Page 59 of One Spicy Summer

Finally, Krista approaches, cradling a tiny bundle in a soft blue blanket. She places him in my arms.

I peel back the blanket and see his tiny face, so beautiful, so perfect, but blue, lifeless.

Gone.

"Oh, God," I choke out, pressing his cold cheeks against mine. "Not my baby. Please, please come back."

Agatha wraps her arms around me, crying into my hair. "He’s beautiful. My sweet angel nephew."

I unwrap the blanket further, memorizing every inch of him. Every perfect, precious inch. "You were so perfect," I whisper through broken sobs, holding him to my chest.

"Even though you didn’t get the chance to live... you’ll always be my perfect, little, angel baby."

And then…

Darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Rygaard

7 years later

Time sure does fly when you're having fun.At least, that's what they say. I wouldn't know. I haven't had fun since the day my father tore me away from Presley. Not a single day has passed that she hasn’t haunted my mind.

I've written her two thousand eight hundred letters. One letter for every damn day we've been apart.

Life carried on without me, but I never stopped loving her. Even when my father, and Sylvia’s, thought they'd mapped out our lives for us. Even when they planned our marriage like a business transaction.

It took a few years for Sylvia and me to break free, to take our lives back from the people who thought they owned them.

Now, here I am, back home. Ready to get my girl back.

If she still wants me.

Sylvia’s boyfriend, now her husband, was supposed to deliver a message to Presley for me years ago.

Turns out, he never even got the chance.

Our walls had ears. Our lives were never our own. I should've seen it coming. I knew how conniving my father could be. But I let it slip through the cracks, and Phillip paid the price for it.

He survived, but just barely. Hospitalized for weeks. After that, Sylvia and I knew: we couldn’t afford another mistake.

So we came up with a plan. We pretended to fall madly in love, to give our parents exactly what they wanted. All while secretly plotting our escape.

It wasn’t hard to sell. Our lives had been groomed for this moment since before we could speak.Marry, merge fortunes, expand the family empire. But behind the scenes, we were burning it all down.

I overheard my father once, gloating over the phone about how this all started. How he was handed everything he ever wanted, Including my mother.

She was married to someone ‘beneath’ him. When she wouldn't leave her husband, my father killed the man.

Right in front of her.Then he kidnapped her, forced her into a marriage she couldn't escape.

Looking in from the outside, you’d never know it.She played her part so well, smiling on command. Until one day, after years of captivity… she started to fall for him.

Maybe it was survival.

Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome.

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