It wasn’t a lie.
I lost track of everything for the next day and a half.
Everything but his terror and his pain.
And my sick enjoyment of it all.
I’d needed to strip down in that room, I was so saturated in blood in the end, using fucking baby wipes to clean myself up enough even to leave to go take a shower and grab some more supplies.
Because, well, I’d gotten a little out of hand, to be honest.
I spent the next half a day cleaning the town car so there wasn’t a single trace of me around, then went ahead and dirtied it up again, so it didn’t look suspiciously clean, prompting a fine-tooth-comb look through it.
Then I piled Eren in the trunk with his stinking driver.
Well… part of Eren.
I had two parts of him with me in a bag.
A present, if you will.
And so it was done.
She was free.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ezmeray
I was going to need to file a missing person’s report if I didn’t hear from Eren soon.
It wasn’t uncommon for him not to show up for a night and even part of the next day. He often ended up at his brothers’ or one of his men’s houses.
He got drunk and crashed. Then slept in late and often went out for breakfast before making his way home.
I hadn’t been worried.
If anything, it had been a relief I’d felt when I hadn’t been awoken by him slamming the door and stumbling around.
When he wasn’t home for lunch the next day, I started to get concerned.
Enough that I had called the non-emergency line of our closest police department, asking when I should file a report.
They said a full twenty-four hours was standard for adults.
So I’d hung up and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
It wasn’t worry I felt, of course, just something akin to confusion and curiosity.
I didn’t have the numbers for any of his men, but I did call all the various Restaurant 1969 locations, asking around to see if anyone had seen him.
Eventually, the landline rang.
“Eren?” I asked.
“No. It’s Berat,” he said. Eren’s brother. “Eren isn’t there?”
“No. He hasn’t been home in a day,” I said. “You haven’t seen him either? I was about to file a report.”
“No. Don’t do that. Are you fucking stupid?” Berat asked, making me jolt even though he wasn’t in the room with me, couldn’t do anything to me. I was hardwired to respond to that tone of voice after being with his brother for so long.
“But if he is missing—“
“Don’t get the cops involved in our fucking business. You should know better,” Berat scolded, making my stomach slosh around.
If Eren was gone, what would become of me?
There was no comfort in a life with Eren, but at least I knew what to expect with him.
I spent very little time around his brothers and the rest of his organization. I had no idea what they were capable of. But if they were willing to stand by and watch what he did to me, I didn’t think anything good could be found within those men.
“Okay. What do you want me to do?” I asked, knowing that Eren had always liked when I deferred to him. Even about the most basic, ridiculous things. Like he enjoyed the idea of my being stupid and incapable, and needing him to help me navigate daily tasks.
If that was true of Eren, I imagined it had been something instilled in his brothers as well.
“Nothing. Just go about your usual routine. I will be in touch if or when there is anything you need to know.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. The exact same routine as you usually do.”
“I got it,” I agreed, nodding even though he couldn’t see me.
I hung up with a knot in my stomach.
But what could I do except what Berat had told me?
Which meant it was time to go to the market again.
It felt strange to get up, shower, dress, and grab my grocery bags like it was any other day of the week, like it wasn’t incredibly suspicious that my husband hadn’t come home, and his own brother had no idea where he was.
Eren was exceptionally close with his brothers and the higher-up members of his organization. There was hardly a day that went by that he didn’t see them. And he was on the phone with them constantly.
If they hadn’t heard from him either, that couldn’t have been a good sign, right?
I felt a low-level sort of queasiness all through my grocery trip.
Not because of the fate of my husband.
No.
About my own fate.
Because I wasn’t naive enough to think that, with his death, my involvement with the Polat organization would be complete.
Which meant I had no idea what was to come. What new horrors there might be to endure.
Making my way out of the market, I found myself stopping and looking around.
Not for Eren.