Page 92 of Fractured
“I love you and I want you to get a hold of me as soon as you can. I can’t have anything to do with Karl or Helen for a couple of months. And it’s going to take you a while to get yourself wherever you’re going. When you get there, you mail me a letter at some point. You can mail it to Helen or mail it to Karl. Either way, I’ll get it and I’ll do the same. Promise me?”
The tears are rolling down my face as I hug her. “I promise, thank you Anna. Without you, I’d be fucked.” She finally laughs, and I try to.
“Oh, I love it when you swear.” She hugs me tight. I whisperover her shoulder. “Try to forgive Danny. He loves you. This is entirely my fault, and I feel horrible about it.”
“You don’t worry about Danny and me. You worry about yourself. I love you, Anna. Go get in so I can close this fucking thing up and get you out of here.”
I climb in and lie down. She half puts the lid on, and we say our final goodbyes. I just lay there in the dark and cry. I’ll miss her so much.
Anna nails down the lid. “I’ll be right here till the truck comes.” She is crying. I can hear it in her voice. I tapped the box to let her know I heard her. It feels like forever before I hear the garage door creaking open, a male voice murmuring, and I hear Anna saying something back.
Then I’m lifted onto a pallet jack and wheeled into the back of the truck, and the door slams. My heart cracks. That’s the last time I’m ever going to hear her voice for a long time. We drive through town, and I don’t know how long that takes. Finally, I feel the truck come to a complete stop and I hear the beep, beep, beep of the truck in reverse.
The truck comes to a stop, the door bangs open, the pallet jack is put underneath, and I can feel myself being moved across the floor. I can smell the grease from the restaurant and two male voices mumbling. I’m listening intently for any noise, and it’s quiet. The next thing I know, I can hear the crowbar cracking beneath the nails with each crack, crack, crack, and the lid popping open.
“Hello there, little lady.” He smiles brightly. “I’m guessing you want out of there. You’re going to be hungry. I’ll put you in my office for now. I’ll grab you a bite to eat and I’ll fill you in on the plan. But you have little time, sweetheart. You’ve got to get out of here as soon as possible.”
Karl helps me out, and I stagger on shaky legs to his office. I’m kind of cramped up. It wasn’t as big as the sculpture box. I couldn’t stretch out, so I had to stay curled up in there for almost two hours.
I get to Karl’s office, and I sit down. He comes in with my double bacon cheeseburger and fries and a large Pepsi filled with ice. I kiss his cheek and he sits down.
“Eat that, sweetheart, and I’ll go over the plan.”
An hour and a half later, I’m sitting behind the wheel of a car leaving Chicago behind with a new name, a new driver’s license and a new social security number.
Chapter 19 ~ Alexander
It’s 10:00 PM Saturday night, and I’m pacing my office, waiting for Carlos to come back. He and Danny have gone to question Anna. I’m so tired but too wired to rest.
I never slept at all last night.
I grabbed a flashlight and went out with the men and scoured the yard, looking in every nook and cranny, anywhere I could think of where she could hide. It was Carlos who brought me over to the shrubbery below her bedroom window.
My heart dropped when his flashlight illuminated what lay on the ground hidden in the darkness. The evidence of what she had been doing for weeks. Mounds of food piled up and discarded, picked over by animals. I watched her every day as she sat at that window eating her meals. But she wasn’t eating at all. She’d scrape all her meals onto the ground through that tiny slit and fooled me into thinking she was eating because her plate was always empty.
She was starving herself and I didn’t even see it.
I assumed her weight loss was due to stress, and reassured myself there was nothing wrong because every meal, the reports came back she had eaten. The impact hits me like a brick at her intentions.
Isabella was going to leave me no matter what.Starve herself to death or figure out a way to run. She had planned all of this before I had even condemned her, held her helpless against the wall, and called her a liar and a tease.
A traitor.
I felt so sick after seeing that I staggered back and sat down on one of the lounge chairs. I missed everything when it came to Isabella. Every nuance, every word she tried to say to me without actually saying it. But I was a bully, selfish and cruel. I ignored her and left her alone figuring I knew best, and she would just have to adapt to my way of life.
No wonder she wanted to leave me.
I was useless after that, and Carlos brought me into the house and up to my room. He poured me a drink, and I drank it, but I couldn’t taste it. He sat me on the bed, took off my shoes and pulled back the covers and I crawled in just lying there stunned. He spoke but fucked if I know what he said.
She hates me. Fuck, I hate myself. She hated me before I married her. She said she was heartbroken. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. She told me our wedding was her funeral and all I could see was my anger because it meant more to me than just a contract marriage. I liked her, I wanted her more than I had any other woman, but by then, I had pushed her too far. She even told me she had stopped believing in anything.
And I don’t blame her; I took it all and didn’t care to see what it was doing to her. I couldn’t see past the thought of Robert and his betrayal to my family and to the organization, letting rage and doubt rule me. Isabella was the outlet because she was so innocent it had to be a deception.
It wasn’t.
She is sweet, kind, has a soft heart, and thinks of others before herself. She’s shy, quiet and sees the world with an artist’s eye, not jaded and cruel like me. Isabella has a fire in her. She let me see it on our wedding night and I loved it. When she looked at me that night, I felt a little more than like for her.
My father said she can spot a liar like her grandfather, and he is right. I didn’t give two fucks about Harry Potter, and she knewit. In her silence, as she sat on my lap stroking my face softly, trying to ease my anger. She was keeping what she loved safe because she hadn’t had it her entire life and she didn’t want me to ruin her love of the movies. But I did anyway. In my jealousy, I accused her of loving Sebastian more than me.
