Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Everyone filed into the room, and I closed the glass door, hoping it would help this conversation remain discreet.
“Olivia did not come back to the hotel with Charlotte and Rose last night.”
“Well, is anyone surprised? The way that girl runs around pretending to work, it’s unseemly,” Mrs. Astrid said, her nose in the air. “She should be ashamed of herself. No doubt this scandal will be all anyone can talk about. She has ruined this entire wedding.”
“Keep your comments to yourself or leave,” Amelia snapped, and I couldn’t help the pride I felt in my wife as she stood up to that shrew.
“The way you speak to your mother is shameful, you ungrateful, spoiled little brat,” Mrs. Astrid hissed back. She needed to be dealt with, but at the moment, I had more important things to consider.
“Where is she?” my father asked.
“With Marksen DuBois, as of right now. It’s unclear if she went willingly or was taken.”
“How do you know it was Marksen, and why do you suspect foul play?” Harrison asked. This was why I asked for him.
He was a district attorney, he knew what questions to ask, and after everything with Amelia, he and I had come to an understanding.
I unlocked my phone and slid it face down over to him with the text and the picture pulled up.
Harrison’s eyes widened with shock. The bedsheet, though covering most of her, did show one of her inner thighs with a smear of blood. The implication was obvious even if I refused to think it, let alone say it out loud.
Harrison laid my phone screen-down on the smooth tabletop and slid it back to me. My father snatched it from the table, and I couldn’t get it back before he saw it.
The blood drained from his face, leaving him white as a ghost, and then just as quickly, his face turned a bright red.
He got to his feet and threw my phone against a wall, shattering the screen.
“I want the FBI, CIA, every single able-bodied man we know hunting this monster down like a dog,” he yelled.
I understood his anger, I really did. Still, there were better ways to approach this.
“No, if we make this public, it will ruin Olivia. Marksen has her. We need to find out why. What does he want?”
“I don’t give a fuck what he wants. Dead men don’t want anything.” My father was still pacing around the room.
Amelia pressed into my side, clearly intimidated by my father’s rage.
“It’s not just about him,” I tried to reason. “Olivia has built her magazine to be a global publication. She won’t want the media’s attention on this at all. Not until we know more. If she went willingly, then we can address it when she is back home and safe—”
“If she went willingly, I will send her to a convent.” My father was still raging. He needed to calm down before he lost it and did something stupid, like call the mob and put out a hit on Marksen.
“She is twenty-five, she is a grown woman and can make her…” I tried, but when I saw the way his face turned a deeper shade of red, I knew I was going in the wrong direction with this. “If she was taken, then making this public could drive him underground, and put her at risk.” I backtracked.
“What do you mean?” My father stopped pacing to look at me. His fists were still clenched, his face a dark red, but he was listening to me. That was a start.
“The DuBois’s have almost unlimited resources, not to mention familial ties in most of Europe. If we turn this into a massive manhunt, he will run and might take Olivia with him. Or he might see her as unwanted baggage and get rid of her. I want to proceed with caution. Let him think he has the upper hand.”
“Oh, you boys don’t need to worry about a thing,” Mrs. Astrid interrupted again. I had honestly forgotten she was there.
“Excuse me?” I said, looking down my nose at her.
My father boomed, “This is my daughter you are talking about. Are you insinuating that she—”
“I’m not insinuating anything.” She interrupted my father with a dismissive wave of her hand, and I thought for a moment he was going to lunge across the table and strangle her.
It would be a tragedy if he did that. Sort of. It would also solve the issues of Amelia’s mother trying to run our lives and constantly harassing my wife. It would get my father out of the way as he spent the next twenty or so years in prison. It may not be the rest of his life, but it would be long enough.
“Then what are you saying?” he raged.
I tried to hide my disappointment in his lack of violence.