Carlo was there one day, whispering sweet words in my ears, and gone the next. I thought he had moved on, that he never really loved me to begin with, yet I never could come to understand what the hell happened.
Now I did. Castello made it clear what happened. Carlo was dead…and Castello thought I had something to do with it. It was absurd.
The pain, the hurt that stabbed like a thousand knives through my chest, caused more tears and sobs to erupt from my body.
Fuck!
I didn’t even know if Castello was telling the truth. Why would he lie, though? It was clear as fucking daylight that he was, in fact, Carlo’s twin. How else could the remarkable—or freaky—resemblance between them be explained?
Up until now, I tried to convince myself this was simply a sick joke and that someone would come through that door and say, “You’ve been punked, bitch.” But that goddamn finger on the other side of the bed confirmed this was not a joke, and what was happening right now was as real as it got.
I’d been kidnapped, and judging by the cold look in Castello’s eyes when he stared at me, he truly was convinced I was responsible for Carlo’s death.
Carlo’s death…
The mere thought that Carlo was dead, that he hadn’t left me like I thought, was enough to make my chest feel like it was being cracked open from the inside.
My body slid down against the wall, and I landed on my side, still crying into my arms. Shaking and cold, I couldn’t stop the fear and pain from pulsing through my veins…the grief.
More crying, more sobs.
I had no idea how long I lay there crying, thinking about all the horrible things that were probably going to happen to me. Castello and his family held me responsible for Carlo’s death—why, I didn’t know—but thinking about what they had in store for me had me shivering like it was minus twenty fucking degrees in this God-awful room.
I wasn’t a naïve person. I read the newspapers, watched the news. It was a big, cruel world we lived in. Girls got stolen and sold into slavery, and women got kidnapped, raped, and murdered every day. I just never thought I’d be one of them. These kinds of things always happened to other people, not to me, or at least that was what I thought.
For the first time in my life, I felt thankful for my father’s wealth, his power. It meant there was a much better chance for them to find me with all the resources at his disposal. But that brought forth the most important question.How long before they realize I’m gone?
An image flashed in my mind, and I lifted my head, staring at the bed. The box was still on the mattress, but I knew the finger rolled off the other side. There was something on that finger, something like the image in my head.
I pushed myself up, wiped the tears from my face, and continued to stare at the bed.Dear Lord, please don’t let it be what I think it is.
“Get a grip, Tatum,” I muttered to myself, pulling my fingers roughly through my hair, which was one tangled, dirty mess. I bent my knees, steadying my feet beneath me while I remained crouched down, pushing my palms flush against the wall behind me. I needed the support in case I was unable to keep myself up.
My heart was thrumming behind my ribs, the rush of blood causing a pounding ache in my head. Even my goddamn ears were ringing while I struggled to take a breath, feeling like my stomach and my heart were both vying for first place up and out of my throat.
I still couldn’t get that one image out of my head, and I needed to know if that was what I saw on that finger.
Slowly, I pushed myself up, my back scuffing against the wall. This was one of those situations where you could only take one step at a time, afraid the earth beneath your feet might evaporate at any moment, sending you plummeting to a big, black hole of nothing but darkness.
While putting one foot in front of the other, my heartbeat echoed in my ears as fear spread through every bone of my body. I could swear I had never trembled this much in my life.
I lifted my feet, trying to stretch myself a little higher to see if I could catch a glimpse of what I really didn’t want to see lying on the other side of that bed. I wasn’t sure my stomach would be able to handle a full front row view of ahuman fucking finger.
A few more steps and I stopped at the side of the bed, still not able to see it. I gently placed my hands on the mattress and eased my legs on as I climbed up, stretching my neck until finally I saw it. A finger.
A fucking finger! Oh God…
My stomach twisted, pushing bile up my throat as I stared at it. But it wasn’t so much the fact that it was a cleanly cut-off finger that made me feel violently ill, but rather the object on the finger—a ring, and not just any ring. I recognized that platinum ring with the silver L in the middle of a black square. It was the same ring my father and brother always wore, the same ring every man in the Linscott family wore.
“No.” I shook my head and pinched my eyes closed. “No. Please, God, no,” I cried as I pushed my face into the scratchy fabric of the sheets.
Is that…could that be my…?
“Recognize the ring?” a low voice boomed through the room.
I jerked up and looked at the part of the wall where I knew the door was, but there was no one there.
“Does it look familiar?”