Billionaire Romance: Spencer's Torment (A Seductive Alpha Billionaire Romance Book 2) (3 page)

As I walked into the house, I realized I was holding my breath. But when I saw the actual “crime scene,” it was far less dramatic than I had imagined in my mind—whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, I couldn’t be sure.

“It looks like the struggle occurred here in the kitchen,” Young said, pointing to the shattered glass of water on the floor. Other than the broken glass, there wasn't much else out of the ordinary aside from a few pieces of mail that had been knocked off of the counter.

As if he was reading my mind, he said, “Honestly, there's not too much to be concerned about here. No trace of blood anywhere, which is definitely a good sign. Most likely the attacker took her by surprise and overpowered her with brute force. It appears as though she was alive when she was taken,” he said, glancing down uncomfortably.

“Did you see any other cars on the street or any suspicious activity near the house? Maybe something that didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but now might be significant?” Crawford questioned Young.

“No, nothing, sir. We were watching the entire time and we didn't see anyone enter or exit. Just Miss Prescott when Oliver dropped her off from the hospital earlier this evening,” he responded, looking between Crawford and I, baffled as to how all of this occurred right under their noses.

“No Bridget?” I directed at Young and he shook his head no. “I'm assuming you checked the rest of the house?” I inquired and Young nodded in response.

“Yes, sir. We checked every square inch of the place. Didn't see anything out of the ordinary aside from the broken glass here in the kitchen. The assailant had to have been inside the house for hours before Miss Prescott arrived home,” he concluded. “That's the only thing that makes sense.”

I pointed to the side door in the corner of the kitchen that lead out to the backyard patio area and shook my head in disbelief.
How could I have been so stupid?
I had completely forgotten about the alternate entrance to the townhouse and clearly underestimated Calvin’s ability to fly under the radar.

Young and Crawford turned their gaze to the door that I was pointing at and they exchanged a look, then turned and walked over, checking the door jamb and lock.

I looked at Crawford and he turned and nodded his head at me. “Yep, this is where he got in and out most likely. Had to have been. There's evidence of it being picked, plus it's not locked. I'm sure he had his hands full,” Crawford concluded gravely.

“Do we know who did this?” Young questioned, glancing between Crawford and I.

I nodded slowly and sighed, “I have a pretty damn good idea, unfortunately.” He waited for me to explain. “My brother Calvin...he's pretty unstable. He's been harassing Emily and well...let's just say he's been successful on more than one occasion. Growing up in our teens he had to be committed to an institution for several years. But I really thought he was better now. I had absolutely no idea it was still this bad...” I trailed off, a lump forming in my throat as I swallowed back the tears.

I couldn't shake the guilt that I was feeling over the whole situation and everything that had gone wrong in Emily's life since she'd met me. And at that moment I knew I was willing to do whatever it would take to get her back safe and sound.

Suddenly my cell phone started vibrating in my pocket and I pulled it out and glanced at the screen. “Restricted,”
I said out loud, unable to hide the confusion in my voice.
That's weird,
I thought to myself, debating silently about whether or not to answer it.

I looked up at Crawford and Young and the expressions on their faces told me I would be crazy not to answer it. Given the situation, I had to agree, so I swiped my thumb across the screen and placed the phone up to my ear, my heart nearly beating out of my chest. “Hello?” I asked guardedly, unsure of whose voice would be on the other end.

For a moment there was only silence, and then a loud burst of cackling laughter exploded in my ear that set my teeth on edge. “Who is this?” I demanded, trying to keep my composure. I wasn't one for playing games.

Finally the laughter died down and a menacing, yet familiar voice spoke. “Oh, come on now. Don't act like you don't know...” he taunted, feigning insult. And my worst nightmare flashed before my eyes—a vision of Emily covered in blood, limp and lifeless and discarded somewhere like trash. I shuddered and tried to brush aside the vision as best I could.

“Calvin, what have you done? You need to tell me where she is,” I attempted to reason with him, my voice automatically taking on the same tone used by hostage negotiators in the movies. I cringed at how weak I sounded, but I also didn't want to be too aggressive and set him off—or worse, make him hang up since I'd have no way of getting him back on the line, so I bit my tongue. I glanced over at Crawford and then Young, questioning with my eyes what to do.

Crawford made a motion with his hand to keep Calvin talking. I met his eyes and nodded at him, pretty sure that that would be the only way to find out his location and ensure that Emily was safe. At the same time, Young darted for the front door.

Calvin let out a deep, almost jovial-sounding laugh and then hissed, “You think
you're
in charge here? Now
that
is truly funny. You see, the last time I checked...
I'm
the one in a position of power here. Not you, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou Fucking CEO Asshole!”

I had to admit, his words stung even though I knew he was having a severe manic episode. I just couldn't imagine what I had done to him that was so horrible he felt the need to react in this way—especially when it came to taking his anger out on Emily.

But I had to remind myself that I couldn't afford to compromise the situation. “No,” I replied cautiously. “I am completely aware that you're the one in charge here.” I clenched my jaw and shook my head in anger, holding in the words I so desperately wanted to say.

“Good. That's the way it fucking should be, don't you think?” Calvin spat into my ear.

“Uh...” as I grappled for the correct response, I noticed the search team entering the town house, swiftly and quietly.

A detective approached me and motioned for me to continue talking as he started writing something on a piece of paper and they began setting up equipment on the dining room table.

“Speeencer,” Calvin singsonged. “What's going on? I asked you a question and I need an answer. Why are you so distracted?” he sounded suspicious.

“Huh? Nothing. I'm sorry. I just lost my train of thought. Yes, that's the way it should be. You should be in charge. You deserve it.” I agreed, hoping I wasn't laying it on too thick.

The detective held up the piece of paper in front of my face, looking less than confident in my abilities.
Keep him talking. We're trying to establish a GPS coordinate.

“Hmm. You lost your train of thought?” Calvin inquired. “What could be more important than your precious girlfriend's life? I think you need to get your priorities straight here, Spence. That is, if you want to see her alive ever again,” he threatened breezily.

I let out an angry growl and my blood started to boil as I clenched my fist into a ball. Just as I was about to let him have it, he cut me off. “Ah ah ah. Watch it! You don't want to make me angry, do you? After all, you know how unpredictable I can be,” he cooed. “So tell me Spencer...are you alone?”

And by the tone of his voice, I knew that something wasn’t right here. In fact, something was very very wrong. A deer-in-the-headlights look must have flashed across my face because the detective that was coaching me through the call made a shrugging gesture as if to ask what was wrong.

I looked around the corners of the room and covered the mouth piece on the phone in an attempt to mask any sound. I mouthed the word, ‘
cameras’,
to the detective
and he nodded knowingly, cursing under his breath, then scribbled something on his notebook and held it up. On it he had written only one word: ‘STALL.’

After I’d read it, the detective got up from his seat and went outside to fill the others in on the situation, I assumed, leaving me alone to fend for myself. As I examined the room, trying to scope out exactly where the cameras were, I tried to think of an appropriate response to Calvin’s question. 

“Oh, Spencer. You’ve really messed up, haven’t you?” Calvin taunted. “What? You really didn’t think I’d leave this all up to chance, now did you? I mean, I know we’re not that close, but I thought you knew me better than that,” he fake pouted. “And trust me. You’re not going to find them.”

“Look, Calvin, I had no idea it was you,” I tried to reason. “If I had, I wouldn’t have called the cops, I swear. I just want Emily back. This is between me and you. I’ll get rid of the authorities right now, okay? Just please let me talk to her” I pleaded, hoping I hadn’t blown it completely. “I need to know that she’s alright,” I said, swallowing back the tears.

Calvin let out a sickening laugh and replied, “If only it were that easy, Spence. I call the shots!
Not you
. How many fucking times do I have to say that? Jesus!” he shouted into the phone. “But…it’s your lucky day. I’m feeling generous,” he continued, his voice more calm but still not stable. “I’ll give you one more chance, Spencer. That’s it. And if you mess up this time, she’s fucking dead and I mean it. You have an hour to get rid of the cops,” he warned, his voice ominous and full of rage.

And before I could respond or ask anymore questions, the line went completely silent and the call dropped.

“Fuck!” I yelled in exasperation and fell to my knees, sobbing. I knew he was probably watching me and enjoying my reaction, but I couldn’t help it—I was no longer able to hold back the melting pot of emotions that had been stirred up inside of me—emotions that had been dormant for so long that I was actually afraid of what might happen now that they’d been unleashed.

Calvin didn’t know it yet, but I had an advantage. I’d experienced the deepest and darkest parts of my soul and I’d lived in spite of it all—hell, I’d come out
stronger
because of it. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let history repeat itself—not on my watch—not to Emily.  So I picked myself up off the floor with a new resolve to teach this bastard a lesson and more importantly, bring Emily home to me. No matter what it took.

As I dozed in and out of consciousness in the makeshift basement, time seemed to stop dead in its tracks and I couldn’t be sure how much of it had passed before I heard Calvin stomping back down the rickety stairs, even more pissed off than he had been before.

With each step he took, the anxiety in the pit of my stomach grew in a crescendo of terror, until finally he was standing right in front of me, the anger emanating from him, palpable.

“Well you dumb bitch we're going to have to speed this along more quickly than I intended, thanks to your fucking brain dead boyfriend. God, I just, I really don’t understand how
he
turned out to be the successful one because clearly he can’t fucking think. It’s amazing,” he seethed, pacing back and forth in front of me, muttering to no one in particular. 

As he jerked his body one way, then the other he bumped into the disheveled light bulb that hung from the center of the room, sending it into a frenzy of chaos, its erratic light show making me sick to my stomach. When he was gone, all I had wanted was just a little bit of light, but now, the darkness seemed more comforting. I tilted my head forward so that I was staring at the ground, hoping it would calm my nerves and ease the nausea that had come over me.

Unfortunately, it was at that exact moment that Calvin chose to stop muttering to himself and actually focus his attention on me. He stopped abruptly and turned his body to face mine.

I wanted nothing more than to become invisible, then and I scrunched my body up as small as I could. Given the fact that my arms were still chained up against the wall it was basically useless, but I prayed that he somehow wouldn’t notice me—that he’d just forget I was here. I avoided eye contact like I used to do when I was a child, hoping that because I couldn’t see him, maybe somehow, he couldn’t see me, either.

“Oh, Emily…what am I going to do with you?” he asked mockingly, then burst into a psychotic fit of laughter.

I ignored him and continued to stare blankly ahead, willing myself to disappear.

“Hey, bitch! I asked you a fucking question,” he spat, flecks of his spit falling onto my bare skin. His outburst startled me and I looked up at him, then: something was different in his voice and his demeanor. He seemed darker, somehow. As I studied his contorted features an instinctive alarm went off inside of me, warning me to get as far away from this dangerous animal as possible.

He kneeled down in front of me, then and grabbed my face violently, sending a sharp pain shooting through my jaw. I scrunched my eyes shut and held back a scream, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.

“What’s wrong, Emily? Huh? Am I not treating you like a little
princess
? I know that’s what you’re used to, but if you ask me, Spencer is too good to you. You’re just a piece of trash and you know it. I don’t know how he doesn’t see it,” he trailed off, still gripping my jaw, his strong fingers digging into my skin. “Look at me, Goddammit!” he yelled angrily and then backhanded me across the face with his free hand.

I whimpered and a tear slipped down my cheek as I opened my eyes and looked at him. Even though I was trying to be strong and stay optimistic about getting out of here alive, when I saw the look in Calvin’s eyes, a coldness ran through my veins and I knew that it was only a matter of time before I was dead.
Please, Spencer. I need you,
I pleaded, hoping he would hear me somehow.

My thoughts were interrupted when, out of nowhere, Calvin pushed my face away, causing the back of my head to hit the basement wall with a
thud.
I felt an immediate, throbbing ache at the base of my skull and my vision became blurry again.

“Calvin, please,” I whispered, my voice cracking. I felt severely dehydrated and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had any water—
hours, days
? “I need water.”

He paused, staring at me as if he was thinking and he nodded. Then without a word he went back upstairs and I could hear him fumbling around for something. Finally, he emerged again from the darkness and as he approached the bottom steps I saw that he had a bottle of water in his hands.

If I hadn’t been so dehydrated, I probably would have been salivating at the sight of it. As he stood there in front of me with a smile on his face, untwisting the cap, for a split second I actually felt hopeful that he was going to let me have a drink. I should have known better, though. Because as soon as he’d untwisted the cap, he tipped the contents of the bottle back into his mouth and chugged the whole thing. Once it was empty he crinkled it into a ball and threw it at me.

“Aaah. That was damn delicious,” he said, smacking his lips in appreciation. “Thanks for the reminder, Emily. They always say it’s so important to keep yourself hydrated, but I just lose track of time and forget,” he laughed, shaking his head, as if this fact truly amused him.

If I had had any water left in my body, I probably would have started crying, then, at the hopelessness of the situation, but instead all I could do was hang my head in sadness.  

“Alright, let’s get this show on the road. Where were we?” he asked, almost jovial. “Oh, yes. It’s confession time,” he said, rubbing his palms together, his eyes lighting up  with excitement. He studied the watch on his wrist and a look of concern flashed across his face. “Well, damn. We’re going to have to make it quicker than I had originally planned,” he sighed, shrugging his shoulders as if this was a completely normal situation.

I watched him as he crossed the room, barely able to keep my head upright because I was so exhausted and in so much pain. I knew I had to fight the urge, though, because if I slipped off into unconsciousness, there was no telling what he’d do to me and there was a very real possibility that I wouldn’t ever wake back up.

Calvin dragged a stool over in front of me and sat down on it, staring into my eyes. Then he said, “Alright, so…I guess I better get this out of the way first or else nothing else will make sense to you. Now, I don’t know how much Spencer has told you about our past, but my guess is not much. I mean, he likes to act like he’s perfect and got it all together but really, he’s just as fucked up as I am, if not more.” He glanced at me, waiting for a reaction, but I didn’t give him one.

“Okay. You don’t want to take my bait? That’s cool. I’m going to fucking tell you anyway,” he snarled. “Do you know our “mom” used to bring her tricks home and fuck them on the couch right in front of us while we watched TV?” he offered, nodding his head, like he couldn’t believe it either. “Oh, and that’s not all. No, no. As if that wasn’t enough, she would string herself out on heroin so bad that she’d be passed out for days on end, leaving me and Spencer to fend for ourselves, never having any fucking thing to eat. God, we were just kids. And one day…she just never woke up,” he said with a shrug, as if he was completely okay with this fact. “We found her in the floor, dead. She had choked on her own pile of vomit, the useless piece of shit. You know, can I be honest here, Emily?” he asked.

Without waiting for a response from me he continued, “I have to say that I really didn’t care she was dead. In fact, I think the emotion I felt was happiness, then. It would just be me and Spencer, that’s all I’d ever wanted, you know? But Spencer,
Jesus
, he was a wreck. Sobbing and pissing all over himself. I mean, he was supposed to be the one who had it all together, being the oldest and all, but he just lost his
shit
. And after that day, we were taken away and put into foster care and she ruined it all again. Even after she was dead. Fuck!” he screamed, running his hands through his hair as he hung his head. “Why the
fuck
did you do this to us, you cunt?”

At first, I thought Calvin was talking to me, but then I realized it was even worse than that: he was talking to his dead mother. I was frozen in fear and had no idea what to do. I was afraid that if there was too much silence Calvin would remember why he brought me here and just skip straight to the part where he kills me, but at the same time I was also scared to say anything because the slightest comment could set him off. Luckily, though, Calvin kept talking.

“And you know…all of this isn’t even the best part,” he said with a twisted grin. “I’m just curious, Emily: did you know that Spencer was married before?”

He studied my face, gauging my reaction to what he’d just told me. As much as I tried, I couldn’t hide my surprise.
Spencer was married before? Why didn’t he tell me?
A part of me felt hurt, betrayed even and I forgot all of the pain I was in, focusing only on the fact that Spencer had kept such a huge part of his life a secret from me.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Calvin said, nodding as the smile on his face grew bigger. “But it gets better. Wait till you hear the finale,” he laughed.

My insides did a flip and I felt nauseous. I really didn’t want to hear what he was about to tell me, but his words were like a speeding train and there was no way to stop them from coming. I was at his mercy and he knew it. All I could do was listen.

“Lauren, that was her name—damn, she was hot. A lot like you, actually. I mean, it’s uncanny how similar you look to her. No wonder Spencer’s so hung up on your pussy.
Jesus.
You remind him of his dead wife,” he cackled, tipping his head back in enjoyment. He stared at me, then, his eyes becoming daggers.

I could feel the blood boiling inside of me and I wanted nothing more than to slit his throat. I couldn’t stand him and he knew it, but he took pride in the fact that there was nothing I could do about it.

“Well, anyway, I guess I should get to the point,” he sighed and then continued, “I raped and stabbed her to death. Well, actually, in the opposite order, but you get the picture. It was a bloody mess and poor Spencer, he had to deal with the whole thing. The cops even tried to pin it on him. Not that that’s what I was going for, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to go down for it. It really did a number on him…” he trailed off. “And now this,” Calvin shook his head in fake disbelief.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” I whispered, unable to keep quiet any longer. I was overwhelmed with grief and sadness for the women he’d hurt and would continue to hurt—not to mention his own
brother
.

A sick, cruel sound escaped his lips and he smiled. Then, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world, he replied, “Oh, Emily. Because I’m going to kill you, too.”