HIDDEN (Hide Or Die)

Chapter 43

EMILY'S P.O.V.

I felt like my jaw lost a screw and my heart had stopped altogether.

My eyes had to be confused or something because somehow the person lying in a pool of his blood in front of me looked exactly like...him! The man I once believed to be a secret admirer, the same man who admitted to taking Kyle's twin! This couldn't be true; the last time we met, he vanished before my very eyes.

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. My thoughts raced madly as I tried to make sense of everything. I felt a wide range of emotions all at once: dread, confusion, suspicion, happiness, and, most significantly, hope. And they all worked together in making me feel like I'd been dragged into a rollercoaster that I couldn't find a way out.

"Olivia, please stop shaking and try to calm down." The man hissed through his anguish and I was instantly dragged out of my head. I didn't even realize I was trembling until he mentioned it.

Yes, I was concerned by my current situation, my surroundings, and my "roommate's" condition, but what genuinely terrified me was the eternally afraid expression engraved into his bloodied face. I could tell it wasn't just because of the enforcer's terrible treatment; no, it was something else, and I worried that his next words would only make my fears worsen.

And I was right. Unfortunately.

"Olivia, he's here, our baby is here." My entire world froze.

"What?" He wasn't referring to Damon, was he? Please, God, no!

The man struggled to a half-sitting posture, then crawled towards me, shakingly taking my lean hands in his bloodied ones, his tears-red eyes pinned me to the spot, and then he dropped his voice to a whisper, "Olivia, he's here, Damon is here. You have to help me get him out of this awful place. Please."

"No!" I found myself screaming before I could even stop it, and the man immediately put a hand over my mouth.

"Shhhh! You're going to kill us!" He growled, and his blood-red eyes shone brighter, filled with an unfathomable amount of fear as they trailed unblinkingly at the door. After a few minutes of listening for footsteps or any other sounds behind the door and not hearing any, he carefully removed his hand from my mouth and looked at me apologetically.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, staring down at his hands before returning his gaze to me, "they all have sharp hearing."

I gave a robotic nod. " Damon," I muttered, my eyes welling up. My limbs had already been weakened by the drug I had been injected with before my capture, but they now appeared to be frozen completely as a result of shock. I didn't want to believe him, even though there was no reason for him to lie to me, I just didn't want to; so my eyes held his and begged him to elaborate and assure me that he was simply joking. Yes, it wasn't impossible for someone in his current position to want to make jokes about things to lighten their sorrows, and I prayed with all my might that this time was that 0.0001 probability.

"We've been held captive for a while now, I stopped counting after two months." I gasped, and his gaze returned to his hands.

"I'm sorry Olivia, I failed to protect him." Hot tears began to rapidly stream down my cheeks.

"How?! The last time we met, you vanished before my eyes after they injected you with something; what happened to you after that?" I shouted, still in shock. "How did they manage to get their filthy hands on the baby?" The man still couldn't bring himself to look up at me as he sobbed.

"I'm so sorry," he begged once more. "That day I met you and we ran into those enforcers, I had left Damon in the care of my six-year-old son Felix, and so when I was captured and woke up in a room just like this one I was terrified and did something stupid." He returned his gaze down after looking back at me with sorrow.