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We wait in silence as we hear the door open.
“Amari?” he calls again.
Every second, wiping away hope.
“She’s not here. The window is open…” His tone has now changed, no longer as confident as it once was.
“We fought.” He sounds shaken and confused. “She wanted to go meet some boy. Something about a painting and a charity event. He was leaving town. I told her she wasn’t to leave the house. She must’ve gone through the window. I don’t understand why she would do this.”
Sickness swirls in my stomach, rising to my throat as the room starts to sway.
“Fuck!” Ren’s fist hits the table, a loud bang echoing through the room, he too knowing this is real.
“Tell me right now,” his father bellows through the phone. “What is going on? Where is my daughter?”
Ren’s head drops and so does mine, looking straight at the picture of Amari, smiling unfazed with Sergei’s arm wrapped around her.
“He has her!” Ren’s voice explodes “Who the fuck was watching her? How could she just leave and no one fucking see anything?”
“What? I…” his father is beside himself.
But I don’t think Ren is yelling at his father, but to everyone around, to himself, to the world. After telling his father he will bring her home, he hangs up.
“We should have taken him out earlier, like I said,” Tommy roars, directing his anger at Dante.
It’s loud, as they let their fear and rage overwhelm them, shouting, cursing, arguing. It all rolls into one deafening gut-wrenching noise.
We thought we had everything covered. We thought we were ready.
But he has Amari, and visions of the girls in the containers, the things he said he’s responsible for, is all I see. He’s a monster, with no feelings. He uses people, bends them to their will and it’s all my fault. This family is falling apart right in front of me, and if I just did what Sergei said I could have stopped all of this. Darkness has settled inside me, the crashing weight of reality shattering any hopes and dreams I had.
I don’t know how much time has passed.
I haven’t moved.
I can’t.
Even with the commotion all around me, pained voices, chaos, my body is frozen. I didn’t even realise Ren had dropped to his knees in front of me until he lifts my chin up to look at him.
“Baby, are you okay?” His eyes somehow manage to soften when it’s me that should be asking him that question.
I don’t answer because I can’t, there are no words.
“We knew something was coming, just didn’t know what. Now we know. Now we can fix it.”
“Ren?” My voice breaks, but how can I tell him there’s only one way this ends, one way to save Amari from pain. “She can’t stay with him.”
Not for a day, an hour, a minute.
“She isn’t going to stay with him. We are going to get her back.” He traces his fingers along my face, caressing my skin, showing me soft when all that’s raging in him is fury.
My eyes well and I nod, even though I want to say more. I want to tell him to swap me for her. To tell him how unsafe she is in his possession. But I have to trust him to get her back and I don’t want him to think of the pain, and seditious things Sergei is capable of doing to his sister. Why would I?
“The photo is in his apartment,” I say, and at least there is something I can contribute other than burdening this family with my mess.
Abruptly he stands, calling out orders for more men to leave for Sergei’s apartment. He takes my hand and pulls me up from the chair and leads us out of the dining room toward his office. The boys follow, storming through the foyer until the front door flies open and stops us all in our tracks.
Ren’s father barges toward us, with red puffy eyes and a murderous face. Ren drops my hand and walks to meet him.
