Two Months Later
I stood before the mirror, staring at myself like an anxious teenager before his first date. Do I take flowers? No. She isn’t that kind of girl. She would want French fries, a stiff drink, and a hug. Unless she changed. I prayed to a god in whom I didn’t believe, begging her to be without clue, without awareness of the damage done to her, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Demons in hell are capable of converting even the most horrific evil into its own poison. Someone took her, hurt her, shattered what we rebuilt together. Please don’t change. It’s my fault. It’s my fault. Still. Always.
I latched onto the counter, nerves crippled as my knuckles whitened. Two months passed—two months since she was taken from me, two months of torture and grief. Two months of her wondering why I never came. I never stopped looking. I needed to remind myself. She would understand; she knew about my life. She understood and accepted it—one of the traits I adored about her, her unconditional love—no matter how much we both despised my life, my family. And I never stopped looking.
I was sick, standing there while realization poured its filthy notions into my soul. I let them take her from me. I’m the monster, the failure. I’d found her, but no information about the tortuous interim, no clue the damage done to her body and soul. Will she run from me? Will she want to see me? Her last words to me as they pulled her away radiated in my mind, their painful potency stabbing my soul. I love you. But she wouldn’t anymore. I was sure of it. How could she, after I wasn’t able to save her, to protect and prevent whatever damage had been done? I just need to see her. I need to know she is alive. She would never be safe, not while living alone, working with them, but I dedicated myself to never leaving her again. I would always have an eye, an ear, waiting for her.
My blood flowed with determined revenge, desperate for time to pass so the answer to our mystery was already in our past and we could move on with the future we promised one another.
My closet overflowed with files and scraps of information Liam and I spent two months sorting through. There were hopeless trails, bounties of information that left us spinning in circles until our backs smashed into each other. I closed the door as I passed the pit of information and suits on my way out of the bedroom. I’m going to see her.
Without second thought, without allowing my nerves to belittle my heart, I went into the parking garage and sped off toward the Common. Traffic, the icy rain falling on snow-covered Boston, and lethargic pedestrians would not threaten my trip. I parked two blocks away and turned off the ignition. Move, you bastard. Just MOVE. I couldn’t. All I thought in that brief moment before stepping into the salted sidewalk was how I lost the woman I love.
I flipped the collar on my coat, covering my ears while I marched through the cold winter air. The flow of people in and out of the shop never ended. Life was normal, a flurry of activity, but I knew as well as anyone how deceiving appearances were. Even the ideal, perfect American family held the darkest, most deviant secrets. Mine was one of them, the utmost of privilege and evil, captivating society with appearances, destroying lives for our own pleasure. I despise it.
“Excuse me.” I was shoved by pedestrians crossing the street while the traffic lights changed. I hadn’t realized. I simply stood there, watching the icy rain patter against the windows of the coffee shop. Petrified. The glass panes were frosted from inside, signaling a blissful moment of studying, coffee, and hot cocoa. Make it so damn hot that it will burn off his skin. The people inside didn’t have an inkling as to what devious deals and murderous plotting occurred within those walls…and how magnificent the heart of its owner was. Was. Is. I hope.
There I was, with a trembling hand reaching for the knob, heart pounding in my stomach, and fucking terrified. The door swung open with my hand in the air before three college students tumbled into me, the smell of her coffee shop flowing out in their wake. I felt it. She was finally there. She’s back.
The ink in my shoulder, the permanency of her mark on my heart, burned as I crept into the shop. She told me she loved me, and I couldn’t save her; I couldn’t keep her like I promised. But someone kept her alive—to torture her, to torture me. A warning. A challenge. I was prepared, determined, my ammunition of methods in which to kill instilled within the coldest part of my soul. And yet, it left me in that moment. Breathing, beating, thinking. Gone.
My soul abandoned me, as I knew she felt I did to her, when I saw her across the shop. It all left, but in the same moment I was alive, renewed, and utterly destroyed. She was barely exposed, leaning against a wall behind the espresso machine, eyes locked on him. I wanted to know what he told her about it, if he told her what a piece of shit he was, and his entire family. I want to kill him.
I waited, silently observing the pair as he blabbed on and her graying eyes suggested nothing but loss. Shit. I told her what I knew weeks ago. Then why is she still here with him? My palms twitched at my side, my muscles fighting the urge to take the gun from my back and end his life. And rescue her. Her laugh tore me from the delusion, my body floating toward the sound as though completely out of my control. The sound of a Siren, a song dissolving all hate, pain, and evil from my soul with her simple giggle. I need her. I need her mouth.
The space filled while my feet anchored. What the hell do I say? How do I start? I need her. I tried to move, but only my eyes were forgiving, consuming the vision across from me. I was too damn strong for the silence and paralysis with which my body taunted me, and she was entirely my weakness.
She laughed once more at something he said, her body slinking further into the light. Where it belongs. Holy fu—Her eyes locked on mine, and the world stopped. All of it. Everything. Silent, but for the pulse of my heart raging in my skull. It was two seconds. Two beautiful seconds in which my soul willed hers to acknowledge mine, waiting for her to permit me to run across the shop and consume her. Two seconds observing the passive nature in which her gaze fell from mine and she returned to him. I stepped forward, my heart aching. She stood at the bakery case, responding to questions from patrons. I heard her voice over all others, the sound piercing my soul while its song fastened my heart. Her gaze met mine once more. Nothing.
I occupied a table near the window, hidden behind patrons and wooden crates, hoping the moment would come. It never did. And damn myself, the pathetic pompous bastard who let her go, let her slip away into the routine of her life and give her reason to truly believe our love failed. I ruined her. I was the reason she ignored me, the reason her vacant eyes expressed nothing to me of our history.
I returned three more times, my soul solidifying with its pernicious punishment. Our gazes refused to meet, while mine adhered to hers with curious observation as I contemplated every disastrous way I could isolate her in that space and take her home. It was during my fifth visit, the one my heart prepared its speech and promise to her, that Elliott confirmed my desire to kill him. He bubbled with artificial life, a destructive consequence of his addiction, while informing me he was working alone at the shop. His best friend was ill, placed back into the care of her physician because of her migraines. She was in too much pain; she wasn’t remembering routine things. She couldn’t remember. He spoke of her health, her shattered mind, too casually for our business relationship, and followed up with a question of which coffee I wanted on the house. I am the god damned house.
I pounded on Doctor Monroe’s intercom, slamming everyone’s doorbell in my hysteria, while the frozen rain poured onto me. I deserved it. All of it. I deserved to freeze to death. I deserved to be forgotten. She did not deserve this. Any of it.
“Julian?” He approached from behind, his eyes squinting with confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“When Liam and I came to you…when she went missing…” I couldn’t speak. My lungs and throat battled for precedence, stubbornly outdoing the other. “She’s…the nurses…”
Monroe’s palm lifted to my shoulder, but I shoved away his touch, unable to accept affection or calm. She doesn’t deserve this. He walked around me and opened the door to his building, ushering me inside. We were silent in the elevator, the hallway, and mute but for my panting breaths until he closed us off from his family in his study. He has a daughter. Keep it together.
“They’re at piano lessons until six.” He read my mind. “We have some time. It’s about her? Your friend?”
“Yes.” She is so much more. She is my heart, my soul, my fucking oxygen. God! I am going to rip the throats from whoever took her, did this to her, threatened us…take a breath.
“She’s with a doctor. Somewhere. I don’t know who it is. When Liam and I came to you that night she was taken—”
“I remember. We considered something bigger at play with your friend. The nurses, they couldn’t remember anything or were paid off to tell you they didn’t know. Right. I advised you of my history with patients experiencing traumatic brain injuries and memory loss and, while difficult, it isn’t impossible for memories to return.”
I looked at him, watching his wrinkled forehead curve and straighten while processing. “I went to see her, Monroe. I found her.”
“Liam told me.” God damned snitch.
I shook my head, shelving plans to murder my brother. “Four times. Four, and she looked right through me. I know my girl, Monroe. She is one stubborn, lethal little thing, and there was nothing there. Her friend advised me her migraines sent her back to her doctor, and she couldn’t remember routine things. Monroe, I was a damn routine! Me! Us! Do you have any idea what hell this has been?”
“Yes. I take your vitals monthly, Julian. You’re about to have a stroke or heart attack.” He nestled onto the corner of his desk, arms crossed along his chest while waiting for me to stop talking or die.
“I wish I would. If I wasn’t here, if she hadn’t met me…”
“You wouldn’t have met her,” he whispered. “I’ll look into who may be her doctor, but Julian?” I stopped staring at the window, my glare snapping straight into the eyes of my family’s physician. “Headaches. Forgetting routine things. Appearing to not want to talk with you…after whatever she went through…”
“It isn’t her. She would be the first voice to scream at me, the first fist to fly against me. She’s too stubborn. That woman, that shell of my love…there’s something else. It’s like she forgot. Or wanted to. Nobody could forget what we felt, what we shared. Doc?”
“Forced amnesia. Julian—” He paused while moving around his desk to search through a series of folders on a heavy shelf. “I told you it’s not impossible. It is difficult for memories to return, Julian, but not impossible. Of course, it depends on the type of injury—whether the injury is physical and irreparable, or damage to the psyche that can be repaired through intense therapeutic efforts. If, in fact, whoever held her captive had the means, it is possible to force memories from one’s mind.” No. Who. The. Fuck. I was sick, my stomach churning into my throat. My skin was melting, the heat fanning behind my eyes, blurring my vision. Someone took her, they took us. And then it hit me—she knew this was happening.
“She told me.” I paused to catch my breath. I knew the entire time and was too blinded by desperation to find her that I missed it. “She knew someone was doing this to her. She knew, Monroe. In the hospital, she told me she stopped taking their medication. They were trying to take her from me. She knew, and I let it happen. I promised her I wouldn’t let it happen.”
“You can get them back, get her back. She won’t be the same, and neither will you, and there’s a chance she may not remember.”
I turned from the window, my arms so tightly bound across my chest that my lungs ached. “How do I do it?”
Monroe scanned through his files, pulling scraps and anecdotes into a pile for our review. It was a bounty of research, jargon beyond my capacity in that moment because I wanted to die. I deserved it. Torture, pain, all of it.
“Are you hearing what I’m telling you, Julian?” His palm was on my shoulder again, but I didn’t jump that time. In fact, I barely recognized him at my side, us in that room. I had only the thought of her in my mind and missed all of what he told me. It was his summary that confirmed the possibility.
“Only you can do it,” he informed me. “If she knew something was amiss, you’re one step ahead of them. There is research out there to suggest you could, in other words, jolt something in her mind. If you’re determined, even intimidating, it may help. You’re privileged, and whether or not she remembers the truth of your family, there is plenty of reason to suspect. Be who she would assume you to be, be extreme, and it might wriggle free something within her memory.”
“Her mind is incredible, Monroe.”
“Then it won’t take you too long to get her back, Julian. But you need to be strong. Your methods need to be strong. Here.” He handed me the pile of documents. “Read these. Now. The only way you’ll get her mind to switch, to get her back, is to be strong.”
To get her back, I needed to be the one person I always hated the most. Julian Patrick Molloy.