Untamed (New York Unraveled #1)

Chapter Six.

NATHAN.

It had been a whole day and a half since I'd talked to or seen Karen and I was starting to get tensed. There had been no word from her. She didn't even inform me that she was going to miss work. I was also pissed because it was obvious there was something wrong and this bitch wouldn't open her mouth until I forced her to puke it out. After I'd done so much to make her trust me, she ultimately still didn't. And this made me want to really strangle her.
"State hospital, Buffalo," I told the driver as I got into my Maybach like a man possessed.
In my agitation, I had totally forgotten that I was supposed to be meeting my parents for dinner. So naturally, when mother called me, I said in a gruff voice, "I'm busy," like I would have to any other person.
"You were supposed to be here half an hour ago, Nathan," said my mother in her prim, controlled voice.
I cursed under my breath. "I'm going to be a little late, mother."
"Why?"
We had reached the hospital by then so I dismissed her hastily, knowing full well it would cost me dearly later. "I'll tell you later. I gotta go now. Bye."
When I walked down the aisles, everybody stepped aside to give me a wide berth. Even the disabled people rolled away on their wheelchairs. Seeing my furious expression, I didn't have to tell the receptionist twice to give me information about Karen's mother. She didn't even ask whether I was family or not.
"She passed away last morning, sir. The body was handed over to her daughter," informed the receptionist.
"Are you sure you're not making a mistake?" I demanded.
"I'm very positive, sir," she said in a slightly shaky voice.
That's why she wasn't picking up her phone. She probably didn't even know where it was. I couldn't imagine what she was going through. But I could imagine what she must be doing to herself.
"Can I help you with anything else, sir?" The receptionist's voice brought me back to reality. I must have been standing there for quite a while.
Without gracing her with an answer, I turned on my heel and stalked back to my car. I knew her address but I didn't have it memorized. This led to wasting fifteen minutes in trying to access the database of my employees to retrieve that little piece of information.
I tried to call her again. Thrice. But this time it was switched off. Fuck.
She lived in a studio apartment in a pretty okayish area of the city. It was clean and everything, but the crime rate around the place was very high which didn't exactly reassure me about her going home late at night.
12-C.
I knocked on the purple wooden door of the studio apartment. A minute later, a petite girl in the skimpiest clothes ever opened the door. She looked like something straight out of a porn movie with the way she was dressed up and all the assets she was showing. For a second I thought I'd come to the wrong address.
"I'm looking for Karen," I stated.
Her lips formed an 'O'. "I'm presuming you're Nathan Black?"
I lowered my eyebrows. "Yes."
She nodded slowly, with her mouth still open, and retreated to get Karen. The girl that came into my vision looked like a ghost of my Karen. Her face was paler than ever, her eyes were puffy like she had been crying for a decade, her lips were blood red and tear stains seemed to have taken a permanent residence on her cheeks.
"Hey. I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was not going to come today," she said. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach like that would hold herself together.
"That's what you're sorry about?" I said dubiously.
She gazed at me questioningly with her head cocked to one side.
I caressed her cheek. "I remember telling you to call me if you need me. Turns out you really don't, do you?" I said softly.
"My mother died, Nathan. We had her funeral today," she whispered, her lower lip starting to tremble.
"I know," I said and took her in my arms. As if on cue, her tears started to shower down her face again. Her whole body shook convulsively. I could hear her heart breaking as I held her.
"Let's go somewhere else," I said and gently led her to the lift.
She regained her composure really quickly, smoothing her expression into a blank state. But the way she wrapped her shrug around herself told another story.
Like a hero, I'd very comfortably said that we should go somewhere else but I had no clue where. I didn't want to take her to a public place because that would just defeat the whole purpose of making her comfortable. And I didn't know any place where I could be alone with her. "Can I take you home?" I asked her.
She nodded after a second like she was having problems processing what was going on around her.
I told the driver where to go and settled back with Karen pressed into my side snugly. "You want to talk about it?" I asked her gently, wiping off the tears on her cheeks.
"I don't know what to say," she said, staring expressionlessly out of the window.
"Whatever is going on in your mind," I suggested.
She took several minutes before she spoke again. "I don't have a family anymore. The only thing I have in the excuse for a family is my sister who, it feels like, does a favor to me by talking to me once or twice a month and telling me which part of the world she is in now. And even though my mom used to live in a hospice, at least I knew that she was always there, unlike the other people who went away so easily." She sounded like she didn't believe what was happening herself.
I ran my fingers through her hair, untangling the knots and smoothing them down her back, waiting for her to get it all out. I knew she eventually would and it took a real test of my patience to wait for her speak rather than bark at her to spill it out. I really was too far gone for this woman.
"She was the only person who loved me for who I was, who was proud of me." Her shoulders shook again as another volley of tears broke through. "I... I saw her dead body. She was so...still. I mean, she was... She just wasn't there anymore, you know? She wasn't that same person. She was..."
Every miserable sniff, every tear that dropped from her eyes caused the crack in my heart a little bit wider. I held her tighter, hoping it would keep me together as well. I couldn't even make my girl stop crying. I didn't feel quite so strong anymore. "Hey, it's gonna be okay," I said but even to my ears it sounded hollow.
"You know." She sniffed. "I hadn't even reached the hospital. I got to know on call. That fucking doctor so simply told me he couldn't control the pressure building in her brain because of intercranial bleeding. I didn't need the goddamn science. I just wanted an answer!"
We were entering the driveway to my house. The huge mansion loomed up in the distance, blocking the moon and all its light. Two men opened the doors on either side of the car and we both got out. Karen stumbled a little when her feet touched the ground and one of the bodyguards held her waist to steady her, but quickly stepped back when I glared at him bluntly. I put an arm around her to support her as we went inside. The fact that there were men to open the doors and take our coats at every corner certainly helped.
She stared wide eyed at the majestically decorated house. It was huge, I knew that, especially for a person who lived alone. But where was I to spend all my money if not on material comforts like that?
I seated her down on the couch as I went to get us both some scotch. "Here," I said, handing it to her, "I've heard alcohol has healing properties."
She chuckled as she took a tentative sip. "Thank you, doctor."
"When did you last eat something?" I asked.
She opened her mouth then closed it, looking up at the ceiling like I'd asked her to recall the events of the World War in succession.
"Today?" I probed.
"I don't think so." She shook her head. "No. Not today."
"Yesterday?"
"Not really. Nah. No." She actually had to think. She hadn't eaten and she had to fucking think about that.
"Do you want to die? Cuz I could make it possible with much more ease," I said sarcastically.
I gruffly asked the house staff to fix something up for Karen. What good was her roommate if she couldn't even keep her fed? But she was as stubborn as they came. I had to spoon feed her because she wrinkled her nose at every bite and pushed the plate away like a child. Then I would chide her, make her open her damn mouth and stuff it down her esophagus.
When she was inebriated enough to not remember who she was and had stopped crying her throat raw, I picked her up and took her to bed. She fell asleep instantly with her head on my chest and arms wrapped around me tightly.

Morning was a little lighter than the night. It came with a certain ease that I hadn't expected. Karen's mood seemed better, or at least not that broken anymore. I blinked my eyes open drowsily and she was already awake, staring up at me through her impossibly long eyelashes.
"Good morning, baby doll," I said, my voice sounding husky because of the sleepiness still lingering on it.
Her lips stretched into a slight smile. "Good morning."
"Slept well?" I asked.
"Better than I expected I would," she replied with another bright smile, nestling her face in the crook of my arm.
I reached down to brush her hair back from her eyes and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "You can skip work. I'm sure the boss wouldn't say anything."
"You don't know the son of a bitch. He hates my guts," she said with raised eyebrows.
I gasped dramatically. "How dare he? Give me his number. I'll bash the nose off his face."
She traced an ambiguous pattern in the center of my chest. "No, don't do that. His face is too pretty to be bashed."
"Really? 'Pretty' is the last word you could find?" I said dubiously, cutting the game.
She giggled and got up on her elbows, her face hovering over mine. "Unbelievably Greek God gorgeous. So fucking handsome, I sometimes have trouble believing he's real."
I twirled a lock of her hair on my finger from the curtain of it around my head. "Do you want a concrete proof of his reality?"
Her eyes smoldered. "Yes."

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Author's note: Hey guys! Thank you so much for reading this. Please vote and comment if you liked it. Any feedback is appreciated. :)