“I need your help.”
“I'm not part of the business.I’m just Ares’s…friend.”
Saying the word girlfriend felt too personal to reveal.
“That works for me,” the woman pushed back her long black hair and started crying.
“I’ll go get Ares.”
“No!Don’t.Look, I need your help.They won’t let me call my sister and I overheard them say it’s Christmas.Christmas Day and he can’t be a human being and let my sister know I’m alive?”
A cold wash of fear rolled through Josie’s body.“I should go.”
“Please!I haven’t spoken to anyone in months.Just the guards.They have me in this compound locked up twenty-four-seven.I want to come home.”
“I’m sure Ares is working on it.”
The woman tilted her head back and laughed.“He’s the one who captured me and locked me up.Your friend isn’t the upstanding gentleman he claims to be.I have barely seen sunlight and what for?Because my business might expose theirs?Please.”
“That’s….awful.”Her mind whirled to her mother’s warning when she first started seeing Ares.Her belly tightened in knots.
The woman hugged herself, rocking back and forth.
“Yes!Mr.Montague,” the woman said with so much sarcasm Josie could practically feel it through the screen.“Ruined my life.Can you get in touch with my sister and let her know I'm alive?Her name is…” and then the screen flickered, going blank.
Josie wasn’t thinking as she raced back to the bedroom, past the still closed doors of Ares’s office, she grabbed her purse and her bag.Her vision clouded with tears as she shoved her feet into her shoes, grabbed her jacket.
The door beeped as she opened it, but she counted on Ares not hearing that in his soundproofed office.
All lies.
The driveway was one long slab, and she didn’t know the address, but she turned on her GPS on her phone.She walked down the driveway, with anger and disbelief churning through her veins, carrying her further down the street.
The concerns her mother raised, her own inhibitions about why she and Ares didn’t belong together, took centre stage in her mind.
When she was at cross streets, she called for an Uber home.
How could she be so naive?
Wild to think that a billionaire is an actual upstanding human being.But she let her guard down because Ares warmed her over with his charm, with his piercing green eyes, with his insistence.
Yeah, he was a man used to getting what he wanted.
He warned her that he’d do anything to protect his brother.It was her naivety that didn’t think that meant capturing a woman and keeping her locked up.
She choked back a sob, wiped her face with her sleeve, trying to calm herself down.She didn’t want to scare the driver when they arrived.
At least her mom was with Carlos, and she wouldn’t ruin her Christmas.She felt so exposed on this corner, so alone.
Swallowing over the lump in her throat she leaned hard on her cane, needing to stay upright.
Finally, her ride came.
Josie got in, willing herself not to cry.Ares was the only man she fell in love with, with who she started to see a future with and it was all…a lie.
She stared at the ceiling of the car, willing it to move faster.
All she wanted to do was to get in her own bed and stay there for a week.
