Antonio
"DAD! DAD!" I turn around to see Robin coming running.
"What's wrong?" I ask him, confused. He gets closer and I see tears streaming down his face.
"It's- it's Alessia."
Alexander and the twins are the first on their feet, on their way to her room, but Robin stops them. "NO, she's not up there!"
"Robin what happened?" I ask him, I pull him closer to me making him stand between my legs.
"She called." He tries to control his breath. "I think someone texted her as-as they were me." He falls crying into my arms. "Someone took her, dad, Someone took her!"
"Where is she?" my dad asks him.
"I don't know. I don't know."
"What are we waiting for! Let's go find her!" Alexander shouts, and everyone stands up.
My mind is frozen, my body is frozen. My world is frozen.
I sit with Robin in my arms, people running past me, that I know are there, but I don't register it, I am here but I'm not here.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. I look up to see my dad looking down at me.
"Let's go inside," his deep voice says. It's only now I realize Robin isn't in my arms anymore.
"Your mom took Robin inside," my dad tells me; he must have sensed my confusion.
On the way inside, it's like everything starts to become clearer. My daughter is gone, she has been kidnapped, and I'm here, home, not doing anything.
"I need to go out and find her," I say before walking towards the front door to get my car.
"No." My dad stops me, I try to walk past him, but he steps in front of me again.
"I need to help."
"Everyone is already out looking for her, and Baldassare have called his best men to try and track her, looking through videotapes in different areas of the city- "
"It's Not Good Enough!" I bang my hand into the wall. "My Daughter Is Out There Needing My Help. I'm Not Gonna Sit Here And Lose Her Again. I CAN'T LOSE HER AGAIN!"
*
One day passes by.
I'm standing in the living room. The couches have been removed and replaced with four rows of tables, filled with 20 of the best IT people, trying to track down my daughter.
The room isn't filled with the usual joy, chatting, and laughing but with 20 keyboards typing, 20 mouses clicking, several phone calls, every time I feel a spark of hope that there is something new about my daughter but each time, they just put down the phone and type something on their computer, and each time the emptiness inside me grow and the spark disappear.
Alexander walks inside. He comes from the place where Alessia got kidnapped that we were able to track.
I immediately walk over to him. "Something new?" I ask.
"Well, it was definitely there that she got kidnapped." He holds up a plastic bag with Alessia's destroyed phone. "We also found something that could be blood, but it could be all from animal blood to Alessia's own so don't get your hopes up, the chances for it to be that asshole is small."
I nod. "Good job." I clap him on his shoulder.
I have been a terrible dad lately, I do everything I can to show that I appreciate them, but it's hard.
"You're doing great dad," Alexander tells me like he can read my mind. He cracks a smile before he walks out again.
I go to my office and sit, trying to help in some way,
My dad walks into my office without knocking.
"Anything new?" I ask him, nearly sitting on the edge of my seat.
He shakes his head and sits down in front of me.
"What do you want then?"
"You should take a break." I glance at the clock; I have been here for several hours.
"I can't, I need to help Alessia-"
"And what about your-"
"It's not for discussion."
He sighs and gets up, he's about to walk out but pauses. "Lorenz and Robin need their dad..." He walks out and closes the door shut.
I sigh and close my computer. I sit for a few minutes, just trying to clear my mind. I open my drawer and take out a whiskey and a glass, I pour a bit up and drink it, it burns in my throat, I pour some more in and drink again before I put everything back into the drawer.
I take my phone out and send a text to the family chat.
We're eating dinner together. It's NOT for discussion. Be in the dining room in thirty minutes.
Then I order some pizzas and get back to try and find my daughter after setting a timer to 25 minutes.
The alarm goes off, and I walk down, through the living room, and out in the hallway.
"I have ordered pizza, when it arrives get them to the dining room," I tell a passing maid.
"Yes sir."
I walk into the dining room where Lorenz and Robin are already sitting.
"Anything new?" they ask me in choir. I shake my head. They sigh.
I sit down in my seat. "How are you, you two?"
And with that Robin starts to cry, I pull him into my arms so he's sitting on my lap.
"It's okay we're going to find her," I assure him.
I sit with Robin in my arms while the others arrive. Robin stops crying and he goes back to his seat.
"And what about you?" I ask Lorenz.
He shrugs. I don't know if he actually means it, or he tries to seem a little tough in front of his brothers.
"I'm here for you, all of you, okay?" I will still do anything for my sons. "Even the smallest things, like a nightmare you come to me," I tell them, not that they have ever done that but that's not the point. The point is that I will always be there for my sons, I can't fail the others because I lose one, I have already done that once, and I won't do it again.
They nod but don't say anything.
The pizza arrives and we sit and eat in silence. It feels wrong eating without Alessia, knowing where she is, she might not even get fed probably.
I glance at Matteo, I don't know why he hasn't treated Alessia the best, I don't think he even knows himself, but I can tell he's worrying about her. We all are.
After a moment the silence is broken by someone storming into the dining room.
"Uncle! We are getting a video call." Baldassare says.
Everyone stands up and runs to the living room.
"Who is it from?"
"We don't know yet." We walk into the living room, and he sits at the nearest computer, the big screen in front of them is showing someone is calling. "Okay, are you recording?" he asks a guy beside him.
"Yes, and we are ready to start the tracking."
"Good... you ready uncle?" he looks at me, I nod and turn my gaze to the big screen.
The room goes silent.
A dirty man with thin light and gray hair and a light gray hoodie appears on the screen.
I can only see from his shoulders and up, he is blocking everything behind him making it hard to get a chance to figure out where he is.
I stare at the man when I hear Robin whisper something to himself.
"Jack."
I look at Robin's terrified face. Jack? He knows him.
"Oh, hello Robin, how are you?" Jack asks him. No one says anything. "Has the cat got your tongue?"
"Don't Talk To Him!" Lorenz shouts at him. He ignores Lorenz's outburst.
"Well, I can tell you that your sister is fine- or alive. At least for now," he says and takes a step aside revealing Alessia wired to a chair, in front of a dirty white sheet, tears are streaming down her face, and blood is falling from her head and nose.
I clench my fist; my heart is racing so fast that I can hear it.
"What Do You Want?" I ask him.
He seems satisfied with my question but doesn't answer, instead he takes a knife out; he looks at it while walking closer to Alessia.
I watch Alessia panic more and more.
"IS IT MONEY?"
"DON'T TOUCH HER!"
"WHAT DO YOU WANT?"
People scream at the same time.
Dead silence.
"Revenge." He stabs the knife in Alessia's leg, making her scream through the cloth, her wide-open eyes fills with more tears before she starts to cry. She takes heavy and deep breaths in, and cries all the air out again.
Everyone is screaming at once.
Jack sighs satisfied before he speaks again and makes everyone silent again. "Her screams and cries are music to my ears." He pulls the knife out, and blood is pouring out of her thigh. "Maybe I should make a playlist on Spotify, I can send it to you if you want." He smirks.
Everyone start screaming again.
I try to think.
"SHUT UP!" I shout.
Dead silence. I walk closer to the camera.
"No one hurt my daughter... I'm gonna find you."
"The time you find me she will already be dead- "
"IF YOU DON'T WANT ANYTHING THEN WHY ARE YOU CALLING?"
"I'm not a monster," he laughs, "I wanted to give you a chance to say goodbye to her."
"WE WILL KILL YOU! YOU'RE NOT GONNA GET AWAY WITH THIS!" Alexander screams.
"Good luck."
The last thing I see is Jack reaching for something, Alessia's eyes widen again, screaming for her life, trying with all her power to get out of the wire- and then the call ends.
Robin starts crying into Lorenz arms.
Everybody has already started working again.
People are talking but I only get a few sentences.
"I'm gonna kill him."
"We will find her."
"Go through the recording."
"It's gonna be okay."
I walk over to my two youngest sons. I kneel down to be at eye level with Robin, who is clenching to Lorenz's shoulder for dear life.
"Robin, who was that man?" He looks at me with his wet and red eyes. "I need you to tell me everything."
"It's all my fault," he says before he bursts into tears again.
I pick him up and we walk past everyone, people are running back and forth and right in front of me like the building is on fire and everyone is just running past people not giving a care in the world. We go to my office while Robin cries into my neck. I tell Lorenz to open the door and I walk in and sit in my chair with Robin in my lap and Lorenz on the chair beside me.
"Robin, please, we need to know everything about him... how do you know him?"
He looks at me and blink with his wet eyelashes, making my heart crack. I hate to see my kids in pain.
"He- he was mom's boyfriend," he says, trying to steady his breath. I take his hand in mine.
"We met him in the summer... he was nice, but... when mom started working again, she was never home... he hit Alessia..." He says between his sobs.
"Didn't he hit you?"
"If I did something wrong Alessia would do something worse, so he didn't think of punishing me." The corner of his lip tilts up a little but disappears again as quickly as it came.
"He said he wants revenge, revenge for what?" Robin starts to cry even more, mumbling something."It's all my fault. It's all my fault."
"Robin please, what happened?"
"I called the po- police on him, even though Alessia told me not to, but I hated to see her get hurt... I told them everything he had done... he went to prison for 3 and a half years or something because of the lack of evidence... Alessia told him she was the one who called." After the last part he begins to cry again.
I pull him closer to me. "It's okay. It's okay, you did nothing wrong."
Wordcount: 2051
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