CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
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Ella
I woke from the most delicious dream about Calder with a smile on my face, the phantom sensation of his hands still ghosting over my skin as his sensual and sonorous voice still echoed inside my head. I hummed in contentment and stretched languidly on the bed. I remembered spending all day yesterday with him as he spoiled and doted on my little girl. I remembered the night before when the sharp and wondrous sting of his paddle had finally quelled the guilt of leaving him that had been eating at my heart for so long. I remembered when he told me that he forgave me and loved me, then showed me with his body how much that was true.
I felt whole and happy for the first time in so very long. I loved him so much, and I couldn't wait until we could share a bed every night and wake up together every morning. I desperately wanted to wake up to the feel of Calder's hands on me for real, but we had to be patient and wait until the appropriate time to tell Violet about us. We talked about it before he left last night, and I was grateful that he agreed and understood that. The last thing I wanted was to upset her so soon after losing her father, even if Ray had been a bastard.
I opened my eyes to the morning sunshine that was gleaming through the room's gauzy curtains, then rolled over to face my daughter's side of the bed only to find it empty. I frowned. Violet rarely rose before me, especially after a busy day like yesterday. I stilled and listened. The house was quiet except for the low whir of the central air conditioning. I sat up and listened again. Still nothing. My frown deepened.
"Violet!?" I called out as I flung the covers off myself.
There was no answer, and the first stirrings of panic began to flicker to life inside me. I glanced at the nightstand and saw that Violet's tablet wasn't there. Maybe she took it into the bathroom or downstairs and was so engrossed in it that she didn't hear me. Lord knew she could tune out just about anything when she had her nose buried it that damn thing. I jumped out of bed and hurried down the hall to the upstairs bathroom. The room was empty with the door wide open. I checked the other bedrooms, and didn't find her either.
"Violet?!" I called out again as my heart began to pound in my chest. There was still no reply. A feeling of foreboding fell over me, making my blood run cold.
I hurried downstairs and rushed from the living room, to the dining room, and finally to the kitchen searching for her, but my daughter was nowhere to be found. I clenched my fists as a wave of fear swept through me.
"Violet!" I yelled, my voice panicked and quavering now. "You answer me right now, young lady!" Nothing.
I took the hallway back toward the stairs and peered into the downstairs bathroom. It was empty too, but Violet's tablet was sitting abandoned on the vanity. I walked in and picked it up in a daze as my stomach roiled with fear. Where was my baby?
I whirled and went back into the kitchen and stopped in the middle of the room, my eyes darting frantically around the room. That was when I noticed that Violet's flip flops were missing from where they usually sat by the back door. Okay. Maybe she went outside. She knew better than to go outside without letting me know about it first, but she could be impulsive at times. I strode forward and reached out to unlock the door, but found that it was already unlocked. I felt even sicker.
I flew out the door in my pajamas onto the small deck on the back of the house, and looked out across the small fenced in lawn toward the alley that ran along the back of Evan's property line. My eyes widened, and my heart stopped when I focused on the chain-link fence at the back of the yard. The gate out into the alley was hanging wide open.
"Violet!" I hollered as I ran down the deck steps then across the grass to the gate. I rushed out into the middle of the alley and swept my gaze up and down the crumbling pavement stretching in both directions. "Violet!" I screamed out loudly. My only reply was the faint creaking sound of the gate swinging in the breeze behind me. "Where are you, baby?" I sobbed out in a raw and ragged voice as tears burned my eyes. They dripped down my cheeks as I clutched my baby's tablet to my chest in a death grip. A deep pit of agony opened up inside me, and I just knew something was horribly, horribly wrong. I needed to call the police. I had to find my baby. I turned and sprinted back across the yard and into the house, then hurried upstairs to find my phone.
I went into my room and flung the tablet onto the bed, then froze and stared at it. I had the sudden and inexplicable gut feeling that my answer might be right here in front of me. I picked it back up again, and woke it up to find a messaging app still open. I saw that a recent video call had come through late last night from someone I didn't recognize. What the hell? Who was Violet talking to?
I opened up her recent text messages and started scrolling through them. Whoever it was had been communicating back and forth with my daughter for weeks. As I scrolled through more messages, one word caught my eye and sent icy terror streaking through my body in a instant. Pumpkin. They called my daughter, pumpkin, and there was only one person on earth who had ever called Violet that, her father, Raymond Voss, my dead husband. The tablet dropped from my suddenly limp fingers and thumped onto the floor at my feet.
I couldn't breath. I couldn't even think. No. It couldn't be. It was impossible. Ray couldn't be alive. He just couldn't be. No, no, no. A strange keening noise came up out of me as I backed away from the vile tablet. The backs of my thighs hit the side of the bed, and I dropped down hard as my knees buckled. I squeezed my eyes shut as pure terrified panic swept through me, my heart racing and my body shaking. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
Somehow, I managed to hold on to my sanity, and eventually began sucking in deep breaths as I tried to keep it together. Losing it right now wasn't going to get my daughter back to me. I needed to calm down so I could think. Finally, my brain began to function again. I opened my eyes to see the tablet lying on the floor in front of me. I leaned down and snatched it up. I typed in a text message, then took a deep breath and hit send.
Where is Violet?
I stared at the screen for what felt like an eternity waiting for a reply, hoping this was all some horrible mistake or a nightmare that I'd wake from any second. Neither happened, and instead of a text reply, a notification for an incoming video call popped up. I answered the call with a trembling hand. I gasped when the video finally filled the screen, and gaped in horror at the face I thought I would never see again and now proved that this was indeed a nightmare, just a very very real one.
"Hello, my darling," Ray said, his familiar and intimidating voice smug and condescending.
I shivered as I took in every hard and cruel line of a face that I could never forget. I remembered how he'd hijacked my life and stole it from me. I remembered how much I hated him, and how long I lived in fear with my own daughter held over my head to control me. It all came rushing back. I thought I was finally free of all that, of him. I thought I would never feel any of this again, but now it all came pouring back in an instant and made me feel physically ill.
"Ray," I whispered as the bile churning in my empty stomach threatened to come up.
"Surprise," he said with a vile grin. "It seems that the report of my death was an exaggeration."
"Where's Violet?" I demanded fiercely, ignoring his poor attempt at humor and refusing to stroke his ego by asking how he'd somehow faked his death in that plane crash. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting my Violet back.
"She's safe with her father, and away from the influence of her whore of a mother," he snarled out as he glared balefully at me. "My little girl told me all about your new boyfriend she saw you kissing, and how you spent the night with him and dragged my daughter along with you. Something tells me there was a whole hell of a lot more going on than just kissing. Am I right, Ella?"
"You cheated on me for years, Ray," I blurted out angrily. "How dare you-"
"Shut up!" he shouted with rage darkening his eyes. "I'm going to make this simple for you, you little fucking whore. I don't know who this man is you're seeing, but it stops now. If you ever want to see Violet again you will end things with him and come to me alone tonight at midnight. This is nonnegotiable. You are my wife. You belong to me." He leaned in closer to the camera. "Don't you ever forget that I own you," he added in a low threatening growl that made my heart stutter in my chest. "If you call the police or don't show up, you will never see Violet again." His intense dark-green eyes glittered with a dark and deadly malice that chilled me to the bone, and before I could even form a reply past the hard lump of fear in my throat, Ray's image winked out as the call abruptly ended.
I sat there in stunned and stupefied silence, until several seconds later when Ray sent me an address that I knew was deep in the worst part of The Armpit, a place I never wanted to set foot in again. A harsh and guttural sob tore up out of my chest as I slipped off the edge of the bed to the floor and curled up into a ball on my side, consumed by bitter pain and sorrow.
I don't know how long I stayed there crying hysterically, lost and afraid. How could I walk away from Calder again and have my heart and soul survive? How could he survive it at all? All I could picture was Calder turning to heroin again after I left him a second time, and this time I knew it would kill him. I would kill him. I was torn between the two people I cared about most in this world, my child and the love of my life. Torn between the old pathetic me that always did whatever Ray said to keep the peace so I could protect Violet and myself, and the newer stronger me that didn't want to let that bastard control me anymore.
I couldn't let Ray have my daughter. I couldn't break the promise I made never to leave Calder again. There had to be a way to get Violet back without destroying Calder in the process or handing myself over to that horrible man. There had to be. I felt helplessly trapped and all alone, and I didn't know what to do, but then with sudden clarity, I realized that I wasn't alone like I had been these last twelve years. I wasn't without help. I had Calder now.
Though Ray might be powerful and ruthless, Calder was a powerful force in his own right. He was a survivor, a fighter. He'd been tempered into steel by the cruel and merciless environment of The Armpit. He fought his way out and overcame his addiction to become the strong successful man he was today. If anyone stood a chance of helping me against Raymond Voss, it was my Cal.
With my decision made, I was finally able to pull myself back together. I took a deep fortifying breath and stood up on my own two feet. Then I picked up my phone off the nightstand to call the one man I knew I could trust completely with my daughter's life, and my own.