Chapter Twenty-Two
Linden
“So, what were the results?” I ask Merrill before she can force me out the door.
It’s been a week since the last bullshit mandatory grandparent visit, and I’m no happier today than I was last time. At least I could spend the day mentally preparing, though. Attempting anyway.
Her mouth purses in that way she does when she’s forced to interact with me. “Avery’s blood was perfectly normal. No negative indicators.”
“Good.”
“Little Avery is a perfect specimen; you should feel very lucky,” she says, just as she closes the door in my face.
What the fuck? The perfect specimen?
She acts as if she did me a favor by getting knocked up by her son. As if it hasn’t been the most traumatizing few years of my life.
She’s right though; Avery is perfect. She makes my life worth living.
The way Merrill said it rubs me the wrong way though, and I find it hard to leave once I’m sitting in my car.
If I go home, I’ll just sit in silence for 90 minutes before it’s time to turn around and come back.
Jack’s been avoiding me since I deflowered him last week, but I don’t blame him. He doesn’t do emotions, so he definitely doesn’t want to get attached.
He might be able to stay objective when sex gets involved, but I certainly can’t.
I don’t know what possessed me to fuck him in the first place.
No, that’s not true. His unending kindness to me and my daughter is what had me stripping my clothes off for him.
Part of me is embarrassed, but I’m a grown adult. If I want to have meaningless sex with my hot neighbor, then who cares.
Pfft. Can’t even lie to myself about that one.
It wasn’t meaningless, but I need to get my head on straight. The road to happiness leads straight out of Twinflower, and that means away from Jack. As soon as I can get things in order, we’re out of here.
I’m just not sure how long that will take.
I hold my phone up to my ear, playing the recording that I took last week before I barged into the mansion. I have the entire confession of Merrill taking Avery’s blood without my consent.
It won’t solve much, but I hope it at least gives me a little bit of ground back in case the Scotts attempt anything shady involving custody again.
You can’t trust them.
My thoughts go back to Jack, as they do quite regularly these days, but I still can’t get his warning out of my head.
Why would he be so adamant to warn me about them if he didn’t know them personally?
I glance around the front lawn, searching for the security guards that cover the expansive property.
They all seem to be wearing black pants and black-collared shirts, nothing crazy. Definitely no masks though.
It has been a while since I’ve seen my masked man; maybe it was a fluke.
My masked man. What the hell is wrong with me?
Still, as the sun dips below the horizon and shadows fill the courtyard, I look for him. I search the corners that no one is supposed to see, along the towering brick walls where the rose bushes grow.
Just as I nearly resign, with my hand already holding the lever for my seat to recline so I can attempt to relax for the final 45 minutes of this visit… I see it.
A shadow in a second-floor window that moves against the light of the setting sun. Nothing else indicates that this is what I’ve been waiting for, but my legs are moving across the driveway with conviction.
I only take pause when I encounter the verified security guard standing at the side door to the mansion.
“Hi, I’m waiting for my daughter’s visit with her grandparents to be over, but I need to use the restroom.”
He stares at me with boredom. He’s armed like they all are. I never questioned why the Scotts have so much armed security until I noticed the assassin-looking one lurking throughout the house.
If my daughter is in this house, then I want to know what she needs protected from.
“You’re not on the authorized guest list.”
Of course I’m not. “My daughter is, though, and I’m sure you can understand that a 3-year-old can’t drive herself here. I just need to go to the bathroom while I wait for her.”
His gaze flickers back and forth with uncertainty.
“Please. I ate my dinner too fast trying to get her here on time, and my stomach is killing me. I don’t want to puke in Merrill’s rose bushes.”
I actually wish I could. To spite her would thrill me.
“Sure, go ahead.” He opens the door for me, letting me pass through, and I start walking toward the stairs with confidence before he has a chance to question it. I know where the closest bathroom is, and it doesn’t involve stairs.
Once I’m up the two flights and standing on the landing all by myself, my confidence disappears. Now what?
“Where are you?” I whisper to myself. If there is any chance that it is Jack… I just want to know.
So I can quiet the delusions in my head.
I start down the hallway to the room where I saw the shadow pass by, and quickly realize that I’m going in the direction of Edmund’s office.
There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in this wing of the building, but I can hear Edmund talking on the phone in French.
My steps are silent across the plush carpet as I peek through his open door. He’s on the phone, but that’s not all…
He’s tapping a tiny straw onto a square of glass.
Surely, he’s not..?
He brings it to his nose and sniffs a long line of white powder.
My jaw hits the floor. Is he doing cocaine while my daughter is in the house?
With my teeth clenched to control my breathing, I snag my phone out of my back pocket, pulling up the camera to record him.
Within 12 seconds, I have footage of him doing a second line.
He moves out of my view, and I take a small step to the side to get a better angle, but my toe bumps the leg of the console table that’s tucked against the wall. The decorative bowl of black rocks on top jostles just enough to make me freeze.
“Hold on,” I hear Edmund say in English to whoever he’s speaking to.
Air whooshes out of my lungs as my body is ripped out of the hallway and into a pitch-black room. Any noise from my mouth is muffled by a large hand, barely leaving me enough room to breathe through my nose.
I blink against the dark, but I can’t make anything out. I can hear Edmund in the hallway, opening and closing doors.
Suddenly, the door two feet from me is thrown open, but my body is moved again without my consent, being shoved deeper into the shadows behind the door.
I’m suffocating, barely able to get enough oxygen in my lungs to keep from passing out when the door shuts again, and the blackness returns.
The hand over my mouth eases, letting me breathe easier but staying in place, and the steel cable around my waist loosens slightly. Only then can I fully register the solid wall of muscle pressed against my back.
The room is filled with nothing but the sounds of my own frantic breathing.
This is my fault. I should have known that this shadowy figure wasn’t some guardian angel over me, and could actually do me significant harm.
Faster than lightning, my shoulders hit the wall with a crack, and the figure behind me is looming in front of me instead.
I thought the room was dark before, but now all I see is blackness towering above me.
The hand stays clamped over my mouth, concealing my whimpers of terror, as the dimensions of my mystery come into focus. It isn’t clear, just the oval cutout of his mask that exposes his skin around his eyes.
It’s too dark to see the color of his eyes, but this can’t be Jack. I would never be afraid of him.
Right now, I’m fucking terrified. My entire body is trembling against his still one.
Jack wouldn’t want me to be scared; I know it.
The soft material covering his nose drags the length of my jaw, and a shudder rolls over me.
I was wrong. This isn’t Jack. This isn’t Jack.
But my body ignites like it is. Heat pools in my belly as his hand skims up my side and I fight the feeling.
This is so fucking wrong.
The glove-covered hand disappears, and a bare one wraps around my throat in its place, making me gasp. I know he feels every labored breath being forced in and out of my lungs.
His hand inches even higher, holding my jaw taut. He knows that I’m too afraid to scream, or maybe he knows that I was up to no good and screaming would only give me away.
But as his pointer finger traces my trembling lips, I’m tempted to bite it. And as if he senses it, his finger pushes inside, tempting me by hooking my lower teeth.
My top teeth sink into his flesh without causing any real damage, and his head quirks in amusement.
I only know because his eye cutout shifts slightly in front of me. He leans in closer, enough that our mouths would nearly brush if it weren’t for his mask.
It covers everything but his eyes. I don’t know how he can breathe.
He doesn’t seem at all affected by the lack of light and oxygen in the room.
That’s because I am not a threat to him and whatever he is trying to do here. He is the threat.
His finger slips from between my lips, and shame fills me when the tip releases with a pop.
His mask-covered mouth rubs over mine, and the warmth of him spreads through me just before he spins me so fast my hands fly out and splat against the wall. I hardly stop in time from smacking my face.
Large hands roam down my body, and I struggle for breath against the musty wallpaper. When they linger around my ankles, I’m bracing for depravity, for him to force my feet apart so he can spread my legs farther.
But then those hands disappear, and there’s a flash of light in the doorway before all is black again.
I gasp for breath for what feels like several minutes before I’m brave enough to turn around and check my surroundings.
He’s gone. I can tell because the air is different in the room.
When I take a small, hesitant step away from the wall, my foot catches, tripping me into the door.
He knotted my shoelaces. Motherfuck.
I rip the bunny ears apart and duck out of the room with less care about whether someone sees me. In fact, I would like someone else in this giant mansion to know where to find my body if I come up missing.
I race down the stairs and back to the side door where the guard is already eyeing me warily through the window.
“Sorry, it was coming out both ends.” I cringe at my outlandish statement and keep trucking towards my car without making eye contact.
No one chases me down, and as far as I can tell, no one noticed I was snooping.
I glance towards the security guards again, and I observe the same thing that I’ve noticed before. All black uniforms. Firearms on their hips. No gloves. No mask.
So who is the one inside?
And why didn’t he alert Edmund that I was spying?
I’m still breathing heavily, my shaking hands gripped on my steering wheel, when the front door to the house opens, and Avery comes running outside.
“Hi, Mommy!” Avery squeals as she leaps into my arms.
“Hi, baby,” I murmur against her hair, squeezing her until she grunts.
“Dear Lord, Linden. You look a mess. Were you sleeping in your car?” Merrill scoffs.
“No.”
“Fix your hair. You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she quips distastefully, turning on her heel without even saying bye to Avery.
I pull out my phone after I get Avery buckled and play the video I took before I get behind the wheel.
13 seconds of Edmund in his office, and then the entire thing goes blurry just before my thumb slipped off the record button. There isn’t even a slight frame where the masked man makes himself visible…
Maybe he was a ghost.