracting information from someone stronger than I at first gave them credit for.
Of course, they always cave in the end. They all spill their secrets just to feel the sweet relief of death. I can keep a man alive for weeks if I need to. After years of being in my line of work, you learn where to cut for pain and not death.
But extracting information takes energy from me.
At least when I am home, I can lay in Amelia's arms at night and forget about that part of my life; just looking into her eyes all I see is love and hope and good.
Without her, I have no way of recharging my soul.
I arrive home early in the morning after a very long flight on my private jet. I head inside, hoping she might even be here to welcome me home.
I can't wait to see her.
Oddly, for the last two days, she has not been replying to my messages or answering her phone. I don't understand and it's bothering me to no end.
But at some point, I decided she was playing a game with me, a buildup of sorts, and that when I walked into my house, she would be here to shout surprise and jump into my arms.
But she isn't.
I walk quickly up to my room and flick the shower on, noting that her face cream is not on the basin counter, and her vanilla-scented shampoo is not in the shower.
She must have taken it home to use while I was away.
I shower in a hurry, just trying to wash away the groggy feeling of the long flight and wanting to feel fresh for when I do find out where she is.
I have this weird sensation of excitement and anxiety.
Excitement to see her, but the confusion of why I couldn't get hold of her was starting to get to me.
With a fresh suit on I feel more awake and ready for the day. Once Lia is back in my arms, I'll feel like myself again. Until then I just feel like a huge piece of me is missing.
I head downstairs to ask the housekeeper if Amelia has been here at all since I was gone, and she tells me that she has. A few days ago. She didn't stay the night, she just came and left.
I thought she might come and stay a night or two. My home is her home after all.
Perhaps she came to fetch something.
I clench and unclench my jaw as the frustration thickens.
If I remember correctly then today is the day she has a morning shift at the deli.
Before leaving I make a quick stop at my home office to put the files from this past business trip into the locked cabinet. I have a strict policy to keep information safe, so I have to lock this away before I leave.
I shove them into their hanging folder in the steel cabinet and slam the drawer shut, locking it.
Then turn away, but something on my desk catches my eye.
A ring.
Not just any ring.
The ring.
The ring I proposed to Amelia with just before I left.
What is it doing on the table in my office?
My stomach knots as I reach for it.
I pick it up and anxiety floods through me. What the fuck is going on?
Did she leave it here by mistake? But why in my office? What was she doing in my office? No, this wasn't a mistake.
I pull my phone out of my pocket again and dial her number again. The line seems to be dead; it doesn't even ring. Panic grows. Something must have happened to her. But that doesn't explain why the ring is here in my office.
I can't take this; I have to go and find her right now.
Running downstairs with the engagement ring gripped in my hand I climb into my Mustang. Revving loudly, I pull out with a squeal of tires and the smell of burnt rubber.
I head straight for the deli.
I don't care if I promised not to go inside. Something is going on and there is no fucking way I am going to sit in my car waiting to find out.
I push through the deli doors with a loud thud and stride inside like a tidal wave.
I grab the guy standing near the wall. He's wearing the same apron Lia wears, so I know he works here.
"Where is Amelia?" I demand to know, my fingers twisted around the collar of his shirt.
"I - I - I don't know." He stammers with his eyes so wide they look like they are about to bulge out of his skull.
"Don't fucking lie to me, boy. Tell me where the fuck she is." I am past the point of games and patience. All I have right now is anger.
"She hasn't been at work in a few days already. I swear. I don't know where she is." He squeals.
I push him to the floor and glare at the woman behind the counter.
"Do you know where Amelia is?" I say with my voice low and menacing.
"She quit." The lady says quickly.
"Why?"
"I don't know." She looks terrified, with tears glistening in her wide eyes.
I spin around and head back to my car. I will go straight to her house then. She has to be home if she isn't here. None of this makes sense.
I drive like the devil himself is chasing me and arrive at the door of her father's mansion in an absolute rage. Someone, somehow, is making a fool out of me.
I push the door open, and three security guards run towards me. I tilt my head and draw my gun.
Her father walks into the entrance hall.
"Stefano Amalfi." He says politely, waving his hand towards the security team to tell them to stand down. Good decision because I would have shot every one of them in the head before they could blink.
"I want to see Amelia. Now."
"She isn't here."
"Don't fucking lie to me. Get her down here now."
"I promise you she isn't here." Her father stands his ground.
I glare at him. "Well, then I suggest you start talking and tell me exactly where she is."
Her father takes a nervous breath.
"Amelia wants nothing to do with you anymore, Stefano. She met someone else, and they are in love. She has gone away with him. I don't know where they went. She wanted to keep it a secret."
"Bullshit."
There is no way that Amelia left me. We are in love. We're going to get married. All that time we've spent together. I know it was real. I felt it. There is no way she's left me.
"Where the fuck is she?" I scream, feeling the veins on my neck throbbing.
"Stefano, Amelia has made her choice. I wasn't happy to have her leave, but she made her choice. I don't know where my daughter is, and I have no way of contacting her. She made this choice." His eyes are full of fear and defiance. But in them, I see no lies. I see a father who looks like he is saddened to have lost his daughter's company.
I shake my head, my finger playing across the trigger of my gun.
"She chose another man?" I ask in disbelief.
"She did."
"When?"
"Two days ago."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"Fuck." I scream.
I can't take this. I don't understand what the fuck is happening. It's like I came home to a nightmare. Why didn't I send one of my guards over to her house the moment she didn't answer my calls? Why didn't I think ahead, so that I could stop her from doing this?
I storm out of her father's house before I shoot him in the head out of sheer blind anger.
I am livid. I am fuming and raging and storming inside.
I am broken and torn and shattered.
It feels as though someone has dug their sharp bony claws into my chest and ripped my heart out.
I remember that day, years ago, in another life when I vowed never to love anyone again.
I remember the pain I felt then - and the pain I feel now.
I called her phone three more times on my way home, but the line has definitely been disconnected.
At home, I call my head of security and a private detective.
I won't leave this alone. She has to talk to me. She has to answer me.
I have to see her no matter what.
I want them to start looking for her right now. Because I will find her. I will find her, and I will have her back with me. She is not leaving me. She is not disappearing with another man. I am the only man for her.
She belongs to me.
I'll get her back and lock her inside my mansion. Whatever choice she made to leave me was a mistake that she will forget about, and she will fall in love with me again.
For weeks my team searches and I push them, day and night, hiring more and more people, but I find nothing. Not a trace of her or this man she ran away with.
It's as though she has disappeared into thin air -- a whisper in a breeze that I can't hear well enough to follow.
I lay awake at night questioning everything.
I don't know if any of it was real for her. Why did she lead me on and taunt me like that? Why did she make me believe in love again only to rip it away from me?
More weeks go by and that is when the rumors begin to reach me.
She is going to be married. She is pregnant. She is going to have his baby.
Someone tells me she is happy.
Someone tells me she looks healthy and beautiful.
No one can tell me where she is, where the wedding is, or who the man is.
I am going crazy with pain.
As time goes on, I have to learn to push the pain aside, and to survive the torment eating away at my soul I turn the pain into anger. Numb, deep hatred.
I begin to hate her. I hate her and her new husband, her unborn child, and her entire family.
My phone rings and I lean forward in my office chair to pick it up off the desk; it is sitting in exactly the same spot where she left her engagement ring for me to find all those weeks ago.
I snarl as I lift the phone -- feeling the weight of the engagement ring on the chain around my neck.
"What?"
"Sir, everyone is talking about the wedding and her baby, but I can't find a single fucking thing about where she is."
"Call it off. I'm done looking. She made her choice." The words that come out of my mouth cut into my own heart like a self-inflicted stab wound.
"You want to stop?"
"Yes. Stop the search. She will have to deal with the consequences of not being found."
"What consequences sir?"
"Revenge. I will make them all suffer. She, her family, her husband, her child. I will take my revenge on all of them."