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three years later
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
"Hey, G!"
"Yeah, man?"
"Where are you running to, huh?" he asked, removing his boxing gloves as he prepared himself to sprint on the treadmill.
"Oh, nothing. Boss got some work for me up north, Ry," his friend replied.
"Boss got some work for everyone up north except me, man," he commented.
"It's not like that, bro. He wants you to handle things here," the friend shrugged.
"What's to handle when you're planning to take the whole gang north? Is this a major one, man?" he asked, throwing his hood down from his head and beginning to run after increasing the speed.
"I guess so. Boss said -"
"You can call him Jason in front of me, bro," he said, for the hundredth time.
"Jason..." he continued, correcting himself, "said that he'll brief us once we reach there. I am the last one to leave, anyway," he added, realizing soon enough that he had said too much. He had to leave, right now.
"I really wanna come too, G. He doesn't allow me! If this is major, shouldn't I be in the US too?" he told him. "I am really the best you mutts have," he chuckled. Everyone knew and feared Ryder in the gang, but that's exactly why no one would allow him to go back to where he came from. Either way, G's work of making sure Roman or the Jonathan scum that everyone called him, stayed in his line.
He had spent three years, following him to his classes at the Uni, making sure he didn't talk to anyone suspicious and most importantly, making sure he accessed internet that was moderated through his devices only.
But G's work was ending today. His task to babysit the man everyone hated but feared in the gang and faked knowing as Ryder would finish tonight when he left.
"I wish you could, dude. But...your dad's orders. Not yours," G said before he prepped to leave.
"I'll try to talk to him," Roman said. "This time, I got to, bro."
He had never been allowed, for any work to go to the US, even though his father's aspirations had always been to expand the business there. He couldn't even attend a programme as part of his course in Seattle. But even he knew why he really wanted to go there.
He needed to go to the small town of Port Angeles. It had been tough to find the town in a small journal in the library but when he couldn't find it on his phone, he was desperate to know if the place even existed and a few weeks ago, he had gotten to know that it does. He hadn't been imagining it all.
"I'm going to him," he told G, jumping out to run to his father's office which was across the hall.
But before he could enter, he decided to use the washroom on the side. All this workout was really making him stink. If his father had guests over, he possibly couldn't enter this way.
As he washed his face, he noticed the small scar on his forehead, reminding him of his first few memories. Unlike the man he had seen three years ago, in the mirror in his room, Roman had changed a lot.
His hair weren't dark anymore but a dusky blonde. He could notice himself becoming older as the days went by and the cuts from training added themselves around his body.
He had no memory of anything before the accident still, not even his own name but the one thing he knew was a face. The face that wouldn't stop haunting him.
All he remembered was a face when he didn't even remember his own.
He saw her everywhere imaginable. In his lecture halls, in the streets of Rio, in the crowd that gathered after his lectures, and most often, her face haunted him in his sleep. Almost every night, he woke up to her.
He shook his head as the only name he remembered came back to him. As if the face wasn't enough, her name, at least that's what he named her for his sanity, was haunting too.
Before the name rolled off his tongue, he broke away from the trance and patted his face with the towel, ready to leave before his thoughts could consume him, as they did every night.
"Dad -" he called out but stopped in his tracks as soon as he heard his father speak. Something made him close the door which connected the bathroom to his father's office and stay hidden behind it.
"Yes, Dave," his father said. "Thank you for all of it. I'll meet you in Seattle then?" his father asked on the phone.
Seattle.
Seattle is near Port Angeles, Roman's mind screamed at him.
"No, no. Loaning the ship was the best thing you could have done for me. Yes...no, definitely. You have no idea, Dave. Marcus Jonathan won't know what will hit him when he sees me in Seattle. I will destroy his home, just like he destroyed mine."
Marcus Jonathan. Marcus Jonathan. Jonathan.
Jonathan, said a voice in his head as he shivered against the door.
"I want to uproot them finally, especially before my son..." his father trailed, moving away from his table as Roman backed away. He left the bathroom in a hurry, running out to the gym. Up till tonight, he would act as if nothing was wrong but he knew what he needed to do.
More than ever before, he needed to go to Port Angeles now.
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"Mr. Carter, would you like anything else? Tea? Coffee?"
"No, thank you so much!" Roman told the air hostess who asked him.
He settled back on his seat, humming a tune of a new song he had discovered, diving into his thoughts.
He didn't want to betray his father, but when most of the men around the house left, it was easier to sneak away. Before his father arrived in Seattle, he had to know what that name and place meant to his past.
He breathed out, as the pilot told them they were about to land.
He didn't like to defy his father, but then, he was Ryder Carter. His father had always told him to go with his gut feeling because the gang business was in his blood.
He had trained without a single break since the day his father had told him that he would take over him, in order to please his father.
"Seattle, hmm..." he hummed, looking around the airport as his passport was cleared by immigration. He couldn't believe it. His friend from Uni had actually got him a fake passport within a day. Guess he wasn't lying when he said he could do this easily. Thank god he had kept his phone number even after graduating early.
As he stood on the airport, wondering how he would manage a cab till Port Angeles, someone tackled him with so much force that he almost fell against his bag. As he looked down, a girl was crying while wrapping his arms around her chest. For a minute, he remained frozen, unaware of the new way to greet someone.
"Ma'am. Excuse me..." he poked her head but she continued to wail on his chest. "I'm sorry...but I think you have mistaken me..."
"MADDIE!" He heard a woman scream behind him almost immediately. As he turned his head around, another woman, this time, crying before hitting his chest already added herself in the hug. Unlike the girl hidden in his chest, this older lady looked...oddly familiar. The uneasiness crept in as he tried to pull away from the girl and the woman. He could feel the slight headache he woke up to almost every morning return.
"Okay, I didn't know about this little ceremony they do here, but ma'am, I really need to get a cab. I'm late. I need to reach Port Angeles before dark!" he begged in desperation.
As the woman pulled away from him, he couldn't understand why her eyes were still crying, looking at him with such intense expressions that he wanted to back out.
He wiggled out of the hold, pushing the girl by her shoulders as everyone around them gave them weird looks. "Do I know you?" he asked the girl, whose eyes were oddly similar to his.
Bam. A hand came, hitting him on his head from behind.
"Never talk to your sister like that -"
"I'm sorry! You're mistaken, ma'am. I am not her brother!" he told her, stepping away and picking his bag up. "I am really late...I am sorry," he told them, running before he would be tackled in another hug by the crazily familiar ladies.
"Let him go, Mum," Mason told his mother, as she cried on Maddie's shoulders.
"What do you mean by let him go?! You saw him, didn't you? Why were you standing there -" she cried again and again but her eldest cut her in.
"Because he isn't the Roman we knew," Mason told her.
"He...the rod. They hit him in the head, didn't they?" His mom whispered, stepping away as she wiped her tears.
"Mase," Maddie whispered. "I think we really need a good plan to get him back," she said, handing them an identity card of some university in Rio De Janeiro. The name on the card that Maddie had stolen from his pocket was a clear indication of what had happened.
Ryder Carter.
"At least they let him graduate," Mason said. "Someone will follow him. Come, we need to get back home. I have a feeling he isn't in Seattle for no reason."
"If he's going to Port Angeles, we need to make sure he sees his home. If he has lost his memories...I know how they may come back."
"I know what I am taking home for Christmas for Scarlet, now," Maddie said. "We need to get him back."
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
"This is it," Roman stretched his neck, pulling himself up on the wall.
"I hope the electricity is out," Mason spoke into the earpiece to his men as he looked at Roman or Ryder, whoever he was, jump down the wall and enter their house. "And you thought a power cut and a couple of broken cameras would get you into our house, brother? What have they done to you," he chuckled, shaking his head, from the control room.
"Is every room of the house except Scarlet's and his own locked?" he said, looking at Roman, unaware that Roman was just following a hunch. He had somehow taken a cab to the heart of Port Angeles and somehow the first search on his phone told him he was very close to Marcus Jonathan's house. When he had noticed no one was home, he thought he could just meddle with the wires and enter.
"Yes, sir," his men replied as the door behind him opened and his wife walked in with a coffee in her hands.
Even after two years of marriage and before that, six months of dating, didn't change the way she would surprise him as she entered his office to deliver files or the way he looked at her.
Nothing had changed about Clarissa since then.
When they had got married two years ago, he had asked for a destination wedding because he knew Scarlet would refuse to come back home but desperately wanted to be there for it. As they married each other in Madrid, Scarlet had been one of her bridesmaids, managing most of the wedding as a thank you to Clarissa for rescuing her.
"I can't believe he's the same guy who threatened to kill me," she laughed as a very serious Roman broke the lock of their backdoor with ease.
"At least his basics are present in that head...which is blonde now, ew!" Mason commented, as Clarissa chuckled further.
"They underestimated his memory, I guess," Clarissa said. "I wonder what led him to this place? Jason won't want him to go back to his house, would he?"
"I am wondering the same thing, to be honest. Why did he come here when he doesn't even remember anyone, anymore," he said, scratching his chin as a hidden camera showed him Roman, trying to open a door that he had gotten closed.
"Shit, I need to leave soon," he muttered, looking around the family room, while Mason and Clarissa paid close attention to him.
As Roman looked around, his eyes fell on a picture, making his legs involuntarily walk towards the little black and white photograph and pick it up.
It was him, as a child, anyone could see that. The child was a replica of him. There was no doubt about that, but what was this picture doing in this house?
The familiar headache was back but for the first time, it wasn't because her name screamed in his head. "What is this place?" he whispered, placing his hand on the wall and immediately the light switched on in the room.
For once, he should have run, because there was a good chance of him being caught in this mysterious house.
"This is...this is the same..." he muttered, frozen in his footsteps as he faced the foyer.
A dream, a distant memory was back. He could see it, himself standing right where he stood right now as the woman who haunted his dreams walked down those stairs. Every night, this scene had played in his mind until he woke up sweating profusely. And here he was, in the same house, standing right below the staircase.
"Scarlet," he whispered and unconsciously began to walk up the stairs as the pictures he saw made his headache increase. There were so many more images of him from a time he couldn't recall but when he saw the woman from earlier along with the younger girl, his head pounded further as confusion increased.
Jonathan.
Port Angeles.
Winters.
Maddie.
Scarlet.
Rome.
All these names played themselves in his head, over and over again but he couldn't establish any connection between them.
Rome.
That thought, he held to it because out of everything, it turned out to be the most familiar one.
"Roman Jonathan," he whispered to himself, the name rolling down his tongue like it was meant for him only. "Is that..." he had dreamt once, just once, of walking up to the room he stood in front of. Before his thoughts could get the better of him, his fingers twisted the knob that clicked the door open.
"Come on, Rome," Mason whispered, eyeing his brother, waiting for him to enter Scarlet's old room.
"What -" Roman abruptly stopped when he looked ahead.
She was here. She was everywhere in front of his eyes. The same woman he had spent years seeing in his dreams, memories, the only thing he remembered. This was Scarlet. She had to be, his mind told him. A pain crossed the back of his forehead, but he ignored it and looked ahead, picking up a picture of her with him which was placed right beside the bed.
He couldn't believe what he saw. It was his picture, with her, as she kissed his cheek and he pulled his tongue out at the camera. "I know her. I know you," he kept on repeating while stressing on his brain to remember something.
I love you, Rome. A voice chuckled in his head, the headache impossibly painful as if he was suffering from a migraine. "Scarlet. Scarlet," he yelled, not caring if anyone caught him anymore as he placed the picture down and sat on the bed. All the pictures beside him, of hers, that woman who ran into him on the airport. All came back to him.
Roman Jonathan.
Ryder Hunt.
Scarlet Winters.
"Scarlet..." he mumbled, the headache getting him as he felt himself being pushed towards darkness.
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"Is he ever going to wake up?"
"Maddie..."
"No, mom. He isn't even moving! I have to go back soon!"
"Maddie..."
"Dad!"
"The doctor said he would be up in a few hours, okay?"
"It's been twelve hours already!"
"Will you shut up, please?" A hoarse voice called out, as a pair of gray eyes opened themselves. "Cry baby," Roman mumbled as his eyes opened to the familiar room.
"OH MY GOD, HE'S UP!" Maddie yelled, not believing her eyes.
"Maddie Elizabeth Jonathan, shut up or I swear to -"
"What did you just call me?!" Maddie said as everyone else gasped around them.
"Maddie...why? Isn't that your name anymore?" he asked her, everything becoming clearer to him.
"Your memories are back?" Mason asked in a low voice.
"Yes, brother. They were back as soon as I saw this room," he chuckled as he sat upright in Scarlet's bed. His mother was the first one to tackle him, as he expected.
"I missed you so much!" she whispered. "Oh my baby boy, what did they do to you?" she said, letting out a sob that she had been controlling for far too long.
"Mom! I am fine, I am so sorry for -"
"Son, you will not apologise for something that wasn't in your control," his father said, hugging him next. "I missed you too, by the way."
"Me too, Dad," he said, patting his old man's back. He didn't want to admit it, but his father, out of everyone else in the room had aged the most.
"How does it feel?" Mason asked him, sitting beside the bed as everyone else settled.
"I...I don't know. One minute, I was someone else, and then, when it all came back and there was this impossible headache, but when I woke up, it was...normal, I guess. As if nothing had gone wrong," Roman told them, even though his head still hurt a little at same place where he had been hit.
"You're very lucky," his mother said. "It can be a painful experience."
"I...where's Scarlet?" he asked, looking around the room as Mason was reminded of the day she had woken up the same way, looking around for him, over three years ago.
At least this time Mason had a better answer.
"Patience, brother," he told him but that didn't help Roman's uneasiness.
"So, how was it with...the Carters?" Maddie asked him after awhile.
"To be very honest? It was good. They made me believe I was Ryder...but hey, I don't know. Now that I look back, there were things I couldn't explain ever since I woke up but Jason...Jason acted well, let's say." But then Roman's eyes widened as his last interaction with him played in his mind. "He's going to attack!"
"Oh, we know. He's an idiot. Dave's a friend," Mason swatted him as Clarissa entered the room, handing Mason his phone.
"There's a missed call from Barcelona," she told him, smiling at Roman who stared at her with confusion.
"You're...you're the girl who helped us find -"
"Clarissa May. Yes, it's a pleasure to meet you again, Roman," she smiled at him as she sat beside Mason, who kissed her cheek.
"She meant Clarissa Jonathan," Maddie chuckled as Roman looked at the couple in confusion.
"Oh...I...I MISSED A WEDDING?" He screamed, pointing at them and then questioning his parents as he hopped out of the bed.
"You're two years late, brother," Mason chuckled, shaking his head.
"No way in -"
Before he could finish, the phone that was now kept between Mason and Roman rang, Scarlet's face appearing on the caller ID. Before he knew it, Roman had taken the phone in his hands, picking it up almost immediately.
"Scarlet -" A hand pressed over his mouth as Clarissa snatched the phone from him.
"Yes, Scarlet?" Mason asked as Maddie whispered a shut up to Roman.
"Not this easily, Rome! We'll surprise her later!" she squealed in his ears.
"Huh? Oh...hi, Mase," he could feel it, the tug in his heart that her voice made. She was alright but where is she? He wondered in utter confusion as Maddie dragged him away from the phone that Marcus had placed on speaker.
"Are you okay?" Mason asked her.
"Oh, no...I just thought I heard...nevermind," Roman hated to lie to her right now but whatever Maddie had planned better be worth the wait. "I hope Maddie is okay after your trek in Canada? I didn't want to wake her up, I know how she gets after those trips, especially the painful flights. And now she has to take another one in a few hours -"
"Scarlet, she's fine. Stop worrying," Mason assured her as Maddie rolled her eyes. Some habits about Scarlet would never change. "How are the classes going?" he asked her.
"Good, I mean, I didn't think anyone would do well on the surprise test, but they did, thank God! Mr. Will would have killed me if I got my first assignment wrong," Scarlet said, as everyone around the room readied themselves for her rants, but Roman. Roman just stood there confused as Maddie removed her hands from his mouth.
"You'll get used to it," she whispered to him.
"I have to pick up Bella from daycare and I have to finish some work from the publishing house too, Mase. I have so much planned for our Christmas dinner as well, I just really hope Maddie will want to eat chicken after that long flight! And...oh! You know Bella did this -"
"Scarlet, I love you, but something came up. Can I call you back in awhile?" Mason said.
"Oh yeah, please. I am late to pick her up already. Love you, Mase!" she yelled from afar as Mason cut the call.
"Okay..." Roman trailed as everyone saw the expected confused eyes searching around for answers. "I have clearly missed a few things here. One, where is Scarlet? Two, she's still in college and knows about a surprise test...what? and three, whose Bella?" Roman asked, tapping his foot.
"I think Maddie can tell you the best," Cara said, patting her daughter's back as she smiled.
"After you disappeared, we tried to settle here but...nothing would work so, in brief, we moved to Barcelona with Adrian, Rihanna and the twins where she resumed her course. After graduation, she became a teaching assistant. She also helps Rihanna with her publishing firm and Bella...Bella is Adrian and Rihanna's daughter," she said, speaking all at once and then finally breathing.
"Rome, we'll handle Jason when he comes. Right now, I need you to get to her, please. She has waited long enough. She calls every week, hoping to get some information on you. Chris and Stephen are sick of dead ends too," Mason told him.
"He's right. I know how tough the days are -"
"FUCK THIS!" Roman snapped, taking Maddie's hand.
"Language!" Cara screamed from behind them.
"Where's Andrew? Ask him to pack some clothes and book my ticket with Maddie!" he yelled as he dragged Maddie out of the room with him.
"Slow down, buddy!" she chuckled. "You didn't even remember your name until yesterday -"
"Maddie, please let this adrenaline guide me," he said, entering his own room for the first time in three years.
I'm coming, Scarlet.
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