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It wasn’t the first time he had tried to tell me that my daughter was gone, that there was no one to find, that I was selfish for tying up police resources looking for a kid who statistics clearly said was likely no longer alive to be rescued. Finally, I had had enough. Everyone has a line, and he had crossed it. I might have been sad, desperate for news about my baby, and craving affection, but loneliness was better than attaching myself to a heartless creep like him.
I should have never let him in.Not into my body, my heart, or my life at all. If I had learned anything in the last year, it wasthat cops could not be trusted. Nobody with a badge lived up to their office anymore.Protect and Serve,was a load of crap.
What did they care if a poor single mom’s daughter got snatched from her daycare? Not enough. Nowhere near enough, not even when leaned on, not even when I’d used the internet and the press to seek leads on my own. I’d missed out on a year of her life—would she even remember me? That’s what killed me, missing out on those precious early bonding moments. Would she be calling someone else mommy now? Then, there were the other dark thoughts about who took her and why. But I had to stop myself from going there, I only hoped that whoever had my baby was treating her well.
Soon, likely with Alan’s input, the investigation would go cold, and I alone would be left searching for Michelle. And what could I do alone?
Nothing.
The idea of giving up on Michelle was unthinkable to me. I knew she was out there somewhere—but alive. She couldn’t be otherwise. I couldn’t even fit that idea into my head.
But that didn’t mean I would get to find her. It didn’t mean she would get to be saved. The cops who were supposed to help me do that, didn’t want the job. Alan was just rude and cruel enough to have said aloud what they were all probably thinking. In missing persons cases the first forty-eight hours are the most important, the odds of solving a case decrease by fifty percent after that. My baby had been gone for eleven months, the chance of anyone finding her was practically zero. Maybe I should let go, but how can you let go of your child? You can’t. You have to believe.
As I put some tea to steep, I sent a text message to my grief support group leader, letting her know what had happened.
Knowing Lorelei, she wouldn’t even be up to answer for hours, but I expected her to celebrate once she did so. The whole group had been on me to get rid of Alan, viewing him rightly as an asshole who was abusing me mentally and emotionally. But they didn’t understand. The loneliness was like starving, it made me desperate. Alan had exploited it, plain and simple.
I needed someone to commiserate with. Someone who understood what it was like to live through months of a man’s selfishness and lousy sex when you could remember how wonderful men could be and how amazing, good sex was. But of my friends and support system, those who worked from home probably weren’t awake yet, and those who didn’t were probably rushing through breakfast right now.
After showering, I stripped the bed and put on fresh sheets and pillowcases before lying down. I didn’t want to lie there smelling his cologne and cigarettes. Never again.
Snuggling under the quilt, I sighed and faced the small north window, which had been iced into a blurry white rectangle by the storm. The bed felt vast without Alan there, the bedding generous enough to lose myself under.
Thank God I was ahead on my work. I worked from home as a CPA, but when I’d looked for somewhere for me and Michelle to live, this apartment came up. They needed a maintenance manager, which sounded important, but it was mainly someone to sort out any problems in the other apartments. In return I got a generous discount on the rent, However, one of the suppliers was being an ass, and jobs were left unfinished. The building manager had been okay about it, but said if the work didn’t getdone soon, then they’d have to start charging me full rent. I let my eyes slide closed while I thought about the need to pick up another accounting client if these part delays kept affecting the discount I got on my rent. Otherwise, there would be no making ends meet, on top of everything else.
I fell sleep thinking about money worries, which while not pleasant was much preferable to Alan’s parting tantrum or Michelle’s aching absence, but still a reminder of my brutal waking life. I welcomed oblivion, or even nightmares, just to get a break.
What I got instead was a memory. One that often worked its way into my dreams, waking me panting and frustrated just as it was getting good.
My mystery lover, the man who showed me how good sex could be. He’s here, and I’m not in my bed anymore. I’m stretched out on his hotel bed instead, misted in sweat, shaking, without a stitch on.
He tells me to call him Dimitri. I doubt that’s his real name.
He knows I’ve never had an orgasm. Ever since hearing that, he’s seemed to take it as a challenge.
The lash of his tongue mixes with the hard rhythm of his cock, the feel of my heels digging into his bedclothes, and the blissful look on his face as he thrusts into me. Our voices mixing in delighted cries. His hoarse groan of my name a second before my body takes off, ecstasy erupting through me.
I gasped awake, pussy still spasming, disoriented and confused, and wondering where he had gone. Then came the realization, disappointment, and a small measure of relief.
My mind had found me a distraction, memories of sex so good that it wiped away all those mediocre memories of Alan’s body on mine. Instead, I woke preoccupied with my mystery lover, that man who five years ago had pleasured me to exhaustion and then walked away, oblivious to the gift he’d left me with. A gift that, despite all the hardships it would mean, I had decided to keep.
I’d named her Michelle. And I had cherished her, changed my whole life around for her, worked and saved and struggled and kept on for her. Until the day an unknown woman claiming to be my sister had taken her from her negligent daycare and disappeared.
Michelle, my baby daughter, delicate but tough, soft-hearted like me, an animal lover. Michelle, who loved purple and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t dye her hair at the ripe old age of three. She’d be five on her next birthday, I’d missed almost a year of her life. I knew she had to be alive, because surely if she was dead then I would know?
Michelle, the missing piece of me.
The part Alan had seen as disposable.
Now, I was alone, missing a man from half a decade ago who still haunted my dreams so deliciously. Wondering where he was, and if he ever thought of me. And if he would have helped me to find my sweet child, whom the police were preparing to let slip into oblivion.
Chapter 2
Gregor
“Kill everyone inside. No exceptions. No witnesses. Then burn the place down.”
Vasily’s words echoed in my ears as I sat up in a tree at the bottom of the Ivanov family’s garden. My dark clothing blended with the shadows, I watched their glowing windows and waited for it to grow late enough that they would darken one by one.
