Page 91 of Twisted Obsession

47

Regina

My eyes popped open, and they fell back closed as fast as I’d opened them. My groggy mind minced my thoughts as my woozy body wavered from whatever chemical they’d drugged me with.

I’d seen another vision, a nagging hallucination I’d been praying not to see anymore. A vision was the only way to explain who stood before me, filling my view.

“Did you miss me, princess?” came a voice dripping with enough poison that my skin crawled. “Did you really think you could get rid of me that easily?”

The sound of that voice took my breath away. I reached up and gripped my chest to keep my heart from exploding. My mouth fell open, but all I could force out was a few choked utterances that didn’t make sense. Was I mentally ill? Had my life been so traumatic over the years that I’d suffered a complete mental break?

My eyes blinked in rapid snapshots before I squeezed them together tighter and reopened them to ensure I wasn’t imagining things. Nothing I did took the vision away. As sure as I drew breath, the devil stood in front of me.

“How are you…a…a…?” I managed, breathless, awed, confused.

“Alive?” he finished the question I attempted to ask. “Let’s just say, there’s a guardian angel watching my back.”

Evil laughter filled the space, and my skin didn’t just crawl, it melted off my bones and left me a skinless vessel of wracked nerves.

“Bet you thought you’d never see me again.”

One evil finger shook at me as he stepped closer. “You believed that new boyfriend of yours would keep you safe? I’ll give him some credit. He did a good job, but I knew patience was the key to us reuniting again.”

His taunting words were evil reminders of our history of violence and shame. He’d promised that he’d kill me if I ran from him again. I’d not just run from him, I’d sat by and let Ansel and August Knox plot his murder.

My gaze panned my surroundings as the strong scent of chemicals invaded my nostrils. Inside a small break room, four cheap wooden tables sat next to a collection of rickety chairs pooled together near two refrigerators, offset by a single sink with a dripping faucet. Another table sat alone in a corner under a dirty microwave. The doors of the two white wall cabinets that hung over the sink were crooked on their hinges.

I’d been shoved into the open empty space near the far wall. Praying for mercy was useless because the monster that stood before me would never give it.

Ansel was my only hope of getting out of this situation alive. He was one of the smartest men I knew, and if anybody could find me, it would be him.

However, locating me would be a difficult task. I didn’t have the instincts of an ex-military ranger but searching for me with no viable leads was the same as looking for a needle in a haystack. I didn’t even know where I’d been taken. Hope and faith kept my mind from imploding as fear placed me in a chokehold.

The training that Ansel had started giving me, surfaced. I wasn’t good enough to fight a man, but when the time came, maybe I could find a way to make this monster kill me faster. It was the only way to keep him from getting what he wanted and to avoid the pain and suffering I knew he intended to inflict on me.

My fingers swiped my tired eyes once more, praying that this was a vivid dream and not my current reality.

“What’s wrong? Still think you’re seeing a ghost?”

“So…So…Sorio?” My voice crawled over my tongue and cracked into pieces as soon as his name passed my dry lips. If Sorio was alive and standing before me, who in the hell had August killed in Ansel’s garage?

* * *

The monster tauntedme with cruel words, his body standing proud and sure before me. Surprisingly, his words didn’t have the same effect that they’d always had on me. The words were spoken, they sank in, but my body didn’t flutter with fear like it always had in Sorio’s presence.

My mind attempted to piece together an explanation as to how he was alive, combing my brain for clues. I’d seen who I believed was him, dead on Ansel’s garage floor nearly a month ago.

My gaze scanned the area he’d taken me to. Outside the break room area we were in, there wasn’t much else but the cement wall of the hallway I’d been dragged down by one of his men. When the drug had started to wear off, I’d continued to feign sleep in an attempt to figure out where I was. It was unfortunate that I had already been inside this place when my vision started to return.

However, I recalled us traveling down some steps, so we were likely in a basement since I hadn’t spotted any windows. My family loved their secret underground hideaways. This one stunk of mildew and chemicals. Stale and recycled air surrounded me, same as it always had in the cellar they’d stuck me in in Texas. I’d caught a glimpse of the machines they used to make their drugs, so this had to have been one of their meth labs.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, you fucking black cunt!”

His loud, sharp words were familiar. But like his presence, they didn’t have the same impact anymore. He’d always called me black, like the Mexican part of me had been a horrible mistake. Did my color offend him? He was Mexican too, so he wasn’t much lighter than I was. However, I understood that some people developed color complexes. They associated lighter skin with superiority. I also remembered my father telling me that not many of his family liked the fact that he’d chosen to marry my African-American mother over the woman they’d intended for him to marry.

A sharp standing kick landed in my side and rattled my teeth as a painful jolt radiated through the rest of my midsection and sent my back slamming into the wall behind me. Folded in pain, I gripped my side and struggled to suck in oxygen.

“I said look at me, bitch!”

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