Page 49

Chapter 48

Aria

D arkness looms in Tobias' eyes, glaring at me from across the room while his mom tends to the pen lodged in his arm.

I feel it, the demonic presence of his dark side filling all my senses, like unpredictable waves surrounding him that are only looking to cause carnage. The evil wants to be known, to be feared, and since all I can think of is how we are all about to die, he's succeeding.

Each step he takes while he angrily paces makes me shiver–the way he twitches his neck to the side, blinks at a rapid speed, and ultimately looks emotionless, like a receptacle full of death and hatred.

I'm sitting on a wooden chair in the corner of a bright room, my hands bound in front of me with a red cable tie. Tobias had pushed me into the dog crate next to Gabs but took me out before sitting me here.

Every time his eyes land on mine, he clenches his fists and averts his drained gaze to the ground barely a second later. Every time Justin walks by me and intentionally kicks my chair to frighten me more, he glares at him before hefalters.

He's fighting himself.

The crates are large...for dogs. But for human beings? Tiny. Both Gabs and Kaleb have their knees to their chests, wincing in discomfort with black tape over their mouths to keep them quiet. Gabriella is whimpering for her life, her eyes begging me to run every time Tobias and Justin turn their backs.

It's pointless. We’re in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woodlands. If I do manage to get away, they'll catch me.

Violetta huffs, breaking me from my blank stare at the white wall. She throws down the bloody gauze from stitching up Tobias. "I still think this is a bad idea. If we leave now, we can catch the next boat and be out of here. She..." Her eyes land on mine, strangely looking concerned. "She doesn't want you anymore. We are wasting time."

"Agreed," Justin says, shoving his hands in his pockets. "He doesn't listen."

Tobias glares at Justin, who raises both hands in defeat.

Kaleb starts kicking at his cage, trying to shout through the tape on his mouth. Each blast of his foot vibrates in my ears, and my headache worsens. I close my eyes when I see Justin lift the keys from the table, twirling them around his finger. "Why is he here again?"

"He disrespected my girlfriend." My eyes open once more, staring at Tobias while he confidently smiles at them with raised brows. "No one messes with her."

"Girlfriend," I hear Justin mutter under his breath, followed by a snort.

Before I can say anything, Gabriella's phone beeps in Justin's hand. "Found him," he says in excitement, lifting the screen for Tobias to see. "He said he's just home from dropping his kid off, that she and Aria can pick him up in twenty minutes."

My eyes widen at Tobias shoving his jacket on, keeping his gaze off mine while he packs a hammer and chains into a bag. "Don't you dare touch him!" I warn Tobias in a sneer, my nerve endings exploding. When he ignores me, I push myself off the chair and shake in my rigid stance, begging him to look at me. "Please."

Justin comes at me, shoving my chest so I fall back in the chair with a grunt.

Tobias narrows his eyes at him. "Don't do that to her."

He lifts his hands in defense, his brow raised. "Whatever, big guy. Can we go now?"

"Don't lay a finger on her." Tobias looks over at me without making eye contact, and then he tilts his head to Gabs. "But if the other one starts being a nuisance, you can just kill her," he tells his mom before pointing at Kaleb. "Keep him alive for me. I want to teach him a lesson for speaking to my girl the way he did."

She nods once, her head dropping. "You really don't need to hurt them."

He sniffs, tossing his bag over his shoulder. "That's up to the doctor."

She huffs and crosses her arms as she sits. "Torturing the people she loves will push her away from you. How do you expect her to let us raise the children if you've killed everyone around her? Winning her trust is what you need to do, and even at that...it's close to impossible."

My shoulders tense as Tobias drops a heavy fist onto the dog grooming table in the middle of the room. "I won't leave her! You don't get it. I can't lose her."

"You already have," she replies in a low tone, blunt, matter-of-fact.

"Stay the fuck out of it," he tells her with a pointed finger. "You don't know her like I do."

I need him to listen to his mom. "Tobias..." I stop my words just as she widens her eyes at me, shaking her head while Tobias drops his. I take her wordless advice, keeping silent.

He’s finally done it, though. I’m officially terrified of Tobias.

The rope I was once comfortably holding is now thin and weak, hanging on by a single thread, threatening to snap. Tobias owns that thread... My life, my unborn babies, my final breath and vulnerability. He owns it all, no matter if I agree to go with him or not. He controls what happens next.

"Hurry up!" Justin yells from the reception down the narrow, cold hallway. "I told him they were picking him up like ten minutes ago."

I close my eyes, my chin shaking as I hold back tears. They are going to drive to Ewan's place, he's going to walk out thinking it's me, and he’ll be met with a pair of vicious animals.

"Please don't hurt him," I beg Tobias, but he ignores me yet again as he leaves the room, slamming the heavy door closed behind him. I gasp out a weep, dropping my face to my bound hands.

"I tried," Violetta says after a few passing moments of my cries filling the room in broken echoes. "I really did try."

I gulp, my eyes drifting to Gabriella still tied up with her mouth taped. "So did I."

"You need to understand, Tobias is my baby boy," she says, standing from the chair and slowly walking over to me. "I'm his mother and my job right now is to keep him alive and safe."

"Alive and safe?" I let out a breathy laugh. "He's definitely not safe. He's wanted for murder and now kidnapping. He's not even safe from himself. If he succeeded earlier, we would all be dead."

"Meaning?" she asks, tilting her head with a frown.

I wipe my eyes on my sleeves. "He tried to kill me, twice."

She doesn't flinch. "Tobias won't kill you."

I chuckle again. "First time, he wanted us to both hang ourselves." I watch her face drop, her lips parting as fear washes over her. "And then he tried to blow my house up with us both inside."

"You're lying."

I shake my head. "I wish I was."

She drops to her chair, twisting the pendant of her necklace between her thumb and finger. "My son was going to kill himself?"

I nod. "Ten minutes before, he agreed to hand himself in under the condition that I stay by his side."

She presses her palm to her mouth, closing her eyes as a tear slides down her cheek. "He did?" she asks with a croak, her lip quivering. "He agreed to turn himself in?"

Nodding, I say, "We can help him, Violetta. You can let us out, and we can keep him safe from himself."

"He will never forgive me," she says, pressing her palm to her chest. "He's all I have."

"I'm pregnant with your grandchildren, and the chances of us surviving this with me denying Tobias are slim." I move forward, taking her hand in between mine, the plastic causing painful friction against my wrists. "I won't doom my unborn babies; I will get out of this. Please...please, help us?"

The corner of her mouth turns up ever so slightly as shestrokes the back of her fingers down my cheek. She takes a deep breath, and I get to my feet as she stands. "My son is a good person. He was taking a cocktail of different things that helped regulate most of the issues he faced daily, but?—"

"But he stopped them when he met me," I finish her sentence, remembering Tobias telling me he'd stopped his meds because he wanted to be normal. "He told me."

"His stepfather was monitoring his behavior around you at work, but Tobias had lashed out at him for some reason. He broke his ribs with one punch. They never really formed much of a relationship over the years. Roderick... You know him as Blythe."

“Yeah.”

She nods, rubbing her hand down her face the same way Tobias does. "He is very unique, Aria. I have had many specialists observe him since he was young. He's a trickster, and a really good one at that. He intentionally manipulated their results so they couldn't diagnose him. He always told me he didn't want a label, that he didn't need one because he wasn't different."

She clears her throat and continues.

"When Tobias was a teenager, his father taught him to compartmentalize his emotions, arrange them in a way that protects them from each dissociation. He was able to protect things like empathy, love, fear, and anything that rendered him powerless. As he got older, I watched him fight against himself to keep them safe, to make sure they didn't get lost. He was terrifying to be around."

I look over at Gabriella and Kaleb, both sitting with their mouths taped and their hands bounded, watching, listening.

"I don't know how to explain it. There are parts of him that aren't even in touch with reality, that don't even know who I am. They only come out when he's blinded by rage. I have no idea who he is right now. He's not my son...not the real Tobias." She sighs, looking down at her fingers in her lap. "He has to be inside that vessel, Aria. My son needs to be there...somewhere.”

Her body is trembling, but she keeps going.

“He has a lot of things going on, but I don't know if it's really him, or if he's tricking us into thinking it. Blythe thinks he's a psychopath trying to play a game with everyone, even you. But I believe each part of him has a different disorder."

"I think Blythe might be right, and if he is... Tobias is a good actor." I walk over to Gabriella's crate, leaning down to her and curling my fingers over hers as they grip the bars. I turn back to Violetta. "Tobias is going to torture my friends, isn't he? Until I agree to leave with him?"

She moves her head up and down slowly, wiping her eyes with her fingertips. "Where will you run to if I let you all go?"

I feel a wave of relief hit me, making me breathe deeply as I turn to her. "You will let us go?"

"Only if you promise not to call the cops. Let me get my son out."

I sigh. "He needs help, Violetta."

"I'll help him," she says, nodding as she lifts the keys from the table, picking up Tobias' hunting knife and cutting my hands free. "You need to injure me so he doesn't know I let you go." She hands me the knife, moulding her fingers over mine on the handle. "Make it look believable."

"I'm not stabbing you," I retort, moving away to unlock the cages. Kaleb doesn't even wait for my help or to unbind his hands. He scurries out and runs from the room without a word.

I help Gabriella out, cutting her hands free and carefully removing the tape from her mouth, embracing her as she cries into my shoulder. "We're going to be okay," I tell her as she weeps, her body shaking.

"We are never getting boyfriends again after this," she says with a sobbing laugh, her arms tightening over me. "We need to go."

I turn to Violetta, and she nods. "Make it look believable." She gestures to the knife in my hand. "Just don't kill me. I'm all he has too."

I freeze as she takes my hand and presses the point just above my hip to demonstrate. "If you stab me right here, I’ll survive."

I grip her wrist, paranoid she'll hurt me, but before I can say anything, banging has our heads snapping to the side.

Tobias kicks the door open, dragging Kaleb behind him, dropping him on the ground with his eyes set on the knife pressing against my hip, my hand on his mom's wrist, and Gabriella gasping, backing away.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he shouts at his mom, closing the distance as the knife drops to the floor, grabbing her by the throat and shoving her against the wall. "You're trying to kill her!" Slapping the side of his head, Tobias fumes, a fire burning in his eyes as his face reddens, veins sticking out from his neck, rendering him completely unrecognisable.

"I wasn't!" Violetta cries out, her voice croaking from the pressure on her throat. "P...please."

Gabriella and I back away, our eyes on the door, hands gripping each other's arms. As soon as I see Violetta struggling to breathe, I let go of Gabs. I brace myself, gritting my teeth as I run for the blade on the ground.

His foot crushes my hand just as I reach it, and I scream in pain, moving away from him as he lifts the weapon and presses it to his mom's throat.

"No!" I yell, jumping forward to grab his arm. "She wasn't going to hurt me!"

He stays silent, heavily breathing through his nose while he growls at her. "Get in the crate." He throws her aside, slamming it shut while she whimpers. "You as well, Doctor."

I don't argue back. I slowly get into the cage. "She wasn't going to hurt me, Tobias." He's still not looking at me, his eyes dark, the whites bloodshot.

Taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes and pulls Kaleb to his knees, kicking him until he's in front of me. Before I can question what he's doing, he slices the blade across his throat, cutting through flesh and muscle, blood shooting all over me, splattering across the floor. The eardrum-blowing scream coming from him is like an animal being tortured, making me feel dizzy and sick as I fall back, my feet sliding in the crimson liquid filling the floor of my crate.

I scream, covering my mouth with my palm as my eyes bulge at the lifeless body in front of me, blood pooling around him.

He just killed Kaleb.

"Tobias," his mom cries. "What have you done?"

"I did what was necessary. He hurt Aria years ago, so this is my revenge." He grabs Gabriella and kicks her legs, making her kneel in Kaleb's death.

"Don't do this," I beg him for what seems like the hundredth time today, Kaleb's blood coating my face, my fingers turning white from my death grip on the crate door. "You don't need to kill people! She's my best friend!"

"Last chance. Are you or are you not going to give me Aria so we can leave?”

Before I can reply and say yes, Gabriella stops me. “Aria.”

Gabriella's lip is shaking, her face drained of any color as she stares at me.

"Aria...listen to me," she orders, and my eyes meet hers. "The twins are your priority, always, and they're even mine." Her voice breaks, and I feel my heart starting to race even more, twisting, shattering. "I love you more than anything, and I've had the best years with you as my best friend, as my sister ." Tears burn my eyes, gulping down a solid lump in my throat as I shake my head, my face contorting with impending grief. "I need you to be strong. I need you to get out of here and give your babies the best lives ever. Don't give it all up for me, please."

"No," I whimper, feeling my heart suffocating. "Please, no. I need you, Gabs."

"Just don't find someone funnier than me, okay?" She laughs, but I just feel a knife digging deeper into my chest. "And don't you dare steal my clothes."

With a racing heart and tears streaming down my face, I grit my teeth, desperate for Tobias to stop this. "Don't," I plead with him once more. "Please remember you choose Luciella. Your daughter will be named after the person under your grip."

His eyes don't meet mine; he doesn't even flinch at my words.

"Be strong," Gabriella tells me. "I love you."