Page 41 of Taking Adalisa

For Jason’s sake, I hope she wants to live badly enough.

My phone buzzes, pulling me from my thoughts. I groan and pull it out of my pocket.

“Why is the facility calling me?” I mumble to myself.

“Thefacility?” Ethan asks, his eyebrows pulling together. “We don’t have anyone in there right now.”

We use a facility to get information out of people every once in a while. It’s easy, and all our equipment is there. We haven’t used it in a while, but we still make monthly donations, so they don’t talk, and so we have access to it at any point.

“This better be good,” I growl into the phone when I pick it up.

“Go teach them a lesson. The owner is getting to be a prick and demanding more money to keep his mouth shut,” Ethan tells me. “If he is, make it known that we can and will kill him at any point and take over. We’re doing him a favor by paying him when we don’t need to.”

I grunt. Ain’t that the truth. I was skeptical in the beginning when Ethan wanted to pay him instead of just killing him and taking over. The owner isn’t innocent, and we would be doing New York City a service by taking him out.

“Is this Matthias?” a female voice asks.

“You know it is. Now what the fuck do you want?” I growl once again, my patience wearing thin.

“We have a woman in a room here,” she starts off. “She is blonde and fairly tall.”

“What’s her name?” I ask. “I don’t know any woman who is there. We didn’t send anyone.”

“Y-you didn’t?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I am supposed to be leaving soon to get to Adalisa. I have a whole night planned with her, and this phone call is ruining it.

It seems like every single time I want to leave to be with Adalisa, something comes up. It’s like the universe knows how badly I want her and is making it harder for me to actually get her.

Adalisa is mine.

I will do everything in my power to get her one way or the other. No one is going to keep me from her.

“Do they want more money?” Ethan asks, leaning back in his chair.

I shake my head and pull the phone away from my ear. “No, they have a girl there. Blonde, tall.”

Why are they calling me about some girl? Every person we send there, we personally deliver. No one walks in that we are going to hurt, and we very rarely obtain information from girls. Not unless they are a criminal who has done something grave. But even then, most of them will talk before we even touch them.

“Isn’t your girl blonde and tall?” Ethan looks at me.

I narrow my eyes on him. “Yes, but she wouldn’t be there. She has no reason to be there.”

“She did tell Margery to visit if she was still having hallucinations,” Ethan says. “Though they weren’t hallucinations, but your girl doesn’t know that, does she?”

Turning away from Ethan, I pull the phone back to my ear. “What is her name?”

“She was wearing a silver bracelet. The one you told us to watch out for,” the girl says.

It can’t be Adalisa. Ethan and I have given several people silver bracelets. It could be anyone.

“What is her fucking name?” I growl. “I won’t ask again.”

Silence fills the room as I wait for her to answer. How do they not know the girl’s name? Why don’t they know her name?

Because we told everyone with those bracelets to get them somewhere safe and ask questions later. They are just doingtheir jobs, but when it comes to Adalisa, they need to do a better job.

“Adalisa,” the girl finally whispers, and the blood drains from my face.

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