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* * *
Jessica
Jessica woke up to an empty bed. She found the note Matt had left her ‘Out to handle some business. Be back soon, beautiful.’ and smiled. God, how she loved those small handwritten notes from Matt. She brushed her teeth and took a shower. She hoped Matt would be back by the time she was done with her shower, but when she got out of the bathroom, he still wasn’t back. Confused, she dialed his phone, but he didn’t pick up.
I wonder if I should dial again or if he is busy in a meeting or something important?
She decided to wait a bit more, so she grabbed some water from the fridge and fixed herself a bowl of cereal for breakfast. She prepared coffee on the French press and tried watching some TV to kill time, but her mind was restless.
Where was Matt?
She glanced at the clock. It had been more than an hour since she had woken up. Feeling bored, she decided to go down to the main lobby to check it out for herself. Maybe someone working there would know where Matt went so early in the morning, so Jessica got dressed in a golden dress and did her makeup lightly. She grabbed her phone and keys, then unlocked the penthouse door. She then let out a scream, which was quickly cut off by a cloth clamped around her mouth. The chloroform in the piece of cloth kicked in, and her body went limp at the hands of her attacker.
* * *
Matt
It had taken longer than Matt had expected for his accountant to arrange the huge sum of money requested by the Coretti brothers. He checked his phone and saw a missed call from Jessica.
Shit.
He hurried back to their penthouse. The door was locked, so he used his key to get in.
“Jessica, I’m back,” He called out, But there was no sign of her in the bedroom. He checked the bathroom in case she was taking a shower, but she wasn’t there as well. He called her number, but it was turned off.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
He looked out on the balcony, then came back and double-checked the suite. Jessica was nowhere to be found.
42
It was still early in the day. The hands on the clock on the bedside table pointed to 7. The sun hadn’t even begun to shine at its full capacity. It was as if it was also having a lazy morning and didn’t want to rush to start the day. Matt was standing in the middle of the room, breathing hard. He had done several searches of the whole place, trying to find Jessica. The room was completely empty. Matt was the only person in the entire suite. He had looked for clues in the hopes that they would lead him to her but found nothing. For a second, he thought that this couldn’t possibly be happening. He had just wired the money to the Coretti brothers. Surely, they wouldn’t break their word and take Jessica against their agreement. Not even they would be stupid enough to cause such unnecessary conflict and dare anger Matt’s family. After all, the Coretti brothers had a worse reputation than Matt, but they were all but barking pups when it came to the position of his family in the community. Still, where was Jessica? Why was she not here where he had left her?
He tried her phone again. It was probably the fifth time in a matter of a couple minutes that he had called her, but it always rang and rang until that machine-automated voice told him that he had reached her voicemail. Jessica hadn’t even bothered to put her own voice message there. She had just kept on using whatever setting came with the phone. He was in the bedroom now, and as he held the phone to his ear calling Jessica, he felt something vibrate under the sheets. He frantically felt the bed, and his hand found a phone under the messy sheets. He took it out and saw that it was Jessica’s. It showed six missed calls from Matt and a text message from the phone server. She had left her phone back in the suite, so whatever plans Matt was forming to track her down through GPS tracking services were squashed with that. He felt the urge to throw the phone across the room but controlled himself at the nick of time and threw it on the bed aggressively.
Shit.
Although the TV was playing in the background, Matt couldn’t hear anything louder than the sound of his heart beating in his chest and the ringing in his ears that suggested rising panic. He had never felt this way before under any sort of situation, and he had been into a lot of them, but nothing had ever been as bad as the possibility of Jessica being in danger. Nothing had ever shaken him ever so hard that, for the first time in his life, he was actually scared. He couldn’t even conceive the idea of something bad being done to her. He just couldn’t. He told himself that if she had indeed been kidnapped by the Coretti brothers, they would gain nothing by causing her any harm. They had to know that to get anything in return for a hostage, they had to make sure the hostage was untouched, but this logic didn’t help Matt’s raging heart one bit. He could tell himself nothing to ease the blinding panic that gripped his heart and made him forget all reason.
Fuck, I’m scared.
Matt shook his head, trying to get the negative thoughts out of it. He couldn’t think of the worst-case scenarios right now. He had to think straight and cook up a plan and fast.
Think, think, think. What can be the course of action for me now?
This was something Matt always asked himself when he was under pressure and needed to make a quick decision. He urged himself to calm down just a little for his brain to start working again after the terrible shock.
The bodyguards!
Matt took out his phone from his pocket again and dialed the number of one of the bodyguards assigned to Jessica while he was away. Originally, Nash and George were designated to be her bodyguards. They were some of the most trusted people in his employ. Although, just this morning, he had taken them with him when he went to transfer the money because they had previous experience with such dealings, while he entrusted his own bodyguards with the responsibility to look over Jessica for the small window of time Matt was away.
The phone rang for a while. Matt was getting angry and was about to hang up when someone picked up the call.
“Mr. Miller, this must be you. Hello, I’m Lucio Coretti,” said a deep voice with an Italian accent from the other end. Matt was instantly alert, and his hand gripped the phone tighter.
“Where is she?” he ground out.
“Perfectly safe, not to worry,” replied the elder Coretti brother. “And so is your sorry excuse of a bodyguard. You know, for one of the most influential families in the business, you guys sure have very poor protection services. Might want to improve on that next time.
