Chapter Eighteen: I Know Where She Lives.
1214 Words
Renee sat up straight, something in his tone hitting a nerve she didn’t know she still had.
“None of your f*****g business,” she snapped. “I quit. You don’t own me anymore. I’m hanging up now, bye-bye.”
“Renee—wait—” he said, almost begging.
She stopped cold, her finger hovering over the end call button. She was ready to snap back at him when another voice slipped through the line. Deep. Male. Muffled, like someone had a hand over the speaker. She couldn’t catch the words, but the tone alone pushed the fear deeper into her.
“Why the hell do you want to know where I am?” she asked, suspicion turning into anger. “What’s going on?”
Silas didn’t answer her question. He just grunted like he was in pain.
“Renee, just f*****g tell me where you are. Enough of these games!” he pleaded.
She laughed, as if she had finally snapped under the weight of the chaos.
“f**k you. I’m not telling you shit.”
There was a split second of silence.
Then—
BANG.
A gunshot so loud she ripped the phone away from her ear, her stomach fell so quickly it almost reached her feet.
The line stayed connected, nothing but heavy breathing coming from the other side.
“Silas…?”
“Silas can’t come to the phone right now, he’s a little bit dead,” the man mocked, followed by a sadistic laugh. “You can talk to me, though. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”
“What the f**k! This is Ricardo, isn’t it? Funny, I’ve been waiting a long time to talk to your ass too,” Renee snapped, but the words wobbled, coming out far less strong than she meant them to. The fear was eating her alive.
“Fiesty. Can’t say I expected anything less from Adrian’s daughter.”
“Why can’t you just leave us alone? I don’t get why you want to murder me for his mistakes. What the hell did my father do to you to make you this vengeful?”
“He didn’t tell you the entire story, did he?”
“Nothing he could have done to you can justify hunting his daughter down and murdering whoever got in your way to finding her.”
“Are you sure about that? You seem like a smart woman, Renee. Tell me, what would you do if someone murdered your two young children in cold blood over something that wasn’t your fault?”
“Is—is that what he did to you?”
Renee’s entire body went cold.
“The baseline of it, yeah. So now you understand why he has to suffer exactly how I did,” Ricardo murmured. “If you’re going to make me build a trail of bodies just to reach you… Then fine. This isn’t over until I’m holding your head in my hands.”
Her breath broke. A tiny, shaking gasp.
“And Renee?” he added, almost sweet. “Claudia’s next, if I don’t find you first.”
Her heart stopped for a beat. He wasn’t supposed to know that name. No one was. She hadn’t heard Claudia’s name since she gave her away at sixteen and walked out alone.
“I know where she sleeps,” he said softly. “I know the streets she uses to walk home from school by herself. She was much easier to track down than you. Kids in the system usually are.”
“How the—don’t you f*****g touch her,” Renee choked out, her voice cracking as the realisation hit that he wasn’t screwing with her anymore.
“It doesn’t need to come to that. I’m a reasonable man,” Ricardo protested.“ Someone has to pay, though. And you…”
Silence.
“You’re the perfect payment.”
The line went dead.
Renee stared at her reflection in the dark window, shaking so violently she almost dropped the phone.
She didn’t feel safe in her own skin anymore.
Ricardo knew exactly where to find everyone she loved. That alone was enough to make it feel like the entire sky was falling, but Claudia… she had no way to protect her, no way of finding her to warn her adoptive parents.
The adoption was closed.
She didn’t know if the family had even kept the name Claudia; she only chose it for the birth certificate because it was the last thing she could give her baby.
She didn’t even know if they still resided in the same state—
But Ricardo somehow knew.
How did he know things she thought were buried in dusty files and cold rooms, things known only by her and a handful of social workers who had probably forgotten her name by now.
Yet he spoke about it to her like he’d lived through it with her.
It left her shaken, confused, and terrified in a way she couldn’t even hide.
Adrian came back to the car with a large drink in his hand and a small, almost smile on his face. It disappeared the second he saw Renee.
She looked wrecked. Her eyes filled with tears and her chest rising too fast to keep up.
“What’s wrong, monkey?” he asked softly.
Renee broke.
The hyperventilating hit her so fast it made her dizzy and nauseous. She shoved the door open and stumbled out, her hands shaking, her breath staggered. Adrian followed her immediately, but before he could say another word, she was on him.
She swung at him, screaming, her voice splintering from the force of it.
“It’s your fault! It’s all your fault!”
Adrian grabbed her wrists, not to stop her, but to keep her from hurting herself.
“Renee—hey—hey—look at me—”
She didn’t. She couldn’t. She was gone, drowning in panic as the truth finally ripped out of her.
“She’ll die because of you!” she screamed, the words shattering out of her. “She’ll f*****g die because of you, and I can’t protect her because I was selfish, and I gave her away!”
Her legs buckled. The strength left her body all at once, like someone had pulled the bones out of her. Adrian caught her before she hit the ground, pulling her into his chest as she sobbed so hard her whole body shook.
He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t push. He just held her, arms locked around her as if keeping her together was the only thing he cared about.
“It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “It’ll be okay… I’ll fix it.”
And for the first time, Renee wanted to believe him. God, she wanted to believe him more than anything. But there was no fixing this. Adrian couldn’t magically find Claudia. He couldn’t keep her safe the way he kept Renee safe.
This wasn’t a situation anyone could pull her out of.
Renee had to get away from her father. Slip away before he realises she's gone and meet Ricardo on her own terms, before he gets impatient and kills Claudia first.
There was only one way this ended.
- Writer
