Chapter 43 : Alec
Tuesday, December 27th, 2022
As much as I would love to spend every second of every day enjoying having Madelyn back in my arms, I fear that if I don't get to the bottom of this stalker situation soon, that enjoyment will be short lived.
Darmonio is a sick and deprived man, and I physically feel nauseous knowing he's managed to hurt her already. The violated look on Madelyn's face when she learned about her underwear... it was unforgettable.
I wish I could've shielded her from it. I wish I could've lied and said that everything was okay, but there was a lot about our relationship now that had to be different than the one we shared before. At the end of the day, Caleb, Xavier, and I were all high ranking members of the Mafia, and we couldn't keep Madelyn from our darkness forever.
As the Don's underboss—his sottocapo—Xavier has me sent away on jobs all the time, even more so now that he's finally stepped into that title.
This also means our list of enemies was endless. Today, I wasn't going to come home until I found real answers. Whoever is terrorizing my girl is in for a hell of a wake up call.
You don't touch what's mine and walk away without consequences.
Raising my hands in absolute surrender, I inhale the humid air of San Diego as my feet carry me to what appears to be the doors of an abandoned warehouse. I know in my gut, though, that this is the entrance to the Keep—the place that housed a prisoner that never did the crime to get there.
How far away would I be from the room that held her captive? How many people would I pass who knew she was sedated but didn't care enough to help her?
My trained expression may only reveal the unbothered facade that has been drilled into me over the years, but on the inside, I was dying. I needed answers, and my trigger finger was begging to get some action.
I was ready, so when the doors showed the first sign of movement, I began to execute the next part of my plan. Swinging around to grab where Lev Ivankov is hiding in the camera's blindspots, I pull him in front of me and shove him to his knees, a low curse falling from his gagged and bloody mouth.
I'm able to count four men who walk outside, all with guns raised and pointed at me. I can't help but scoff at the insult. As if four men who look like they've never experienced true pain could handle me.
"Considering your little display of panic, I take it you know the significance of the man at my feet," I say, cocking my head mockingly. "Take me to Marcus and I won't be as tempted to put a bullet through your darling dearest Ivankov's head."
Lev growls at my menacing tone, but I only shove the gun harder into his temple. He may have agreed to do this with me to help get the answers we needed, but that doesn't mean I trust him any more than I can throw him.
He has access to Madelyn's old apartment. He's had a history of being rejected by her. I'm not a moron to not recognize his opportunities, however his DNA sample didn't match that of the semen that covered the underwear.
Unless he had a friend who was with him on it—which seemed unlikely because who would want to be friends with him—we had nothing incriminating against the Russian "bodyguard".
Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the fuck out of beating him to a pulp to make the visual we have now look more convincing.
Lev was just the distraction, though. The bait. Truthfully, I don't have much love for a single person here, and I'm ready to blow some shit up.
"Duck," I say, and he does, just in time to miss the bullet that embeds itself into the side of one of the disgraces Marcus considers a soldier, not stopping until four bodies drop to the ground in a satisfying thud.
I don't give myself nearly enough time to enjoy it, though. "Get up," I order, untying Lev from his bonds. "Bring me to him, and if you try to pull any type of sketchy shit while we're here, I don't care that Madelyn likes you. I will make your death one of unimaginable pain."
Lev raises an eyebrow at me as though my words were BS, and then gestures his hand to the rusted old door before us. "Sure thing, loverboy. Ladies first."
I shove him through the entrance as my body readies itself for what's to come. The four dead bodies didn't even come close to scratching the itch of violence that's coiling inside of me. There were a lot of ways to send a message apart from murder, and I was about to show the mockery known as the Resistance why we're called the Night Reapers.
Tick fucking tok.
____
Marcus Caddel is just as pathetic as I remember.
Having sat in his chair in his perfect little office, it was almost too easy to smell his fear, likely due to the blood of his comrades being worn like a trophy against my clothes.
He may have accepted the meeting, but it was going to happen on my terms. I was even more volatile now that Lev had led me straight through the core of the Keep, nothing but tunnels and pathways and dead ends. The only light provided was artificial, and every moment spent here was a moment imagining what it must've been like for Madelyn.
It all needs to burn.
"Alec, thank you for joining me," Marcus spews out in greeting as he takes a seat across from me, clearly irritated by my own choice of location. Good—irritated was good. By the time my absence is required, he'll be left fuming, just how I want him.
Visually, Marcus looked every bit of what I would expect of him. Salt and pepper hair, ever so slightly overweight, and bags under his eyes that betray his portrayal of having everything under control. It's really hard to believe that this is the man who raised the woman I'm in love with, if you can even call being MIA half the time parenting.
Madelyn may have raised herself, but I'm not ignorant to the fact that Marcus taught his daughter a lot of what she knows today. I can hate it all I want—it doesn't make it any less true.
"Let's not waste our time pretending you don't know why I'm here," I smile as I lean back, his chair squeaking under the pressure. He returns my expression, eyes void of any true emotion. "Who is it you're protecting, hmm? While you kept my wife drugged up and subjected her to unimaginable traumas, did you happen to notice anybody who grew particularly attached to her?"
"Wife?" Marcus growled, and although my words drew my desired reaction out of him, my current relationship status with Madelyn were mere semantics. Girlfriend, partner, submissive, fiancé, wife. She was just as much mine as she was Caleb's and Xavier's, and she was going to be our wife. The when part didn't matter.
"Did you need me to repeat myself?"
"I don't know who you think you a—"
"I'm Alec Marcello Sawyer, son of Arnaldo Sawyer and heir to the Sawyer Crime Family. I am also irrevocably in love with your daughter, a woman whose stalker who is only going to stay patient for so long before he grows tempted to do more than just send cryptic pictures. Now, are you going to help me find this fucker, because if not, you're wasting my time and I do not take kindly to those who waste my time."
I can see the agitation burning in his gaze. I can feel it against the cool exterior of my body. I wasn't lying when I said I wasn't returning home until I had answers for Madelyn, and I had little patience for Marcus's not so casual attempts at beating around the bush.
If I can't find them here, I'll go elsewhere. Perhaps her hometown will be next—pay a visit to her childhood memories and see if there are any monsters lurking there stupid enough to fuck with her now.
"Okay," Marcus nods—curtly, but a nod nonetheless. "Okay, I'll help you, Mr. Alec Sawyer."
His tone was menacing, though I wouldn't expect anything less from him.
"Here's a good start. Did you know having sex in a lake greatly increases ones chances of a yeast infection?"
"The fuck did you just say?" I growl, standing from my seat before he can even finish the sentence.
Marcus scoffs, unbothered by the threat that is growing by the second.
"You know, receiving a picture of my daughter being fucked in front of a waterfall wasn't exactly my first choice of learning of your relationship..." Removing a picture from his jacket pocket, he tosses it onto the desk between us. I don't have to look down to know what it is.
It would have been captured during our date to Buttermilk Falls last year, where the four of us hiked into the core of the park before enjoying a private picnic together. Xavier took care of the chance of anyone else entering those woods long before we ever entered them. Nobody could've gotten through, and that's why we spent the evening fucking Madelyn in the water's cove by the falls.
Nobody should have been there but us, yet the evidence was right there before me, a photograph with three separate burn marks marring Caleb, Xavier and I's faces.
Fuck, this was even worse than I thought.
This means Madelyn's stalker has been around since the very beginning, and we didn't know about it.
"Where did you get this?" I ask accusingly, pocketing it without even looking for permission. It was shot from a distance, but I'd recognize Madelyn's beautiful body anywhere. I was going to be the last one to see it before I have it burned along with the rest.
"It was sent to me."
"You were in hiding."
"See, now you're getting it." Marcus clasps his hands together before shifting in his seat. "I was in hiding, but... what did you call him, Darmonio? He was hiding too, right in the shadows where none of us could see him."
This was too much to comprehend. Too damned messy.
"Wait, so you're telling me this asshole has been following her for months, and you didn't think to do anything about it! Say anything about it?"
My patience was running thin, and so was my time. I can only go so long before the temptation to kill the man who's inflicted so much hurt upon my Madelyn overflows my ability to remain composed.
"Oh, but I did," Marcus sighs, shifting in his seat again. My eyes narrow at the countless signs of lying, but he could also just be nervous. Sometimes, it's hard to tell. "I let her stay with you, and you three had to go fuck it up by breaking her heart. I couldn't just let her leave the little protection she had, so I brought her to me instead. At least there's no Darmonio at the Keep. The pictures stopped when Madelyn was kept here."
They stopped? The pictured just stopped?
My blood chills as a realization dawns on me, and it wasn't the type that simply startles you, but a full blown force that captures you in its vice. For a moment, all I can do is remain frozen while I come to terms with the severity of Marcus' actions—this stupid fucking man.
Darmonio has been right here this entire time. I don't know who he is, but I do know that he's been here in the Keep—maybe even still is.
"The pictures stopped," I mutter, just before my rage boils over into into a verbal massacre. "How are you so blind that you don't fucking understand why?" I'm now yelling, but I don't care who hears. "A stalker has no need to stalk if the obsession is right in front of you, even more so when the victim is a near zombie from overmedication!"
Darmonio was right there. For every day that we couldn't find her, Madelyn was right there within his reach.
"You practically served her to him on a silver platter!"
It's not Lev—it couldn't be. Nobody is capable of lying to my face, let alone after weeks of run-ins with me. Unless Kiana has a dick, she's not capable of jerking off with Madelyn's underwear, and unless Noah is capable of coming back from the dead, it's not him either.
The idea of it being her stepbrother Cameron recently crossed my mind too, but it's not physically possible for it to be him given the fact he wasn't even aware of his long lost sister's existence until a few months ago.
I'm still no closer to figuring out this person's identity than I was a few minutes ago, but I was just as angry.
He could have touched her in her sleep—been there when I wasn't. And although I couldn't dish out any of my anger on him, I could on the person who took away Madelyn's fighting chance against him.
Marcus was up and pinned against the wall before he could even shout in protest, and if it weren't for the sound that echoed from outside his door, his nose would've been broken by now.
"Mar—" a familiar feminine voice cuts off the second I swing the door wide, and I smile as she jumps when the handle smashes and then embeds itself into the wall. "Alec," her words are breathless as fear instantly leeches her face of all colour, and then I get the fuck out of there before I kill the sorrowful pair of them.
Xavier's mother is already dead to me, but should her son choose to take her from her second life, that will be his vengeance to pursue, not mine.
Doesn't mean I don't feel bad as I shove her into the door frame on my way out, hard enough that it sends her flying to the ground.
I was going home to the only family that mattered anyways.
____
By the time I got back to the mansion, it was long past midnight and the lights were all out. I know Xavier had left at about the same time I did, something about needing to resolve a few complications that occurred during a shipment earlier that day. With Caleb still healing from his injuries, he was likely in bed and passed out by 10.
That just left Madelyn, my eyes catching on her curled up figure in our glassed in balcony. Little droplets of snow peppered the frosted glass, nothing but a small reading lamp to provide her with light.
Not that it matters now.
She's fast asleep on the couch, a knitted blanket half on the floor, half across her lap, and a book caught between her thumb and forefinger.
The sweet thing passed out while reading, and if I weren't just as tired, I would spend the entire night just admiring how pretty she looked like this.
Trying to remain quiet as I walk over to her, I can't help but smile as I gently remove the book from her hands before marking the page with a tissue. I feel her stir against me when I go to set it down, and when my eyes travel back to where she lays, her own eyes meet mine.
"You're back," she whispers quietly, her arms reaching up to touch my face. Bending down to make things easier for her, I nod while her fingers trail over my jaw. Scooping her into my arms while also discarding my shoes, it takes almost no time before laying her back down onto the couch, this time with my body beneath hers.
"Mads," I say quietly, nuzzling into her neck before breathing her in.
"Yeah?" she murmurs.
"I met your dad today to talk about your stalker."
There was no point in hiding the truth. If I did, I'd be no better than the old me I promised to leave in our past.
Madelyn is silent for a few seconds—long enough to make me think she's fallen back asleep on me. But then, when I receive a sleepy, "okay," I realize that it's always been the truth that's mattered the most.
- End of Chapter 43 -
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