Content & Trigger Warnings:
- Sexual assault
- Physical abuse
- Mental/emotional abuse and gaslighting
- Verbal abuse and manipulation
- Substance abuse
- Death
- Guns/shooting
- Improper BDSM
- Stalking and kidnapping
- Excessive vomiting
- HUGE plot holes that have not been fixed in this version.
Please note: This story is extremely mentally exhausting.
~.~
Please note: this story is completed but not on Wattpad. It is only to chapter 10 on here, and then if you would like to continue reading, you will have to move to Patreon where it is $2 a month.
~.~
Footsteps, loud and thundering, echo down the long hallway. They're fast paced and accompanied by heavy breathing. If you listen closely, you can also hear the pounding heart. The blood rumbling through their veins.
Ankles catch in a long skirt, almost tripping her. Maria catches herself against a wall, inhaling sharply as a door slams from behind. It's loud, shockingly so. And, most horrifyingly, it's not far enough away for her comfort.
Distantly, there's a scream followed by a gun shot. The sound jars her body and Maria's heart slams against her sternum, thump thump thump. It's deafening.
She slams into the staircase door, flinching when it bangs against the wall. Everything blurs and twists around her as she stumbles up the staircase, sending a prayer to anyone who'll listen.
Another gun shot followed by rapid footsteps a couple of floors above her. She can hear them. Another series of gunshots follow.
Maria pushes the next staircase door open, stumbling into the hallway and through the first door to her right. She slams it shut behind her and drops to the floor.
Her sweaty palms make it difficult to crawl across the linoleum, but she manages to squeeze herself beneath one of the many desks littering the room.
It's an old and abandoned room. Once used for laboratory testing but now for storing old furniture that nobody bothered taking to the dump.
The staircase door clicks open and slams shut out in the hallway. Maria freezes. She holds her breath as slow, measured footsteps walk down the hallway. They pass the doorway and continue down the hall, allowing Maria to exhale shakily as she reaches for her phone. She almost drops it from the combination of trembling fingers and sweaty palms but manages to click onto her text messages.
Someone screams down the hall, and a gun bangs. Maria flinches so violently the phone drops with a clutter. Breathing becomes difficult as she strains her ears for any noise outside the door.
An eternity seems to pass before she finds the courage to pick up her phone again, trying to swipe the lock screen away. Her fingers slip across the glass.
A sob catches in her throat as more footsteps hurry past the door and Maria hunches herself over the illuminating light of her phone. She holds the small device closely to her chest until the footsteps fade, and then slowly reaches for her back pocket.
A small sim card sits protected there. Biting her lip she slips it free and, with trembling fingers, places it beside her phone as she drafts a quick, misspelt text. As she types, her phone buzzes, and a message pops up.
From: Ronald Dearest
I love you.
Maria's eyes fill and her lips quiver. She types a response.
To: Ronald Dearest
I love you more.
When she doesn't receives a response, her heart weeps. Somewhere in this building, there's been another gunshot.
Swallowing the ache in her chest, she returns her attention to the drafted message, rereading it once before copying and sending it.
To: Serena
Will: all tht mattrs, my belngings , my chldrn, my rsearch - all to u.
Once you receive this, change your phone number. Buy new phone. But use SIM card in ths phne .
Sty safe. I love you.
The send button has never held the weight that it does now, and Maria brings the phone to her lips, hoping the kiss will travel.
Somewhere in the hallway, doors bang open. She almost drops her phone from the brutality, fingers quivering as she desperately tries to pull the SIM card free.
Before the small plastic square slips out though, an array of messages illuminates the screen.
From Serena:
What
Maria
Ron sent a similar message to Samuel
Where are you
I'll call the cops
Choking back a sob, Maria slips the SIM card free, and the messages disappear. It's too late, she thinks.
Hastily, she swaps the cards over. The one from her back pocket nestling safely into her phone.
The door of the room she's in bangs open and, thinking of her two young boys, she shoves her phone into her bra and grips the old SIM card tight.
She's never felt so out-of-control of her body as she trembles. Slowly, as quietly as possible, she peers over the desk, spying a tall man with a machine gun resting on his shoulder.
His breath draws ragged as he stalks around the room. Abruptly, he kicks one of the desks. Maria jerks and ducks as it crashes into the desk before hers.
"I know you're in here." His voice is gravelly. Deep. Wrecked. "Give me what I want, I won't hurt you."
Maria presses her hands together, praying. She doesn't remember the last time she properly prayed, but now seems as good a time as ever.
The man walks around the desk beside hers, and his footsteps echo loudly in the silence of the room. He's going to find her, there's no doubt about it.
Swallowing, sending one last prayer to a God who might hear to protect her children, she slides out from beneath the desk.
"I'll give it to you." She's proud that her voice only cracks a little.
The man stops walking, and Maria steadies herself before standing up, turning around to face the man who will take her life. He stands a foot away from her, nothing but a flimsy plastic desk separating her from her fate.
A plain white ski mask conceals his identity, and Maria almost laughs when she realises she'll never know who orphaned her children.
Forcing those thoughts away, she lifts her hand with her old SIM card, holding it between her fingers. The man snickers, reaching for it, but she can't bring herself to release it.
It isn't even the correct one, she reminds herself. Let it go.
But it holds all her contacts. Her family, her friends. People she regrets not talking to more, not rebuilding and reestablishing bridges with. The people her children will never know helped find this company—
What does it matter? You're about to die.
The man grows impatient. He drops his hand and reaches for his mask, tearing it off. Maria's eyes widen at the face. At the eyes, so familiar.
In the back of her mind, those bridges burn now. Her children will never know. Serena and Samuel will never know...
"No."
The man grins slowly. A horrifying twist of his lips. Maria drops to her knees, staring up at the man who she once called a friend. He stares down at her, eyes glowing with pity.
"Sorry, love." He lifts the gun, and pulls the trigger.
~.~
Reminder: this story is completed but not on Wattpad. It is only to chapter 10 on here, and then if you would like to continue reading, you will have to move to Patreon where it is $2 a month.
~.~
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