EPOV
The next few hours were a fucking misery. I didn't know where she'd gone, but I had all of my men looking for her. The two at the Benbrook warehouse had been so thoroughly interrogated that I'd almost broken them. They'd done nothing but obey orders, and yet I blamed them for letting her leave without contacting me first. I was pissed that she'd let those men go free, presumably letting them walk away without facing consequences. I blamed Eli for not warning me of what she was planning, for not having the courtesy to tell me my fucking wife was packing her fucking bags while I sat in my father's fucking office. I blamed Carlisle for being unmoving in his decision, for being unable to choose to believe my wife when she swore that these were loyal men. I blamed my wife for being headstrong and not listening to reason, for thinking that she knew better than me and her father-in-law.
Most of all, I blamed myself. God, I'd spiraled into a never ending cycle of self loathing and blame. I knew it was past time to force my father to retire. He couldn't have me act like a show pony, but still be expected to answer to him. The very fact that he'd threatened my wife, my equal, had me not speaking to him, but even more so, I'd shut him out. I'd issued a company- and family-wide order that he was not in his right mind, and was not to be obeyed. My word was law, and the first man to cross me would be shot on sight, no questions asked.
I had moles in the Volturi family's operations looking for information. I didn't think she was pissed enough to be disloyal, but I never thought she'd truly leave me, either. As a last resort, I had men checking the safe houses we had stashed around the city and further out into the more rural areas. I hadn't slept, hadn't eaten, in the past twelve hours. I was subsisting on coffee; pot after pot of coffee. I couldn't close my eyes without seeing Bella and her captivating brown eyes, her flowing chestnut hair wrapped around us as we embraced. All I wanted was to hold her again.
The phone in my hand rang, startling the shit out of me. “Yes,” I answered it, my voice gruff from hours of shouting.
“We got something at a safe house, boss.”
“Bella?” I questioned, suddenly terrified of the answer.
“No. Newton with a third eye.”
If Emmett wasn't cowering on the other end of the line with the amount of expletives I was shouting in his ear, then he had bigger balls than me. When I finished, he continued calmly.
“There are signs that she was here, like a towel hanging up, and her hairbrush on the counter in the master bathroom. I checked the stash, and two handguns are missing; the Sig Sauer P238 and a .45.”
Bella's preferred weapon was a Sig, so I had hope. “What size hole in Newton's head?”
“Looks like a .300, boss. The poor bastard.”
I scrubbed my hand over my face, feeling the stubble that was rapidly morphing into a beard. “So three went in, and two left. Two handguns are missing, but the DB has apparently been killed with a rifle.” My brain spun in useless circles, like tires on ice. I couldn't think, couldn't function.
“Goddammit!” I roared.
“Boss, let me and Jasper do some more digging. You need to sleep, you know how you get,” he reminded me.
“Don't tell me to sleep, or eat, or fucking meditate while praying to the motherfucking Buddha!” I screamed into the phone. “All of you need to get your lazy asses moving and find my goddamn wife!” I roared, punctuating that with throwing my phone across the room, watching as it cracked against the fireplace.
I paced the bedroom, back and forth in an irregular pattern. I was going mad without her, and the idea that something went wrong with those two troglodytes that she rescued had me seeing red. I pulled at my hair, I screamed out my frustration, and I threw everything within my reach across the room to shatter on the hearth.
When my fit was over, Felix brought me a new phone, a sandwich, and a sedative. Nothing would satisfy me more than shoving the pill and my Witness Elite 1911 down his throat, but good men are hard to find, and I didn't want to have to replace the rug. Sighing loudly, I swallowed the pill and ate the sandwich before flopping down across the bed. I could only think of Bella, like a movie reel played on repeat in my brain. I wondered if she was okay, where she was, why Newton was dead. There shouldn't be any reason for her to kill him, unless she discovered that he was, in fact, disloyal.
Thoughts whirled around in my head until the meds finally kicked in, and I fell into a restless sleep. Bella was calling for me to help her, and there was nothing I could do. Then I saw her fighting off a man in a ski mask, kicking his ass pretty good. As the scene seemed to play backwards, I saw her in the safe house, standing under the waterfall shower spray and washing her long, glorious hair.
My house phone rang, waking me groggily, and I cleared my throat several times before answering. “Cullen.”
“Edward!” I heard my wife screaming.
My heart pounded in my chest furiously, my mouth arid from the sedative. “Bella! Are you alright, what's going on?”
But it was a different voice that answered me. “Cullen, if you expect me to keep your pretty wife alive, you will sign over the rights to all MCE holdings and leave the paperwork in a drop box. I will call tomorrow at ten with further instructions.”
“You listen to me, you cock sucking, mother fucking piece of shit on the bottom of my shoe. If you harm one tiny hair on her head, there will not be a corner in Hell you can hide in! Do I make myself fucking clear!?”
I knew when he merely laughed that she was in more trouble than I'd feared.
No comments:
Post a Comment