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T H I R T Y F O U R
"Wait. Rewind it a couple of minutes, please," Athena told one of the technicians helping to play the various security footage from the store, the mall, and the parking lot.
We had seen the entire footage from when Maia and Cara got to the mall, ate ice cream at the food court, and headed to the store. In this particular clip, they could be seen entering the store hand in hand and looking around at the unstuffed bears until Maia is seen excitedly picking a bunny and then proceeding to visit the stations to get it stuffed.
Seeing how excited and innocent she looked doing something that should be a fun experience for any child made my eyes water. My job as a mother is to protect her, and I was failing at it miserably.
"There," Athena pointed at a guy in a grey hoodie in the corner of the screen. "He has been following them since they walked through the mall's north entrance. Zoom in on him a little."
No zoom was needed for me to know that that monster was, in fact, Ian. I dated that narcissistic asshole for half of my young adulthood. Making it almost impossible for me to forget his appearance, no matter how hard I tried.
Something that immensely bothered me from the very beginning about this situation was how no one in the store seemed to notice a little girl literally being taken away. After all, Evan and I have trained Maia how to act if someone ever tried such a thing, considering the horror stories we see daily as firefighters. Still, it was not until we kept watching the video that I realized why my daughter went unnoticed.
I felt Cara squeezing my shoulder as we watched how Ian, in a matter of seconds, put something on Maia's mouth, knocking her unconscious. He fucking drugged my two-year-old baby.
"I need someone to find this bastard because I swear that if I get to him first, I will murder him painfully slow, as if we were in a torture chamber." I heard my father fume as I distanced myself a little from the area.
My head was still trying to process this entire nightmare of a day I had been having. First, I lost a little girl on the operating table, and now one of the reasons I still have not given up on my life has been taken away.
I was aware that Ian had lost his mind, but I never imagined he would take it as far as to hurt an innocent child to get back at me. There have been endless nights where I lay in bed wide awake, wishing I had never met Ian. Telling myself that things would've been better, but then those same nights, I would turn on my side and see Evan sleeping next to me, reminding me that if the hell Ian put me through wouldn't happened, I would have probably never made my way to California leaving everything behind. I would've probably never met the person I would love to spend the rest of my life with.
