Page 16 of Diamond Desire

If he’d been like me and presumed my stalker was a man.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“I like Maggie the most.” She grabbed another bottle, handing it to me so I could sip more water. “I didn’t like when your name was Sapphire and I’m glad you gave it back to the real Sapphire.”

Though I was already baffled, it seemed I had found more to be confused about.

“You met the real Sapphire?” I asked, hoping they would say yes and tell me where I had met them before. Ideally, they would say through my daddy’s work, then confess to being Sarah, and suddenly develop a conscious and let me go.

Then I realized I didn’t need to be in a rush. The men I loved were dead. Malone was dead.

I had nothing to go home to now.

Nothing but silence and grief and guilt.

She nodded. “I was going to kill her, you see. But I-” Her words were cut off when her phone rang.

The gun in her hand moved right to my head, forcing me to sit still and silent as they pushed the phone against their ear, listening to what I was sure was a man shouting on the other end a moment before cursing and backing away.

The gun never left me, so I remained docile and calm. As calm as a person could be when faced with a monster that had not only ruined a lot of their life, but was liable to snap at any moment.

“Something came up and there are things I need to do for a while.” She said as she backed up toward the door and I prepared myself to make a run for it the minute I could. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, so we can finally go home. But it may take me a while before it’s safe.” She cursed to herself a couple of times, her voice still distorted by the voice changer that it almost sounded funny.

Fuck me, I was going to laugh at her. I was going to laugh at the deluded bitch who’d recently waterboarded me.

I was an idiot, clearly.

Bobbing my head in the most carefree and lazy way I could manage, I said, “No problem. Ford and I can continue our dinner whilst you deal with the business you have.”

I fucking smiled as I said my daddy’s name and pretended that I was doing anything with him other than wanting to cry and find a way to make sure his body couldn’t be ruined more than it already was. It felt disrespectful to leave him the way he was, and though I was sure there was nothing for us after death,he had thought different. I wanted to burn his body and free any ounce of his soul that might have been trapped inside of him.

I wanted to make sure nobody could ever disrespect him again.

“Would you mind sitting there a moment, whilst I get you some supplies and things to look after yourself with?” Crazy bitch looked at me, or at least her mask stared my way, as she fingered the gun in her hand with the ease of a woman who’d used a gun for decades.

“Of course.” As nice as it would have been to attack, she didn’t turn her back on me or give me a chance to. Instead, she placed her hand on a panel by the side of the one-way mirror, and a small door opened up. “This is your bathroom – you feel free to use it as you please. And the tap water isn’t very nice, so I’ll leave some bottles for you to drink too, and some food.”

The bathroom was tiny and, the worst part of all, without a single window, vent, or anything to escape. It was a toilet, sink and showerhead on the wall. Everything was tiled cream and beyond a plastic toothbrush, toothpaste, a bar of soap and a pile of toilet roll, there was nothing of use to me. Nothing that could be fashioned into a weapon. The best I had was a few towels I could hang myself with if I listened to the nagging voice in the back of my head, reminding me that all my men were dead, and I was fucking alone.

I was alone for the rest of my life because I could never replace any of them. I could never move on.

They were mine, and they were it for me. I didn’t want anyone else. I didn’t even want to live without them.

“Thank you for all this. I think I will take a nice shower whilst I wait for you to return.” There was no shower hose, only the head, and it looked like it was made of plastic, too.

Though I would attempt to do something with it to help me out, I didn’t have a good feeling. I had even less of a good feelingwhen she used the fancy panel on the wall that had delivered me the horrid mint cinnamon rolls, to offer me multiple large bottles of water, cereal bars, bread, cheese and various other little bags of snacks like nuts and candy. All things that lasted a while, even without a fridge and didn’t require cooking.

It would have been nice if she’d handed me a little gas stove, lighter and perhaps a knife. But that was pushing it and I knew that even if she was crazy, she wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t give me things to let me escape.

“There isn’t a lot of food, but you should be fine. I’m going to try to be fast so we can hurry up and get home.” She still hadn’t turned her back on me. Nor had she lowered her gun. “I had your bedroom made up nice and pink for you and you’ve got the best view of the woods. I know you love pink the most, and you’re always been a nature lover.”

I fucking hated pink now. Sure, I had never been a big pink girl, anyway. But living with Henley had made me tap into that more pretty princess side of me who found joy in the Barbie-like palettes and outfits. But now I would never wear the bastard color again. I was going to burn anything pink I owned and move it from my life, so I never had to be reminded of whatever bullshit was happening right now. And I sure as fuck wasn’t a nature girl. I mean, yeah. A woodland fuck? Sign me up. But I was not a hiker and the only time I even considered things like jogging on a trail or something was when Kody had bribed me with orgasms.

And now Kody is dead. He’s dead because you killed him.

You dragged him into your orbit, Sapphire, and now look… he’d burned up and crashed.

He’d died for nothing.