Page 198 of Creep

I moved on to the other hand. “Are you ready to talk? Because I can do this all day. I can fucking make it last.”

I made a move to dislodge his finger from its socket when he pleaded with me. “Wait, please. I’ll tell you.”

“Where?”

“In the old, abandoned factory just east of the city.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s not possible. I burned it down.”

He shook his head. “Not all the way. The structure still stands, and most of the inside survived.”

I looked past Tacchini’s head and to where Theo stood in the shadows.

I couldn’t see his expression clearly, but I could feel the tension in the room. After all these years, we would have to go back to the one place that had been nothing more than a literal hell on earth for us.

I never thought we would have to go back, but Lia was there, and where she goes, I go. And where I go, Theo follows.

49

LIA

Mael didn’t tellme where he was going today, but I had been feeling uneasy all day. Like something big was happening, only I had no clue what that was or whether it would be a good thing or not.

I let out a small sigh and looked away from the book I had found in Mael’s office. It had been a complete failure trying to read. It wasn’t like a book on… I turned the book around to look at its cover—World Economics—and grimaced. Yeah, it wasn’t like this could have possibly held my interest, but Mael’s very small collection of books didn’t offer many options. And the words were blurring on the page.

I closed the book and set it off to the side next to my phone on the couch. I hated the silence that followed as I turned my head toward the window and looked out at the bright sunny day. The snow from the days before was still very much on the ground, and I doubted it would go away anytime soon, but being up so high and in this apartment, I could convince myself it wasn’t so cold outside.

I rested my head on my hand, thinking of things I could do in this apartment that would keep me occupied enough until Mael got home. And he would come home to me. He had to. There was no other option. I pressed my hand against my chest and rubbed it when I felt a sharp sting there.

I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath.

Everything was going to be okay.

It had to be.

Mael promised me, and while we weren’t that far along in our relationship, I had a feeling Mael took his promise to me very seriously. He wouldn’t break it. I had to hold on to that, or I might just lose it.

My phone beeped with an incoming message.

I grabbed it, frowning, when I realized it was a text from Victoria. I should have deleted her contact and blocked her the day we met at her job. I didn’t know what had stopped me. Obviously, there had been no genuine feelings on her part, and there was a part of me that believed she truly hated me and was jealous of Leo’s supposed possessiveness of me.

I opened the text and looked at the picture that had just come through. It took my mind a moment to realize what I was looking at, but when I did, I shot up from the couch, my heart beating uncontrollably in my chest.

My phone beeped with another text from Victoria, though I doubted these were actually from her.

It was a line of letters and numbers that took way too long for my panic-induced brain to process as an address. I didn’t think. I grabbed my purse and headed to the cabinet that held all the keys to Mael’s many cars in the garage just below this building.

I hadn’t even realized how many cars he owned until I found these one day while snooping around his apartment. I grabbed the first set of keys my fingers touched and was out of there, the picture that was sent to me firmly on my mind. A picture of Victoria standing in front of the camera and Leo standing behind her, a gun pointed at her head.

I tried to call Mael on the elevator ride down, but my call didn’t go through. I tried the same with Theo’s number, and nothing.

I looked at my phone.

There was no service at all.

What was happening?

How could I not have service when I had just received text messages on it earlier?

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