Holding my breath, I wait for him to continue.
“My wife was a teacher, and one day, while she was returning from school, she was abducted on her way home. I moved heaven and earth to find her.” He gets up from his chair and walks to the window, looking outside at nothing in particular. “I was devastated. I went through hell during that week.”
“But you found her?” I can’t stop myself from asking.
He looks at me over his shoulder. “Yes, but it wasn’t me who found her. I tried everything to get to her. I spent days and nights holed up in my office or at the police station. I didn’t sleep a minute those seven days. But I couldn’t find her.”
Beast slams his fist against the window sash. For a moment, I worry he’ll break his wrist, but he continues before my mind wanders more.
“It was Roxanne. She found my wife. That day, I was put in a lifelong debt to her. I can never forget what she did for me, my family. She found my wife, heavily sedated and left to die on the highway, hands and feet tied together. Roxanne gave me back my life that day, or so I thought.”
He gets back in his chair. “But she’d changed. Gone were her laughs that filled my house. Gone were her smiles that made my heart stop. She was lost and depressed. I got her the best doctors, and everybody told me it was the trauma, and it would go away with time. I just had to be patient.”
He rests his head against the headrest, looking at the ceiling. I never thought there’d be a day when Beast would be so vulnerable. At this moment, he doesn’t look like the giant, strong man from my childhood.
“She never spoke about what happened in those seven days, but she was shaken. She was terrified. And that’s not how she was before.” He looks me in the eye before slamming his hands on his desk, and the pens go flying around. “My girl made men cry at the shooting range. She fucking knew her place in the world, and she knew how to fight for it. But after that week, my brave girl was nowhere to be found. And there was always this lost expression on her face. I couldn’t bear it.”
My throat constricts, remembering how I found Rose in the shower stall last night and how fucking helpless I felt. I can undoubtedly feel Beast’s pain.
“She wasn’t sexually violated, thank God for that, but she had these burn marks on her back. That fucker possibly used a hot double hook to imprint her skin.”
Sweat trickles down my spine as I imagine Rose being hurt in a similar way. “Rose said something about feeling hot on her back.”
He nods. “I tracked the case, partly with the police and partly by myself, for several more months, but all our leads ran cold. I also had to focus on my wife. She was slipping away from me day by day. She started getting distant, not only from me but Chloe too.”
Beast crushes his eyes with his palms as if trying to get rid of the bitter past images.
“It was a year after the kidnapping. We were invited to a friend’s party out of town. I decided to take her, hoping it would be a good change, and it was. For the first time in a very long while, we had a normal evening. She smiled after almost a year. Gradually, my wife was coming back to me, and we found out she was pregnant again. I was walking on air as we rekindled our lost love. But then she went into premature labor, and our baby girl was born dead.”
Beast’s bloodshot eyes focus on me, and I suck in a breath. I never thought I’d see this man so helpless and lost. I always thought nothing in this world could shake him. But I guess when the storm of life hits, it doesn’t matter how strong you are; it can still blow you away.
“I lost everything that day. A week later, my wife left me, leaving behind a fucking letter. She wrote that she couldn’t bear the pain of living in a loveless marriage. Living with me reminded her of everything she’d suffered.” He finds the letter among several other things that fell from the envelope and hands it to me. The white paper, now yellow with age, is wrinkled as though it’s been folded and unfolded several times over the years.
While I’m busy reading the letter, Beast is staring at a photograph.
“Is it her?” I ask, and he turns it around. The ground beneath my feet slips away as a familiar face in black and white smiles back at me. “What did you say your wife’s name was?” I try to keep my voice light, masking the tension that’s surging through my veins.
“Sophia.”
“Can I see the picture of Chloe again?”
Lost in sorrow, Beast mechanically draws out the photograph of his daughter from his wallet. I fix my eyes on the picture, and this time, I recognize the shapes and lines on the little girl’s face, which has become very familiar to me in past months.
I return the photo and place Rose’s file back on his table, rearranging all the papers. “I need to be somewhere, but I’m leaving this with you.”
He nods, and before I’m out of his study, Beast calls out, “Zander, I have a feeling that your Rose is the key to my Sophia.”
I nod without saying a word. I don’t know if Rose is a key to finding his wife or if his wife is the key to the missing part of my Rose’s life.
* * *
“I want to meet you. Now,” I shout into my phone after parking my car on the secluded road. I pinch the bridge of my nose to hold on to the thin sliver of control I have left.
“Zander—”
“Don’t even try to make an excuse or else I won’t come alone, but with a fucking party of Rose, Kristy, and Ashcroft.” I can hear her loud gasp through the speaker. “I need answers, Sophia, and I need them now. Give me your address.”
“I can’t give you my address, Zander.”