Sufferable Acceptance

Fifty-Three

Theo

I sat in the kitchen with Alfie. We'd just finished work and we were waiting on Marcus to finish up his meeting with Dad so we could plan our next steps. Over the past few days we had isolated and sabotaged all of the Petrovs shipping and delivery systems. It would take them months to rebuild financially. We were so close to finally wiping their supply off the market, and buying out all of their consumers.

"Glad you could make it." Alfie complained as Marcus walked in.

"Not my fault. Lorenzo wanted the full security report."

"Let's get this over with." I complained as I headed to Alfie's room.

The three of us were side by side walking down the hallway when we heard a phone ringing.

I gave a confused look to Marcus who nodded his head telling me it wasn't his phone. I turned to Alfie, and saw the same confused look. His expression changed after a second and he reached for the phone in his pocket. I looked and watched Alfie pull out a phone that neither of us expected to be ringing.

"Amelia? Is that you? Why are you calling?" He asked the person on the other end.

I started to panic. What if something happened to her? What if that's not her? Jesus, I was losing it. I tried leaning into Alfie's shoulder and listening in, but he kept swatting me away. I couldn't hear anything.

Alfie was only on the phone for a few short seconds, but it felt like hours of waiting. Alfie's expression turned grim.

"What happened? Shit Alfie spit it out. Is she ok?"

"She says we need to get everybody out of the house. She says we aren't safe here. I don't know why. She said to take everyone to a safe house and bring only the people we needed to bring."

"What else did she say?!"

"Nothing, after that she hung up."

"So she's ok?" I started to get more worried.

"I don't know, but we don't have time to worry about that right now. Go wake up Theresa. Marcus, go tell Lorenzo we're leaving. I'll grab Charlie."

I tried focusing on getting the family to the safehouse to distract me from thinking about Amelia, but it didn't work. Charlie ran past me into Ava and Oli's rooms. I saw him wake them up, and I decided to head to the basement and pack some essentials. I didn't know what was about to go down, but I wanted to be prepared. I grabbed some weapons, and first aid kits and loaded up the car. Alfie said we weren't bringing anyone that wasn't immediate family or Gio and Marcus. Everyone else was being asked to stay at the house, and watch over it.

Dad took off first with Mom, the twins, and Gio. I waited back with everyone else as we prepped the house, and locked everything up. There was barely enough room for the four of us, plus everything I'd packed. It was going to be a long drive to the safe house.

*****

Two days. We hadn't heard from Amelia in two days. After the phone call she didn't text once. She missed every check-in. We got to the safe house, unpacked and since then we've just been sitting here waiting for something to happen. Alfie doesn't even know why we rushed out so quickly. The only person who did know was Amelia and she was missing.

"Marcus, track her phone." I begged.

"You know I can't Theo that's the whole point. There's nothing I can do."

"That's bullshit, there has to be something we can do! She's out there somewhere and I need to find her. She could be hurt, or stranded or worse, she could be de-" I didn't even have the strength to say it out aloud.