Dark oak shelves fill every wall, ready for her books to have pride of place, there’s also a reading chair in the corner with her favourite Halloween blanket draped over the back and a window seat where Lyla has currently taken up residence. If she’s not by the door, she’s usually in here, her button nose steaming up the glass window. Watching and waiting.
She huffs out a breath and lazily climbs off the seat before coming to sit in my lap and resting her head on my knee, my fingers finding the place between her bat-like ears, giving her favourite spot a quick scratch.
“I’ll find her baby girl. I promise.” I whisper to her with a lump in my throat and my eyes glassy. I’ve hardly ever cried in my life, my father made sure everyday to tell me how weak it was for men to cry, to show their emotions. He’d say“you’re weak if you cry, never let me see you cry like a bitch.”And I never did, not once, no matter how hard his fists came down on me, I kept my eyes dry. But now, I can’t stop the floods of tears that rain down on my face, years of pent up anger and frustration smash down on me like a crumbling building and I don’t have the energy or the will to stop it.
I happily let the dam break.
The sound of my phone ringing from the kitchen thrusts me back into the present and I scramble to my feet, with Lyla in tow towards the kitchen.
“Eli?”
“Hey man. Everything alright, you don’t sound too good?
Quickly I clear my throat and wipe the tears from my eyes. “Uh, yeah I’m good, well as good as can be, I didn’t sleep too great.”
“Yeah. I understand.” He pauses. “Anyway, I was calling to sayI’ve done some digging into Ana’s background. I managed to find her previous home address, I’m assuming it’s the one she bought with Ricky.”
I can sense by the tone of his voice that he doesn’t want me to get my hopes up like last time. Eli blames himself for the prison raid but it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault that we were too late.
“It’s not your fault, you know that right?” I say and there’s a brief moment of silence before he begins to speak again.
“I just.. I should have got us there sooner. I failed.”
“No. No you didn’t. That bastard clearly had the one up on us but if we hadn’t gone at all, we never would have found Ana’s message. Do not blame yourself for this.” I say with a firm tone, hating the fact that my best friend is feeling this level of guilt.
“You’re right man, I’m just sorry that’s all.” He says with an edge of sadness to his voice.
“You can buy us a round of beers when this is all over, how’s that?” I say, a smile tugging at my lips and Eli laughs down the phone. “Alright, I can do that.”
“Good. What have you got for me?”
Over the next couple of minutes, Eli tells me where Ana used to live and that there’s a rundown mill just a couple of miles away from her home, and it makes sense from the message she left back at the prison on the wall.
“The mill has been derelict for quite a while. From the blueprints I found, there’s underground bunkers that run throughout the mill, used to keep the workers locked up. It’s pretty fucked up.” Eli says, his tone now serious.
“No wonder Ricky chose that fucking place then. So when do we move?”
“Well, I heard through the grapevine he’s got buyers coming in this Friday for what he calls Selection Day, basically these sick fucks around the world all come together with their fancy suits and big bucks to buy these girls.”
The blood in my veins quickly turns to molten lava at Eli’s words and the thought of my woman being bought by the hands of a fucking pervert makes me want to skin someone alive, specifically Ricky.
“I don’t even need to assume that you have a plan already in place?”
“Would it really be me if I didn’t?” He says sarcastically. “You’ll go in as a buyer. Ricky already has a buyer lined up for her, some Russian dude whose got a vicious track record for fucking women up. You’ll need to out bid him. Whilst the auction is happening, I’ll get inside with the weapons and then..”
I cut him off. “And then we slaughter every last one of them.”
“Correct. I don’t know how many girls and women Ricky has stashed in there but I’m gonna assume it’s a few so I’ll have Cecilia on stand by.”
“Alright. Send me the details. I’m ready to fucking end this.”
After the phone call with Eli, I tried to keep myself in check but the doubts wouldn’t stop creeping into my mind. What if we were too late again? What if I couldn’t out bid this Russian bastard who wanted my woman for his own sick keeping. What if I failed,again. All these thoughts had me questioning myselfbut I needed to trust my gut and put my worries aside to be able to bring Ana home.
The week went by in a blur. I’d completed the finishing touches in Ana’s library just as Friday rolled around, and now here I stand in our bedroom, slipping on the black three piece suit I’d kept in the back of the closet. It hasn’t seen the light of day for years and I’m surprised it still fits. Smoothing my hands down the front of the waistcoat, my stomach coils with rising anxiety, a completely foreign feeling to me. I have to treat this like any other job, it’s the only way I’m going to be able to get Ana out of there. I have to shove my feelings aside.
Checking the time on my watch, Eli will be here soon, I stash the remaining weapons into the black holdall along with my mask. Eli informed me that there will be security at the front who will do a weapons check so I can’t have any on me unfortunately, but I know that won’t stop me from tearing a man apart with my bare hands. He also gave me a fake identity, a big shot lawyer named Mr Alex Blackwood. If they feel the urge to do a quick Google search on me, they’ll find all my socials, websites and credentials to prove who I am.
Smoothing my hair off my face, I grab my suit jacket and bag and make my way into the kitchen, just in time for Eli to arrive. I hear his truck pull up and I give Lyla a quick scratch and a kiss.
