Chapter Twelve
1306 Words
The entire room felt empty after he left. Amelia stayed exactly where she was for a long time, staring at the closed door as if it might swing open again if she dared to look away. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically, and her hands remained glued at her sides.
He took her.
The thought kept circling in her mind like a bird looking for a place to land, but it didn't occur to her with the paralyzing weight of fear she expected. Something about the situation felt off. It was too calculated, yet there was an edge she couldn't quite name.
She finally moved cautiously, as if the room itself were a living thing that might react to a sudden gesture. The space was too clean, too controlled. No personal photographs, no scuff marks on the floor, no soft textures. It was a beautiful room, but a cage regardless.
She walked to the window, it was locked. The glass was thick and tinted just enough to blur the outside world. Beyond the pane, she noticed some movement, the rhythmic patrol of guards, the glint of black cars, a military grade structure.
Amelia rested her forehead against the cool glass. “Think,” she whispered to herself.
Voss said he had made arrangements. He didn’t specify where Lila was, how she was being treated, or when they would speak. Usually, a man like that spoke with the weight of an oracle. But in that final moment before he walked out, he had paused. Just for a heartbeat.
It meant one of two things: either he wasn’t completely sure she believed him, or he wasn’t completely sure of his own next move. Amelia exhaled slowly, her breath fogging the glass. If he was uncertain, he was vulnerable. That was a c***k she could work with.
Across the hall, Voss didn’t go far. He stopped just outside her door, one hand resting flat against the wall, his head slightly lowered. The hallway was silent and shadowed, but the air felt different.
Something was wrong with the perimeter on the encryption on his servers, but with the internal logic he lived by. He pushed off the wall and walked toward his office, his steps measured and heavy. He was trying to outpace a feeling that didn't have a name.
By the time he pushed through the double doors of his study, his expression was back in place. Cold and Unreadable. The professional mask was his only true home.
Rino was already there, leaning over a console. “We’re still running the trace,” he said without looking up. “The call that came through the alley.”
Voss didn't even bother to sit. He stood behind his desk, a silhouette against the city lights. “Nothing is ever clean, Rino. Tell me something I don't know.”
“It bounced through seven different countries in four seconds,” Rino said, finally turning around. “The routing wasn't random, it was designed to mimic our own internal protocols. Whoever did this understands how you build systems. The timing of the explosion was a synchronized strike."
Voss placed his hands on the mahogany surface of his desk. The alleyway replayed in his mind like a filmstrip, the heat of the blast, the distorted voice on the line, the way Amelia had looked at him. Like she was confident.
“Run it again,” Voss said quietly.
“We’ve checked the logs four times, Boss.”
“Then run it differently,” Voss snapped, his voice dropping an octave. “Don’t look for the digital trail they left. Look for the gaps they created. Find what’s missing.”
In a smaller room located in the secure wing of the house, Lila sat on the edge of a bed that was far too large for her. She hadn’t cried in a while, not because the fear had vanished, but because she was trying to remember what her mother told her about being a lighthouse in a storm.
Her small hands gripped the wooden boat, her thumbs tracing the smooth, sanded edges. It was the only piece of home she had left.
A woman sat in a chair by the door. She was quiet, her eyes flicking toward the child every few minutes. She wasn't wicked, but there was a professional distance in her gaze that felt like a stone wall.
“Can I see my mama now?” Lila asked, her voice small but steady.
The woman didn't answer immediately. She checked a watch that looked like it belonged to a soldier. “She’s resting, Lila. You should do the same.”
Lila nodded, though she knew the woman was lying. Adults had a specific way of tilting their heads when they weren't telling the whole truth. She lay down slowly, pulling the heavy duvet up to her chin, still clutching the boat.
“I’ll wait,” she whispered into the dark.
Back in her room, Amelia sat on the edge of the bed. Her mind was racing, cataloging every detail of the room, every guard she had seen through the window, every inflection in Voss’s voice.
The fear was still there, buzzing under her skin, she was shifting into a different mode, the one that had kept her alive for years before this.
If Voss wanted control, he would monitor her for signs of a breakdown. If he wanted her to be a pawn, he would wait for her to beg for information. She stood up and walked toward the mirror, staring at the woman looking back.
Her hair was a mess, her face was bruised, and her eyes were rimmed with exhaustion. But the fire hadn't gone out.
“Good,” she murmured. If he thought she would shatter under the weight of this house, he was about to find out he had invited a predator into his home, not a victim.
As the clock ticked past midnight, Voss remained in his office. The house had settled into its nighttime rhythm. The lights had dimmed, and the staff had retreated.
But the silence was loud.
“I don’t believe you.”
Her words were stuck in his head like a splinter. He picked up his phone and opened a secured file. It was a deep dive report on Amelia’s life. On the surface, it was a story of a woman trying to make it in a hard world.
But as he scrolled, his eyes narrowed. It was a perfect vacuum.
“Rino,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Look at the 2022 gap in her file,” Voss said, his voice sharp with a new kind of interest. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to scrub those ninety days. Find out who she was hiding from back then.”
Far from the high-tech tower, tucked away in a room that didn't exist on any map, a screen glowed blue in the dark.
Lines of code scrolled by at a frantic pace, then suddenly froze. A small, red notification blinked in the center of the system. Access attempt detected.
A man leaning back in a worn leather chair watched the notification with a sense of patient satisfaction. He didn't reach for the keyboard to block the intrusion. He didn't scramble the data to hide his location.
He simply watched the clock.
The game was finally moving. The players were in their positions, and the tension was exactly where he needed it to be.
“Come and find me, Voss,” he whispered to the empty room.
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD