Chapter 11
The iron-fist negotiator
I wake up in the morning shaken up by reality. By what was going on behind my back. By who I really am.
Yesterday, I couldn’t fully process everything. Heck, I didn’t even think about that. All my thoughts were consumed by the betrayal I felt from the people surrounding me.
But today, the present took me by surprise. And with the clothes from yesterday. I guess I forgot to change my grey sweatpants, and I slept in them.
My life before wasn’t pink either. A 25-year-old woman trying to find her calling, who’s gone from job to job because she was getting bored with each of them.
I attempted to be an author, and I’m saying that because I was struggling to write down some ideas and turn them into a full book.
I was going from one story to another without finishing them.
I also am a hardcore reader with a gigantic home library full of books bought with her fiancé’s money, but who is too tough on herself to really write a book.
Shortly, I was a walking disaster with big thoughts and dumb ideas.
I guess this explains why I chose this fucking adventure as a loophole for escaping a bad routine.
I wanted to find a story good enough to become a bestseller author.
It didn’t even cross my mind that I would find myself in a place so unknown and a magnet for trouble, even though I wished for an experience full of suspense and danger.
Somehow, the thought of being in the middle of the peril excited me, until I began to find out how naive and ignorant I could have been. The truth was hidden from me by everyone, more than I could have ever imagined. Moreover, how could I do this stupid plan with Lucas, nonetheless?
Why didn’t it scare me that I cheated on Marshall? It was probably due to my knowledge of the dangerous world in which he really worked. He’s done more damage than I have. He cheated more than I did. I only did it through a sexual act. But he… killed people. That’s not something I can overlook.
I’m not saying that Lucas did something different, but the way Marshall did it crossed the line. However similar they may seem, my soul keeps telling me the difference between the two of them is huge.
Finding out about these kinds of things, it is clear as day that the wedding we were supposed to have next spring will never happen.
Why the fuck do you even think about this event?
Moreover, I don’t know if he’ll realise I’m gone until the wedding day.
Yes, you heard it well. Sometimes, he forgot about me, but he always made amends through expansive gifts and time spent beside me.
I was usually escaping reality through the worlds of the books, imagining that I was the main character and my life was there, alongside the fantastic romanticism and the indecent scenes.
Even though I got my own amazing indecency beside him, I’m now scared when thinking I could’ve easily ended up like the girls in the photos.
Especially because of what he sometimes did to me.
I shiver at this thought. No, there was no physical violence, but the sexual experiences were… something else entirely.
God, I don’t even get why I saw that life as being perfect.
It was more defective than I could’ve known.
My love for him only blinded my logical thoughts.
There were always signs that something was not right with that man, but I was too absorbed in the books’ reality to realise what was going on around me.
A sound gets my attention from my memories. I see the main door open and an unknown staff member enter with the cart full of food. I freeze, and the panic takes over me. I don’t even manage to process the fact that he is talking to me. My mind goes to the darkest of places.
Well, if he isn’t dead, then why is this person here?
He takes the food to the other room and steps out of the apartment, led by Lucas. After the door closes, I manage to calm down a bit and inhale some air. I didn’t even realise that I was holding my breath.
Lucas comes in front of me and takes my hand to escort me to the living room. I sit down and stay there, trying to breathe normally and slow down my heart rate. Lucas disappears for a moment and returns with a known device in one hand. It is the one who fried the bomb that was attached to Blake.
When he pushes aside the lids covering the food and tests them, I realise how vital that device is for our lives.
“Everything’s fine,” he sighs and exhales.
So I’m not the only one panicking and paranoid. He just knows how to keep his emotions in check. He looks so calm and relaxed, probably because of what he does for a living.
I take a mental note to find out more about that, but first, I need to eat and think where Blake might be.
?
We ate in complete silence. We neither spoke nor took our gaze off our food plates. Each of us was caught in their thoughts, and at least mine went to the dark side.
After seeing his lost gaze, I realise that in his head, it is worse. I read so many feelings at once in his emerald eyes that I feel he is still hiding a lot of things from me. I tilt my head in the direction of the safe room because I can’t wait any longer.
“Tell me,” I say after closing the door behind us. “I want to know everything. Now!”
“Anmara…”
“Don’t Anmara me! I am sick of this brain fog and how much time I didn’t know anything about you,” I growl, beginning to get very angry.
“I can’t tell you everything,” he sighs. “And don’t interrupt me," he says when I want to say something, making me frown. “I will tell you as much as I can, but you need to promise me you will shut up and listen.”
I remain quiet, my anger damaging my insides, but the curiosity lets me keep it captive for now. I nod, crossing my arms and directing all my attention towards him. He can't look me in the eyes when he starts talking.
“Blake. One year after that incident, when he turned 18, he decided to look for us.
His grandparents had enough money, so they were a big help when hiring some private investigators to find us.
Their searches lasted quite long. It was hard catching some people attached to a…
criminal," he says, finally catching my gaze.
“After one year, they found Paul, but that is because he was already on his journey around the world, and it was easier. We were regularly changing our whereabouts, so it didn’t help that Paul knew our last location.
After another year of wasted money, the detectives found something about me and told Blake they didn’t wanna deal with such a case. ”
I think I know where this story is gonna go, but I keep my mouth shut and let him continue.
“They gave Blake all the information they found and broke the contract they had, because the people close to them were already threatened. He then decided to try to find me all by himself with what he had on me, but it didn’t go well," he says, putting his lips in a straight, agitated line, coming closer to my theory.
It would make so much sense…
“The night you turned 18, Cathal’s people found him and took him by force from the front of our old house," he says, making me shiver, scared of how right I was.
Shit.
“The second day, without knowing who Blake was, Cathal made me find out why he was spying on us. Imagine the surprise of seeing my brother after such a long time, but also the terror of finding him in that place. Blake was in tears when I saw him. He kept telling that he was sorry and that he wanted to get back, that you will hate him forever for what he did to you, but Cathal didn’t care.
I explained to him who Blake really was and that such torture was not necessary.
He then decided to leave him be, under one condition. ”
“To work for him,” I say in a soft voice, my teared-up eyes avoiding Lucas’s gaze.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “He started going to the gym before he was even 16.
He found it interesting, and he made a job from this in the year Cathal kidnapped him.
He became a personal trainer, but I think you know that already," he says, and I nod my head.
“Well, Cathal found out about this and used Blake as his enforcer.
The iron-fist negotiator, the one who could take down anyone in seconds," he says, making me meet his gaze.
“We worked together, and we came up with a plan to escape Cathal’s empire, but it failed miserably.
Bottom line, we wanted to get out of the toxic environment we were in, even though we fit right in.
He went away one year ago, running from one place to another until he reached Tamwine, a fact that helped us when we created the plan to find Paul.
We secretly kept in touch, but Cathal was too caught up in his business to see that one of his men was gone.
I was the one helping him lately. I was his right hand, so he didn’t really need Blake.
Maybe he knew, but he didn’t care that much. ”
“Then why did he threaten me? How did he find out about my existence?”
Lucas sighs once again, but when he speaks, he leaves me speechless.
“Blake followed you from afar. He was scared for you. He didn’t want you to do anything stupid and try again to…
take your own life,” Lucas gulps. “He used Cathal’s people to do that.
He probably found out, and he kept in touch with the existence of the girl who was being tracked by one of his employees. ”
“Since when?”
It may appear as a stupid question, but when I think about the fact that I was being supervised without my knowledge… it doesn’t make me feel so good.
“About a week after he was captured. For seven years. He wanted to start earlier, but he had a training that he barely slept through. I didn’t even see him that week, but then…
he looked exactly like a killing machine with his veins almost exploding from how tense all of the muscles in his body were.
And that turned out to be very useful for Cathal.
From the very first day. You’ll find out more from Blake when we find him.
He got his walls up, and even though we were close, he didn’t really speak his mind.
I know that he is more than capable of defending himself, but I don’t know what to say about Cathal’s people,” Lucas says.
“I know we have to go search for him, but we first need a way to get out of this hotel, not through the reception. I won’t go again with a bad plan from this point forward," he says and stops speaking.
We don’t know what to say next, so there are a couple of moments of silence from both of us. I feel like I already found out too much anyway.
Suddenly, I remember something, and the light at the end of the tunnel seems closer than I thought.
Literally speaking.
The fog of the moment clears, and then only the hope of finding Blake alive remains and that my bloody thoughts won’t materialise.
“I think I have an idea,” I smile softly in Lucas’s direction. “Come with me.”
I go to the other room to search for the hidden key from my closet, which I find and quickly hide in the back pocket of my pants.
?
“I don’t know where you’re taking me, but this gloomy basement takes my mind elsewhere.”
The truth is that it is darker than I remember. The lights are way dimmer. There are dense spiderwebs everywhere you look. When we reach the door I was interested in, its broken lock catches my eye. That and the fact that it is open.
“This is not a good sign,” Lucas says, and I agree with him.
I take the courage from inside of me and try to put myself into the skin of the characters from my books, who always succeeded in escaping danger through magical miracles.
Maybe this is not the case for magic, but I feel like I need the heroes’ state of mind to fight the reality that overwhelms me.
Even if I have to borrow it from fictional worlds.
I push the door with a horrible creak, and I am praying in my mind not to wake up a sleepy spirit. I don’t wish for my life to become a horror movie. Everything already seems like a piece of a thriller, and that’s enough.
Inside is the same pale light, maybe even darker. Lucas takes my hand and squeezes it a little, giving me a piece of his strength. I walk beside him after closing the door as quietly as we can, trying not to make so much noise because of its rusty hinges.
Our steps take us through the dark tunnel. I then stop when I hear a strange noise capturing the atmosphere. The hand from Lucas’s hold tightens due to the panic.
I hope I just imagined that sound, and I won’t see in front of me a madman with an axe in one hand, ready to kill us.
That sound is getting closer, and I tremble right when a goddamn rat runs by us. I silently swear and let his hand breathe, the hand that did some miracles…
Okay, now it’s neither the time nor the place to think about the fact that he satisfied me with the hand I was holding, so I push aside my memories and concentrate on walking.
After one turn, I see the shadow of a squatted person, who looks in pain while trying to get up. We exchange gazes, thinking about the same things, and we fasten our steps towards that person.
Unfortunately, but also fortunately, our presumptions were true.
“Oh my God, Blake,” I whisper, dropping on my knees beside him.
His eyes are more scared than I expected them to be, and as lost as they were ten years ago. He moves his gaze to Lucas, looking at him with far more terror. He starts to shake, one hand on his abdomen, where I then see too much blood seeping through his fingers.
“She’s not safe,” he tells Lucas, and I watch him lose his conscience.
We both get his body right before it can hit the ground.