This Charming Life [Tig Trager] [Book Two]

XIV. Ghost

I rapped my knuckles against the wooden nightstand loudly every few seconds. I'd lost track of the days that I'd been stuck inside this room, and I was beginning to head towards serious cabin fever. Nobody, not even Patrick, would tell me what was going on in the outside world. The only human interaction I received was the few visits from the guards, and the occasional visit from Patrick.

My life had become a horrid routine. I would be woken in the morning by a guard carrying in coffee and toast, he'd also bring me a book. At lunchtime I would be brought soup with a slice of bread, and then I assumed my dinner was whatever was left over by the thugs outside. I'd given up looking for a way out. The room had no windows, and for the first few days I had studiously tested all the wood panelled walls to see if any of the panels were hollow, but I had no such luck. The room was always guarded, by at least two people, I could hear them playing cards or chattering mindlessly outside all day. Once every few days I would be escorted to a small bathroom down the hall where I could shower, where a guard stood with his back turned to allow me some form of privacy. The process, however, was still degrading.

I hadn't seen or heard from Galen since the day I spoke to Alex on the phone and I now spent hours a day trying to remember the sound of his voice, or the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. I'd play an endless movie in my head, Braxton crawling around the garden as Ranger followed him around like a nervous mother, giggling as I tickled his sides, splashing around in the bath.

I couldn't seem to control my emotions anymore, one minute I would be sobbing into a pillow and the next I would be banging my fists as hard as I could against the door, screaming at the people on the other side to let me out. Right at this minute I was curled up in the corner of the room, staring at the door, wondering if I would able to move fast enough to make a break for it when one of the guards entered. But even if I was, the one thing I had been able to see on my short trips to and from the bathroom, was that I was in the middle of a network of tunnels. The walk was relatively short, yet I could see countless doors and hallways leading in every direction. It was hopeless. Utterly hopeless. I wasn't getting out of here until Galen wanted me to, and I wasn't entirely sure he would ever just let me walk away a free woman.

*

It had been a month. One whole month, since I last saw my wife. The boys and I had been working relentlessly to make up the $6 million that we 'owed' the Irish, but we were a month on and we'd barely made a dent in it. At this rate, Braxton would be graduating high school before his mother was returned to us.

Gemma had been a god send over the last month. Braxton and I had been staying with her and Nero since the fire, and she minded him for me so that I could get all the club business out of the way. Bobby too had been a great help. He visited Braxton every day, showing him pictures of Anya, hoping that the boy wouldn't forget his mother. His temperment had settled since Anya's disappearance, and he no longer looked around the room with a frown on his face, looking for the mother that in his mind had suddenly left him. Each day, Bobby would bring new pictures of Anya, sometimes just her, sometimes her and Braxton, even once a photo of me and Anya on our wedding day. As Bobby showed him the photos he would tell Braxton stories - stories about the adventures his mother was having. I realised that it probably comforted Bobby to imagine that Anya really was somewhere else in the world on a grand adventure, but it just hurt me. Anya wasn't on an adventure. She was locked away god knows where by an Irish psychopath. I hadn't heard anything from Anya since the phone call when we first made contact with Galen, and it was excruciatingly painful to lie in bed each night wondering where she was, if she was okay, just wishing over and over that she laid in the bed next to me.