Chapter 8 - The Ransom
I completely lost my mind and screamed Daisy's name at the top of my lungs as I ran blindly into the ruined house.
The normally pristine living room was completely trashed, with heavy furniture aggressively overturned and broken glass covering the entire hardwood floor.
Aunt Martha was sitting dazed on the floor near the kitchen, tightly holding a bloody towel to her injured head.
She slowly looked up at me with absolute terror in her crying eyes and weakly whispered that terrible men had broken in and taken the little girl.
I immediately dropped heavily to my bruised knees, feeling exactly as though the vital air had been violently knocked straight out of my burning lungs.
I frantically pulled out my cell phone and dialed Mitchell's private number, screaming completely hysterically the exact second he answered the call.
I viciously demanded that he immediately turn around and bring my precious daughter back to me before I killed him.
Mitchell surprisingly sounded completely caught off guard, his voice trembling with what sounded like genuine, unfeigned panic.
He loudly swore to me on his own life that he had just left the library parking lot and had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
Before I could aggressively accuse him of being a liar, my phone violently buzzed against my cheek with an incoming text message.
I pulled the phone away and saw that it was a multimedia picture message sent from a completely unknown, unlisted number.
The grainy image clearly showed my beautiful, utterly terrified Daisy sitting alone on a filthy, stained mattress inside a dark, concrete room.
Another chilling text message immediately followed the disturbing photograph.
It bluntly stated that the message was from my sister-in-law, Brenda.
She furiously wrote that the dangerous, violent people Mitchell owed massive amounts of money to had completely run out of patience today.
They were actively coming for her life and the rest of the wealthy family unless she paid them off in full by tonight.
Brenda aggressively demanded that I immediately bring the USB drive directly to her without telling a single soul.
She fully planned to selfishly trade the stolen, priceless corporate data to the loan sharks in exchange for her own pathetic life.
May you like
The final, terrifying text provided a specific GPS address for an abandoned, decaying warehouse located deep on the industrial side of the city.
Brenda ominously warned me that if I dared to call the police for help, I would absolutely never see my sweet Daisy alive again.
