Page 14 of Die For Me

“I have to,” I cried out, feeling my face twist into an ugly cry.

“No.” Michael shook his head again, his voice stern, and my heart sunk. “We’re doing it right this time. Come on.”

Michael squeezed my hand and walked me closer to the main street where a cab waited.

“What are we doing, Michael?”

He still held onto my hand tightly as he opened the cab door and pushed me inside before taking the seat next to me, hurriedly shutting the door.

“Michael!” I gasped out.

“Give me your purse. Give me your coat,” he ordered, then looked up at the cab driver who worriedly looked back at us. “Go on, the address I gave you in Greenwich,” Michael instructed him hastily.

The cab started moving, and my mouth gaped at Michael.

“Where are we going?” I hesitantly shrugged my coat off.

I knew what was happening. We were making a run for it. Did Michael really know that I didn’t leave him, or was he just desperately trying to get me away from Jack?

He took my coat and grabbed my purse.

“Is your phone in here?” he asked as he held up my purse.

“Yes.”

“Mate.” Michael looked to the cab driver. “Stop here real quick.”

The cab driver stopped, and Michael jumped out, throwing my purse and coat into a garbage bin on the curb. He quickly came back in, and the cab sped off again.

“Michael, please tell me what’s going on,” I said tearfully as I took his hand with mine.

Michael looked up at me with his intense gray eyes, and they slowly started to soften. “You’re going to be mine again, Hana. Whether you want it or not.”

Jack

When I realized Hana was gone, finding her coat and purse in some fucking trash bin down the street from Dr. Levin’s office, I was ready to murder anyone in sight. I called Jessica and she tried to talk me down—but how could I calm down? My fucking pregnant wife was missing and I had no idea where she was. Was she with Emily? With Billie? With fuckingMichael? There was no way she was back with Michael. She knew how much that would hurt me. She didn’t want to go back to him anyway—she had the perfect fucking life with me and I knew she wouldn’t deny that. She might not have liked making that sex video for Michael, but that didn’t stop her from coming on camera multiple times. She was my dirty fucking wife and she loved it. Would Michael ever do anything like that? No, he was too much of a coward. I would be shocked if she was with him.

Then a thought occurred to me: What if she wasn’t with him by choice? What if Emily and Michael took her the way they took her from me all those weeks ago? By surprise and by guilting her into going back to Michael, confusing her and making her believe she didn’t love me.

There had to be someone I could reach out to that knew where she was. Emily, Billie…I’d even try her parents. And I knew if she had a way to contact me, she would. I refused to believe she had gone somewhere willingly without telling me. Hana just wouldn’t do that to me, not now, not after all we’dbeen through. I wasn’t going to sit idly by and wait, though—I would stop at nothing to find my wife.

I pulled out my phone and dialed 911.

Hana

We exited the city, the cab still driving toward Greenwich. I didn’t know why Michael was taking me to Greenwich, but I didn’t ask any questions—I was still trying to process the fact that I was in Michael’s presence. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it; he seemed anxious and somber. He seemed desperate. I didn’t know what his plan was, but I knew the likely outcome: I would probably have no say in it.

I realized I did have a choice when it came to staying with Jack. It had been so easy to leave him behind. All I had to do was ditch my purse, phone, and coat? I could have done that a million times, yet I didn’t. He had threatened me and my loved ones to get me to stay in the beginning. But I had fallen in love and he didn’t need to bring any of that up anymore. He knew how madly in love I was with him. But did I still want to be with Michael?

“Michael,” I whispered, pulling him out of a daze.

He turned to me and his eyes were tired, but I realized that my beautiful ex-fiancé still had the same impact on me as he did before. My heart leapt and crashed to my knees at just the sight of him. His eyes darkened as he looked down at my stomach, shaking his head.

“I can’t believe you were going to get rid of it. And you don’t even know who the father is? What thefuck, Hana? Why wouldyou do that?” His Irish accent sounded more pronounced than I remembered, and his scolding made heat rise to my cheeks.

“Whywould I do that? Because it’smyfucking body and I want some say in one aspect of my life, especially something as major as having a child!” I blurted out angrily.

Michael’s eyes widened. “I don’t believe a fucking thing you say anymore. You really had me going for a while, Hana,” he scolded again.

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