“I’ll tell you this, you’re a lot smarter than your dad.” The mayor laughed heartily while he stared at me with cold eyes. “My father was in this business for years. He told me I needed to recruit someone to help with the business. I was friends with your dad. He was poor. I figured I had the perfect guy. I didn’t anticipate him becoming a loser, though. How is your drunk of a father, by the way?”
“Don’t you ever—” I moved forward to go and hit him, but Vincent grabbed my arm and stopped me.
“It wasn’t easy.” The mayor looked at us with a baffled expression. “I thought he would have jumped at the chance to make some extra money, what with him having none. But he wasn’t interested in hearing about any of my schemes. He just wanted to go to college, get a degree, and find a good job.
“So why did you have to take that away from him?” The words fell out-of-my mouth. What sort of evil person would deliberately do that to someone else?
“He stole the woman I loved.” His expression changed. “From the moment, I laid eyes on your mother, I knew. She was the one for me. She was my everything. And then your dad stole her, and I begged her to take me back. I told her I’m rich, I have the money, I can take care of you. And she said to me she didn’t care. Money meant nothing to her. She loved your dad and wanted to see where it went with him. Well, I took care of that.” He laughed bitterly. “She never had to worry about having too much money or that she was with him for anything but love.”
“How could you do that? You had Maddie’s mother.”
“Ha, I never loved her.” He shook his head. “She gave me Maddie, who is the light of my life. But I’ve never loved her or felt the same passion as I did for your mom.”
“You’re an evil man.” I stepped towards him unseeing but ready to hurt. My heart sagged with pain and the thirst for revenge and I wanted to make him cry out. I wanted to hear him scream for my forgiveness. I wanted to make him pay. Vincent must have seen the look in my eyes because he reached forward and grabbed my shoulders. I tried to push him off of me, and he tightened his grip. “Let me go,” I growled at him and his eyes pleaded with me to stop.
The mayor looked at us both in disgust and was about to step forward when his phone rang. He frowned and pulled it out and answered it.
“Hello, dear, what is it? I’m busy.” His face paled and I saw him look at me quickly. “They took Maddie? What? How much? Don’t call the police yet.” He hung up and faced me, his face as white as a sheet. “What have you done with Maddie?”
“What are you talking about?” I felt faint as I stared at him. All my worst fears were coming true and I was scared to hear what he was going to say. All of my anger and hatred faded as worry seeped into my heart. I was scared that he was going to tell me that something bad had happened to Maddie.
“Maddie has been kidnapped.” His voice cracked. “They want me to deliver a million dollars for her safe recovery. They called my wife.” He looked away from me. “They said they would kill her if I didn’t give them the money.”
“Who took her?” I heard the words but they didn’t seem like they were coming out of my mouth. I had a bad feeling that I knew who had taken her. Everything around me seemed like it was spinning out of control, and all I could think was, what had I done?
“I was hoping you would tell me that.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at me and Vincent. “Where’s the third brother?”
“Home.” I swallowed hard, not wanting to believe Jared had anything to do with it. He was my brother. I knew he hated Maddie, but he also knew that I loved her. I didn’t want to believe that he could do this to me or to her, but as I thought back to the last few conversations we had had, I started to think that maybe he thought this was the only way. The mayor’s phone rang again and he answered it quickly. “Hello.” He spoke quickly and then he put it on speakerphone so we could all hear it.
“I have your daughter. I want a million dollars by eight p.m. tonight or I will kill her.” The voice sounded calm, and Vincent and I exchanged a worried look.
“Where is my daughter?” The mayor shouted into the phone. “I will have you arrested.”
“You can’t do anything to make my life any worse than it is. But I can make yours a lot worse. Trust me.” There was a sudden noise and then a high-pitched scream. “I will call you back in a few hours. Do not call the police or get anyone else involved, or you will not see Maddie alive again.” And then the phone went dead. We all stood there in shock and fright and I stared at Vincent wordlessly. I didn’t know what to say or do. I had to find Maddie and save her. There was no way I could live with myself if anything happened to her, but I was also scared about what would happen to her kidnapper. I knew I would do anything to get her back safely, but I also knew that it could cost me everything. Because I knew the voice on the phone. I knew who had kidnapped Maddie. It was Jared.
Chapter 13
Maddie
I shivered in the cold room and tried to keep my eyes open, though it was really hard because I hadn’t been to sleep as yet. I pinched myself in an attempt to stay awake and tried not to scream when I saw something scurry across the room. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. I saw Jared pacing up and down in the corner with a gun in his hands and I looked away quickly. I was scared and frazzled, and I knew I was out of it. I really needed to sleep for a few hours to refresh my brain, but I hadn’t been able to.
Jared had called me twice last night. The first two times I hadn’t picked up the phone as I had been busy with Joey and then with Logan. But when I saw his second missed call, I knew something was up. And then he called a third time, about five minutes after Logan had left, and he had asked me to come down to meet him outside, and now here I was. I looked around the sparse room and thought that it was straight out of a movie scene. I almost smiled to myself at just how surreal everything felt. I felt like I was an actress playing a role, though I’d never practiced being kidnapped before. All my senses were working in overdrive, and I buried my face in my lap for a moment, while I tried to gather my thoughts.
“Do you have any water?” I asked him quietly. My throat was dry and I really needed something to drink.
“No.” he shook his head. He stared down at the gun, and I shivered at the sight of the metallic weapon. “Sorry, I didn’t think about that.”