Page 36 of Velvet & Sins

His body shook from the strain, while mine allowed panic to seep through, to give me all the words and images of what could have happened to her. In the past two weeks Evelyn had always answered her phone, even if she was sleeping.

And today… No, fuck. God… If something happened to her—

“Nothing will happen to her,” Christian said, and I suddenly realized I'd said it out loud. But Christian didn’t know Tristan as well as I did.

Tristan was smart, brilliant, but he was also a closeted psychopath that liked to torture his victims. And Evelyn… he knew she was with us. He must have seen us somehow, must have realized how much I cared about her. He would torture her just to spite me, and he would let me know how painful it was.

She was our everything, our light, our glue, and without her….

“Hey, hey,” Christian murmured, his hand on my bouncing thigh. “Calm down. We will find her. We will.”

We will find her, he said it as if he knew something I didn’t. I looked at him, seeing the disarray of his hair, the worry lining his face, and it was as clear as day that there was something he wasn’t telling me.

“Christian,” I practically growled, needing to know. “You know something.”

His eyes squeezed shut as he pummeled down the road, so close to our apartment and yet so far away.

“I didn’t want to tell you until we got there,” he murmured, avoiding my eyes. “The security guard saw her going out. It was one hour ago and she didn’t come back.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” I bellowed, unable to contain my anger. “When did you find out?”

“Just before we left Tristan’s place.”

“That’s why you had me call her. Jesus fucking Christ! She could be… No, no, no.” I shook my head, tears filling my eyes. “She isn’t… She couldn’t be—”

“Kill, you gotta calm down.”

“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down!” I blasted at him, even though I understood why he'd kept it from me. He was trying to assess the situation, to have all the facts before he told me, but my irrational mind wasn’t listening to reason right now.

“She was in running gear,” Chris said. “She had her pepper spray with her.”

“Tristan doesn’t give a fuck about pepper spray,” I whispered, my nails digging into the palm of my hand. “He’s going to kill her, Chris,” I added, defeated. He was going to kill the light of our lives. He was going to take her away from me. From us.

“No, he won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t,” he exhaled, finally entering the street where our apartment was. “But Tristan likes playing games, and this one is his favorite game. He likes fucking with you, and he knows it’ll be a game over if he harms her. No matter what, he is still calculating his every move.”

“We can’t know that. The last time we saw him, he was completely unhinged, Chris. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

I knew Tristan wouldn’t mind playing the game, but I hated that I had no idea what the game was. I had no idea where this was going and I hated that Evelyn was in the middle of it. I never should have gotten involved with her, especially not right now with Tristan around.

I'd done this. I'd pulled her into this dark world, and now she was gone.

Christian parked the car right in front of our building, both of us jumped out without locking it and ran toward the trail behind the building. The overhead lamps illuminated the area, but there was no sight of her. Couples lingered around, holding hands, laughing. Kids ran between their parents, giggling, full of life, while Christian and I ran toward the entrance of the forest, where the trail led.

My heart jumped into my throat when I saw the earphones on the ground, right next to an orange cat that started hissing at the two of us as soon as we approached.

My eyes zeroed in on a bottle of pepper spray laying on the ground, but it wasn’t until I saw the crimson red on the pavement that I fell on my knees, mourning the life we could have had. Chris approached the cat, cooing, talking to it, but I didn’t pay him any attention.

This was without a doubt Evelyn’s blood, smeared on the trail, taunting me, telling me that my brother had won. My hand shook as I traced the still fresh blood, when my eyes caught on a piece of paper not too far away from where the blood was.

It was lodged underneath the can of pepper spray I knew belonged to her, and I crawled on my knees, grasping it in my hand.

“What is that?” Christian asked as my eyes flickered over the written words. My gut clenched, unable to hold back as the first tear rolled down my cheek.

How does it feel losing the one you love the most?

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