Page 114 of The Ripper

I spat out the blood in my mouth and pulled out my phone, hitting the side of my head with my palm as I called Klaus, already prepared for him to reprimand me, and the disapproving attitude he kept displaying towards me lately.

“Address?” he asked as soon as he picked up, not bothering to ask if it happened again.

“59th Street, Washington Park,” I said as I stood up and lit a cigarette, then sent him my live location.

He hung up on me, and the photo of her I had on my lock screen lit up, staring back at me almost as if scolding me because I wasn’t with her, because I allowed those motherfuckers to steal her from under my nose like a damn idiot.

Sharp needles stung my eyes as I tried to wipe the blood off the screen, the red staining her beauty, but it wouldn’t go away.

“Where are you, baby?” I asked the image as if it was going to answer, and the tears slid out of my eyes, warm and bitter over my cheeks and mixing with the rain.

Fucking tears. Fucking life. Fucking everything.

I punched the brick as I sobbed like a pussy, then glued my back to it and slid down until I hit the concrete floor, bumping my head against the hard wall next.

“Where?” I ran a hand through my hair, grabbing a fist full of it, pulling at it.

It had been five days.

Five days since the woman who silenced the monster had disappeared.

It was as if she fucking vanished into thin air, leaving behind a vortex of memories, her scent everywhere, and a pink, fluffy slipper that I carried in my pocket at all times. I had found her golden cross necklace in a drawer in our closet, and now I had it wrapped around my wrist, trying to find some sort of faith that one day I would be able to put it back around her neck.

The men who kidnapped her were professionals, because every security camera in and around the building had been hacked and put on a loop, and Hannibal was actively trying to fix the hack and see if he could reverse the process, but aside from that, we had nothing.

We even checked the borders to see if she left the country, but we didn’t find anything that looked out of place, and if they illegally smuggled her out of the United States, she could be at the other end of the globe right now.

Alone.

Scared.

Klaus’ van backed into the alley, and his trusted minions came out the back doors, passing me without giving me so much as a look, getting straight to work.

No snarky comments, no sick jokes. They’d already learned their lesson on the first day, when one of them mumbled something about women, and suddenly died via bullet to the back of the head.

~ He stepped on my tail. What was I to do? Fucking thank him?

To my surprise, Klaus stepped out of the van with our father behind him.

“What the fuck is this?” I muttered as I stood up, stepping on the cigarette, then lighting another one.

“An intervention,” Klaus rolled his eyes.

“I’m fine,” I took another look at her photo before shoving the phone back into my wet jeans.

“You haven’t slept in three days,” Klaus countered.

“I’m fine,” I repeated with a growl.

My father stepped towards me.

He looked ready to attend a funeral in his perfectly ironed black suit, his hair all combed and styled as if he was stuck in the sixties, and that cold, calculated businessman stare.

“You’ve killed fifty-seven people in less than seventy-two hours.”

“I had a slow run,” I shrugged, grinning like an idiot as I raised the cigarette to my mouth.

I didn’t have the chance to take a drag, because he backhanded me across the face, his rings making my teeth clatter, and the cigarette flew out of my mouth into a gush of water.

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