Fortitude (Heart of Stone) (14 page)

“Just tell me one thing?” She asked as she cocked her
head sinisterly, her eyes refusing me any break away from her. “What do you
have that I don’t?”

I stared at her in confusion but confusion soon turned to
horror when I watched the two men slide from their car on the edge of the road and
race up my path, one knocking Rebecca unconscious instantly as another grinned
at me manically before he winked and struck the side of my temple.

I cringed as my car wheels squealed when I pulled up
outside the cottage. It was late and I knew Ava’s neighbours were far from
happy at late night noise, yet right at that very moment I didn’t care. Noise
or no noise, I was there to get my wife, to haul her over my shoulder and lock
her down in my apartment until she saw sense, until she realised how much I
loved her… and how much she loved me.

She was mine. She had always been mine, it was about time
she knew it too.

I pulled my keys from my pocket as I walked up her path,
singling out the little tool that would get me through her front door but as I
lifted it to the lock, the door swung open.

You know when you’re on a train when you are little, and
you enter a tunnel, how the dark walls seem to race past you and all you can
focus on is to keep breathing until you emerge out of the other side? Well
that’s exactly the sensation that overtook me when I stared down Ava’s hallway.

I looked down and stared at her bag, the contents spewed
out over the floor as it tipped to one side. Her phone, keys and medication
telling me that she didn’t leave on her own accord.

Racing back to my car, I pulled my laptop from the boot
and fired it up as I plonked my arse in the passenger seat, then logged onto
Ava’s exterior camera.

***

“Benjamin Olson and John Danby, both known associates of Frank
Halliday.” Kade said when the computer software found a match to the images
from Ava’s cameras.

“Fuck!” I closed my eyes and shivered. “Etta.”

“Maybe,” Sam intersected. “Or maybe Frank. Just cos’ he’s
in the nick doesn’t make him obsolete to external dealings. He’s quite capable
of still running his family from the inside Mason.”

“Shit, but why now? It’s been two years.”

“Because it’s the first time Etta has been within
touching distance of you and Ava since you shipped her off to Italy?” Greg
offered with a quirked brow. His face was pale, his worry over Ava nearly as
crippling to him as it was me.

“She’s just a kid, it’s too… too detailed for her.” I
shook my head. None of it made sense.

“Oh come on, Mase.” Greg scoffed. “And how old were you
when you first let the darkness consume you?”

I huffed at him but shook my head, “My past and Etta’s
are far from similar, Greg. I chose this path at such a young age to fight my
father. She’s a girl with issues, hardly the same.”

“But if her issues are potent enough, then who knows what
the girl could be capable of.” Sam interrupted.

I turned to Kade who was furiously rattling the keys on
two portable keyboards, his eyes scanning the screen in front of him with a
deep concentration. “You’ve spent the last two years with her, any input for
me?”

He blinked at me then shrugged. “No but to be honest, it
just doesn’t seem like her.” He pursed his lips in thought as his gaze fixed to
the wall. “I mean, yeah the girl had a bit of trouble adapting at first, but
when she gave birth to Jamie, she was suddenly different. He was…
is
all
that matters to her.”

“Ahh fuck!” I rubbed at my forehead. “George.”

It hit me with the force of a sledgehammer as I snatched
my keys from the desk and shot out of the front door. “Traipse through every
single surveillance cam the city has. Find her!” I shouted before the door
slammed shut.

***

“That’s twice now!” George yelled at me as he pushed me
out of his bedroom and pulled on his shorts, leaving Debora to stare at me wide
eyed from beneath the duvet. “Why the fuck can’t you knock?”

“Etta?” I barked at him leaving him to blink at me in
bewilderment. “You’re taking Jamie aren’t you?”

“What?” he spluttered as he took my arm and led me into
his bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind him. “For god’s sake dad, keep
your voice down.”

“I knew it.” I shook my head at him sadly, “Why?”

“Why?” He stared at me in shock, his eyes wide at my bafflement
over his actions. “Because he’s my son, that’s why.”

“But what about Etta? She loves him and you’re trying to
snatch him from under her.”

“For fuck’s sake, dad. You can honestly tell me with a
family like hers that she can be a good parent, a good role model?”

My jaw dropped and I fought with myself over whether to
string the fucker up and smack some sense into him, or praise him for caring
enough to want to look after his blood.

“George.” I rolled my lips, wondering how to voice what I
needed to say for him to see sense. “Are you telling me that your mother was
never a good mom?”

“Eh?” He stared at me in surprise. “Of course mum’s been
a good parent.”

I nodded slowly, “Yet she came off the streets. She
killed and stole to survive. She’s since killed and stole. And she married into
my family, but I’ll tell you something, I have never witnessed a woman with as
much love as your mother has for you and Katie. Just because she has a rough
background doesn’t make her a bad mother.”

“I know that.”

“Yet you chose to believe it of Etta. You think that
because of what her parents were that doesn’t give her the right to be a mum.”
I prodded his chest, my anger now surging at his foolishness. “In which case
that doesn’t give you the right to be a dad, because your mother and I are far
from innocent in this fucked up world.”

He squared up to me, his face tight and angry as he for
the first time rid himself of the hatred he had for me. “Wrong,
dad
. You
are the guilty one in this fucked up world, you just dragged my mother along
with you, destroyed her innocence along with everything else in your path.”

I laughed at him, shaking my head in humour at his
blindness. “You have no idea, George. About me, your mother, her life or even
mine, so before you point the finger, you really ought to see things as they
fucking are!”

“And what’s that?” he spat as he pushed at me. “If the
truth is so different from how I see it, then tell me. Fucking TELL ME!”

I was battling with my wrath. I couldn’t ever let it
loose on George but right at that moment he needed to see how life was, like it
or hate it, it was still life and it still held many secrets and truths that
obliterated our fantasies and hopes.

“Come on,” he prodded further. “Tell me what can possibly
turn the tables on your guilt. You took my mother, and you turned her into a
monster.”

“YES!” I roared at him as I slammed him against the door.
“But your fucking mother tore out my heart and spat on it.” I let rip, giving a
few home truths he needed to hear. “She took my love and trampled it into the
fucking floor when she slept with my brother-in-law just hours after I’d asked
her to marry me. She took my love and she fucking laughed at it whilst she
fucked another man.”

I closed my eyes as shock covered my son’s face, his
breathing silent as he daren’t breathe in case my words penetrated and made
them real. “Yes,” I whispered harshly. “Yes I made her a monster, but she made
me into something far worse.”

I pushed him out of the way but turned back to him before
I left. He didn’t look at me, just kept his gaze trained on the floor.

“She turned me into a man with a broken soul who had
nothing left to lose in life. But even then, even though she moulded me into
something that the devil himself would love to become, even then I still love
her. I still can’t breathe without her, I still can’t live without her in my
life.”

He finally looked at me, his eyes sad and full of an
ache. “And still I know I will die if I ever lost her. I will give up my right
to breathe just to see a smile on her beautiful face. I will forfeit my own
right to smile if it grants her another hour with me, another second in my
arms, because despite what you think, George, love is a powerful thing but
sometimes, it’s just that little bit too unhealthy.”

I left him staring after me as I went in search of my
wife, a monster I had created but an angel I would follow into hell with.

The slow drip of water that echoed around me opposed the
frantic pace my heart was hammering at, its laborious rhythm trying to soothe
the velocity raging inside my chest.

I didn’t want to open my eyes. I knew what I would find, the
damp smell streaming up my nostrils and the subdued light filtering through my
eyes told me everything I needed to about my current prison.

My ears were on high alert, listening and seeking for
sounds that would help me at least attempt to formulate some sort of plan
whilst my nose endeavoured to search for any unusual smells that could give me
an idea of where we were being held.

Rebecca’s moans and weeping didn’t help my situation and
I desperately tried to block her out of my concentration but she, as usual, was
prominent and irritating.

“Rebecca!” I grated out as I turned in her direction and
finally opened my eyes, “Will you shut the hell up!”

She stared at me, her eyes wide and wet, mascara trails
streaking her face as her endless tears painted her face like some freak. That
made sense. She was a bloody freak.

Her body was trembling as she sat with her back slumped
against a metal pillar, her bound hands were above her head secured to the post
and her knees were drawn up to her chest defensively.

“W..what’s going o..on?” She hiccupped as she sobbed out
each word.

I rolled my eyes and slid my gaze slowly around the room.
“I have no idea, that’s what I’m trying to work out and your incessant whinging
is not helping me concentrate.”

“Fuck you.”

I tutted and sighed as I mentally went through each
specific point of Mason’s training. One exit door, no obstacles in the path
from my position to the door. One small window, maybe wide enough for a body to
slip through, although it was high up, almost adjacent to the ceiling. There were
possible available weapons, one pipe that directed the water to the single tap
in the corner of the room and a few chains, one which hung above Rebecca’s
head. I smirked at that possibility.

Daylight shone through the window which told me it didn’t
lead onto a street or alleyway and blue sky was visible, telling me we probably
hadn’t been out for too long, night hadn’t descended yet.

I could smell a hint of oil and metal, a trace of manure
and quite a heavy load of fresh grass, leaving me to consider the area to be
slightly rural but somewhere where maybe cars or something mechanical was
involved. Maybe a farm or an old working garage.

The room was bare except for the support structures
Rebecca and I were secured to. A few chains hung from the ceiling in random
spots and of course, the dripping tap in the corner of the room. The door was
metal, causing me slight bother when I knew I’d never be able to penetrate it
but the small window in it would alert me when we had visitors.

“Can you move?” I asked Rebecca eventually.

“Are you fucking stupid? Does it look like I can move?”

I grit my teeth together and prayed for some sanity. I
would never survive an hour with her, never mind how long we were actually
going to be detained for. “I meant have you any leverage on your post?”

“What?” she curled her lip and looked at me as though I
was asking her to tap dance naked with One Direction.

“Is – your – post – weak – enough – to – yank?”

Good Grief!

I licked at my dry lips, giving my mouth something to do
other that spit hatred at her. She finally pulled at the structure but it
remained firm. “Shit.”

I looked around, searching frantically for something,
anything to help us get out but nothing offered that option. We were there for
the duration. Rebecca and I were together for the duration. I wanted to wrap
that chain around my neck and do myself in. Fuck the cancer, Rebecca would
finally pop me off.

“Is there anyone that would want to hurt you?” I asked
her, the list of available answers already forming in my head.

ME

ME

ME

ME

ME

ME

“Whatever you might think, Ava. I don’t have enemies.”

I screwed my lips tightly together and nodded firmly,
“No,” I replied seriously. “Of course you don’t.”

“And what the fuck do you mean by that?” she hissed,
venom spewing from her with every syllable as her eyes fired daggers across the
room at me.

“Well, you’re not exactly the nicest of people.”

“Says her.” She huffed.

“Oh my God, Rebecca.” I shook my head sadly. “How old are
you?”

“Bollocks, bitch.”

“I rest my case.” I sighed and tapped at the column my
wrists were attached to with my fingers, giving something other than the fuck
whore’s annoying screech to focus on.

“Well, have you asked yourself that question?” she
smirked at me.

I sighed as the image of sudden superpowers being
bestowed on me came to mind and I mentally visualised yanking the metal support
from the ceiling and swinging it in her direction, severing her ugly fucking
head in one swipe. I pouted when she remained in one piece and smiling that
grotesque bloody grimace of hers.