19. Rick
Rick
For the next month, I lived in a hell of my own making.
The board of directors and the family’s legal team had sat me down in a windowless conference room and laid it out for me in cold, clinical terms. As the new CEO of Mylonas Marketing, my every move was under a microscope.
Dating a direct subordinate—especially one I had just handed a major promotion, a significant raise, and the crown jewel of our active accounts—was a massive liability.
They warned me that the remaining shareholders could frame it as nepotism, or worse, use it to challenge my father’s will and fracture the transition of power.
So I did what I thought I had to do to protect her career and my family’s legacy. I backed off.
I kept my distance in the office, treating Sofia with a rigid, professional detachment that tore me apart every single day.
I saw the confusion and the quiet hurt in her eyes whenever our paths crossed, but I forced myself to look away.
I threw myself into the brutal logistics of running the firm, trying to figure out a way to restructure the corporate charter without burning my own life’s work in California to the ground.
I’d talked to Joe briefly about him buying me out, and we were looking over legal possibilities.
Nothing was set in stone yet, but Joe was not only open to the idea, he was actively pursuing the possibility of taking over.
By the time the early autumn air sharpened into a biting, bitter cold, the space between me and Sofia felt like an ocean.
According to the local weather reports, we were scheduled to get our first major snowfall of the season, weeks earlier than usual. A massive mountain system was rolling fast over the foothills, threatening to dump several inches of heavy, wet snow on Golden before nightfall.
Right around two in the afternoon, the sky turned a bruised slate gray, and the first thick flakes began to swirl aggressively outside my office window.
I knew Sofia had a mid-day progress meeting scheduled down at Clear Creek Brewery to finalize the user interface layout for the app.
I watched from the hallway as she gathered her tablet and her coat.
She didn’t look back as she headed for the elevators.
By four o’clock, the storm had escalated into a full-blown whiteout.
The wind was howling against the glass, and the roads down below the building were covered in a treacherous, icy slush.
Sofia had grown up in Colorado. She knew how to handle the roads in conditions like this. But that didn’t stop me from worrying. Seeing how bad it was outside, I decided to send everyone home an hour early.
My chest felt tight, a relentless, gnawing worry clawing at my gut. Sofia should have been back by now. The brewery was only a ten-minute drive under normal conditions.
I pulled out my personal phone and dialed her number. It rang until it went to voicemail.
“Come on, Sofia. Pick up,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck as I called again, then sent an urgent text message.
I waited ten minutes and tried again. Still nothing. The fourth consecutive call went straight to her greeting. I didn’t care about the corporate look any longer. I didn’t care about what the board members were telling me.
I grabbed my heavy winter coat, bypassed Elizabeth’s empty desk, and took the elevator down to the garage.
The drive through Golden was slow. The Audi’s all-wheel drive fought for traction against the accumulating snow as I navigated the blinding, white sheets of the storm. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs the entire way to the brewery.
When I finally pulled into the parking lot of Clear Creek Brewery, my breath hitched.
There, sitting under a thick, undisturbed blanket of fresh snow near the edge of the property, sat her car.
I threw the Audi into park, killed the engine, and sprinted through the freezing wind toward the heavy timber entrance of the brewery. The warmth of the taproom hit me, but the relaxed atmosphere inside did nothing to calm the panic surging through my veins.
I strode straight to the main desk, where Marcus was chatting with a woman holding a cup of coffee.
“Where’s Sofia?” I demanded, my voice cutting through the ambient noise of the room, sharp and breathless.
Marcus looked up, startled by the intensity in my eyes. “Rick? Hey. Sofia left quite a while ago.”
“What do you mean she left?” I asked, my hands gripping the edge of the bar. “Her car is still sitting out in the parking lot.”
He checked his watch, his brow furrowing with sudden concern. “She left shortly after our meeting ended. That was almost an hour ago.”
Sheer panic overcame me.
Marcus grabbed his phone and punched the screen, his voice clipping with authority. “Hey, George, can you pull up the cameras for the north parking lot? We’re heading your way.” He motioned for me to follow him.
Marcus led the way down the back hallway toward the brewery’s administrative offices. My boots slammed against the concrete floor as we rushed. My heart was pounding so hard that I could hear the pulse roaring in my ears.
We burst into the security monitor room a few seconds later. A guard, no doubt George, whom Marcus was still on the phone with, was already hovering over the console, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
“I’m pulling up the feed from forty-five minutes ago, Mr. Lorence, when Miss Ferreira checked out with security.” The guard shifted the view to the camera overlooking the snow-covered side path that led to the parking lot.
My eyes locked onto the glowing screen. Through the swirling white flakes, I saw her. Sofia was bundled in her heavy winter coat, her head down against the wind.
Then a figure stepped out from a blind spot, blocking her. It was obviously a man, since he towered over Sofia.
Leonard. The name screamed through my head like warning bells. I had left Sofia entirely unprotected because I was too busy listening to a room full of lawyers and board members.
The man was wearing a dark, heavy jacket, his hood pulled completely over his face, obscuring his features.
Sofia jumped back, her posture instantly turning defensive.
Even through the grainy, snow-blurred footage, I could see the terror in her body language.
She reached for her pocket—likely she was trying to grab her phone—but the man lunged forward and shoved something in her ribs. A gun?
He caught her roughly by the arm. I watched Sofia twist, fighting against his grip, but he was larger, and he used his weight to overpower her. He dragged her backwards toward a heavy, black metal door.
“That’s an old maintenance entrance to the original bottling warehouse,” George added. “It’s mostly used for storage now.”
“Go to the next camera inside that corridor!” I roared, slamming my hand onto the back of the guard’s chair.
“There are no cameras inside that wing, sir,” the guard stammered, his face turning pale. “That section of the old warehouse is locked up tight and a blind spot. The cameras only cover the parking lots, main production floor, and the office spaces.”
“The old bottling building,” Marcus said, his eyes snapping to mine, filled with grim urgency. “It’s completely unheated and mostly used for overflow crate storage. The locks on that side door are supposed to be secure, but if he got his hands on an old maintenance fob…”
“He could have learned about all the blind spots from the blue prints when he worked on this account,” I growled, the realization hitting me like a physical blow.
“I’m calling the police,” Marcus said, pulling his cell phone out as we sprinted out of the security room.
“I’ll lock down the perimeter gates, so he can’t get out,” George called after us.
“I’m going after her,” I threw back over my shoulder, already tearing down the hallway toward the exit.
The freezing wind hit me like a slap as Marcus and I burst through the doors into the blizzard at the same time.
Instead of the cold, all I felt was a blinding, primitive need to get to her.
Marcus was right at my heels. I could hear him relaying the details to the police on the phone.
My boots crunched in the fresh snow as we rounded the corner of the brick building, heading straight for the dark metal door where Sofia had disappeared into the dark with a very dangerous man.
All because I had chosen to listen to a board of directors instead of my heart.
When I found her, I knew that there was no way I was going to let someone take her away from me again.
We reached the heavy metal doors. Just outside, I noticed a slight sound and bent down to pick up Sofia’s bag and cell phone, which were buried under the fresh snow.
“Shit,” Marcus said behind me.
I grabbed the handle of the door and slammed my weight against it. To my surprise, it gave way with a harsh, clicking rattle. The electronic strike plate had been destroyed. Leonard had planned this.
No doubt he’d been lying in wait for Sofia to get out of a meeting, knowing she would have to periodically check in with Marcus and his team for updates.
We burst into the freezing, cavernous gloom of the old bottling warehouse.
The air inside was completely foul, smelling of old dust, damp concrete, and stagnant water.
Shadows stretched deep into the massive, high-ceilinged space, where rows of towering, rusted industrial shelves held pallets of empty glass bottles and plastic crates.
“Sofia?” I called out, then listened as her name echoed in the darkness back at me.
“The main breaker is down that way, but the wiring in this section hasn’t been updated in years, not since we bought the place from the last manufacturer.
” Marcus’s voice echoed hollowly against the metal rafters.
He slapped a row of wall switches, but only a single, buzzing fluorescent bulb flickered to life way down the central aisle, casting eerie, geometric shadows.
“We need to split up,” I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous-sounding low. The adrenaline was pumping so hard, my hands were vibrating. “Take the left side. I’ll take the right. Use your phone’s flashlight.”
“Be careful. If it is Leonard, he’s desperate,” Marcus warned, clicking on his flashlight.
I pulled out my own phone and flicked on the beam. The white light pierced the darkness, cutting through the freezing air as I moved deep into the maze of pallets and old machines.
My breath came out in puffs as I rushed down several aisles, almost getting lost.
Every crunch of my boots on the gritty concrete felt entirely too loud. My eyes darted to every dark corner, every gap between the crates.
“Sofia. Sofia,” Marcus and I called out over and over. Where was she?
“Rick! I’ve got fresh boot prints over here!” Marcus’s voice echoed from a few aisles over. “And a smaller set. They’re heading toward—oof!”
A sudden, sickeningly wet thud cut Marcus off, followed immediately by a heavy, breathless grunt and the sharp clatter of his phone spinning across the concrete floor.
“Marcus!” I shouted, turning on my heel.
I didn’t care what was ahead, I charged through a gap in the heavy shelving, my phone light bouncing wildly against the walls as I sprinted toward the last sound I’d heard. I rounded the corner into the aisle, my light cutting across the floor until it washed over a horrifying scene.
Marcus was slumped against the base of a rusted support beam, his phone’s flashlight hitting a trail from a boot print leading into the dark. A thick, dark stream of blood was already leaking from a jagged gash near Marcus’ temple. His eyes were closed but, thankfully, he let out a low groan.
I knelt beside him. “Are you okay?” I whispered as I scanned the area.
“Yeah, he jumped me,” he said shaking his head.
“Stay put, call the police again,” I said as I swept my light upward, my heart hammering violently against my ribs as the beam illuminated the vast, shadowy expanse of the abandoned boiler room just ahead.
“Leonard!” I roared, the sound tearing from my throat, raw and lethal. I stepped past Marcus, holding the phone steady, letting the white light cut deep into the shadows. “This isn’t going to end well for you! Let Sofia go!”
For a long, agonizing beat, the only sound was the howling wind rattling the corrugated metal roof far above us.
Then a harsh, erratic laugh echoed from behind a massive, rusted copper tank twenty feet away.
“It already hasn’t ended well for me, Mylonas!
” Leonard’s voice barked out of the darkness.
It was unhinged, laced with a terrifying, breathless tremor.
A shadow shifted, and the light caught the edge of his dark jacket.
“She took everything away from me! My career, my reputation, my account! She has to pay for what she did. You both do!”