Page 104 of Vows In Corruption

But I don’t question it. She promised me that if anything was wrong, she would tell me.

I’m hoping that she keeps that promise.

Otherwise, if this continues to happen I will stop at nothing to figure out what might have made my wife so scared.

26

ELLA

My leg bounces up and down as I watch my cell phone ring. The same South Carolina number has been calling for the past two weeks and every time it pops up on my screen, I feel like I’m going to have a nervous brake down.

Seeing a number show across my screen shouldn’t scare me so much, but I know this number. This number has been at the back of my head for five years now. I thought that I was never going to see it again, that now that my debt was paid off, I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Yet, here it is, taunting me. Putting fear in me that I thought I was never going to feel ever again.

When the number first came up on my screen, I thought that I was seeing things. I thought maybe I was remembering the number wrong, that there was no way that the number that I wanted to never see was on my screen in front of me. But the more I looked at the more the realization hit.

He found me. He found us and now he is calling to take everything away.

I wanted to Bennett as we drove home that night. I wanted to confess everything, including where the million dollars he gave me went and why, but I was too scared to do it. I didn’t know how to form the words so that it didn’t end in judgement.

If I had told him, he would have questions that I’m not ready to answer to I told him that everything was fine, but in reality, nothing is.

The phone stops ring for about a minute, before it starts back up again.

He’s getting more eager and I get the feeling that if I don’t answer soon, he’s going to change tactics and possibly come to Chicago. I can’t have that happening. Not if I want to keep Charlie safe and not tell Bennett.

I reach for the phone, with all the determination to answer it, but I can’t seem to make my fingers to hit the button. So I watch it ring until it stop and once it goes to voice mail, I throw the device into my drawer and try not to think about.

But every time it vibrates, it becomes hard.

For a large majority of the time, I try to concentrate on this proposal that I’m working on for the foundation, the one that I told Bennett about the day of the hockey game, but everything feels like its jumbled up. Nothing is making sense and the more I continue to work on it, the more frustrated I get.

My mind is occupied and not with the things that I need to do.

I haven’t even officially started they new part of my job and I’m already failing at it. All because I can’t find it in me to answer a call.

Maybe once I do answer the call, everything will get better. Maybe the person that is calling me is only doing so because they want to tell me that they got the money and that out debt is all squared away. There are slims chances of that happening, but it could happen.

I hate the feeling that these stupid calls induce. I hate that I have to look over my shoulder everywhere I go even with the security detail I got once I married Bennett.

The only way that will all go away if I answer the damn phone and face my demons.

As much as it pains me, I reach for the drawer and pull out my phone. I look at all the misses calls I have from that one number and suddenly feel the urge to cry.

I can do this.

I can make the call.

Taking a deep breath, I look into Bennett’s new office. He moved in the the day we go back from out honeymoon. It’s spacious and fit for a king. It fits him perfectly, like it was made for him, just like the the CEO title. And if he were here, I would tell him just that, but he isn

The man is at a lunch with the commissioner of the Chicago Police Department, something about working on a gun reform together.

It’s both good and bad that he is gone. Good because I can make this call and not have him asking me any questions. Bad because in a short period of time, he has become my safe haven and someone I’ve depended to bring me back when I felt lost. I could really use him right now, but I know it’s best that he isn’t here.

After about a five minute mental pep talk, and a few deep breaths, I wake my phone up and dial the number that has been haunting my life for as long as I can remember.

As it rings, I’m hoping that the call doesn’t get answered. That it will just go to voicemail and I won’t get to hear the voice I hated since I was eighteen years old.

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