THE ABANDONED

Switch lanes on a one-way route
Switchblade make your blood pour out

Make it rain in a drought

***

CHAPTER L

***

WEEKS HAD GONE by and there was still no word or sight of Mateo. Two weeks had gone by and I hadn't set eyes on my child. Fourteen whole days and I still had no idea of the whereabouts of my baby.

I felt like I was losing my mind.

Every passing day, I teetered closer and closer tto the edge of an undescribably steep cliff of which I had no idea where it would lead me if I went tumbling down it. Each day I passed without knowing anything about him, without knowing whether or not he had eaten or slept but being certain that he was absolutely screaming for me, the pain in my chest grew more and more intense. I felt like ripping my hair out of my scalp. The worst part was I could do little about. I was so lost.

All everyone wanted me to do was sit down and wait around, but I didn't know what I was waiting for. There was absolutely nothing to wait for. I knew exactly who had my child and I knew what to do about it, but nobody would let me go and I didn't understand why. Every day, Daniel, Pablo and Guillermo were going out with a field of men, trying to locate where they may be based at but whoever was backing Lola was extremely efficient so they were incredibly hard to find.

Sometimes they would bring me along, almost as bait to lure them out but nobody came for me those times. They knew they wanted me and me alone so why wouldn't Daniel just relent and give me to them? He didn't understand, but he'd be doing the whole three of us a favour. He would be with his son, Teo would be safe and I would be wherever I was knowing that they were both safe.

“Daniel!” I huffed as I followed him down the hallway, annoyed at him for walking away from me yet again whilst I was trying to talk to him. “Stop walking away from me.”

“I don't want to hear the bullshit that'll come out of your mouth,” he said making me get even more angry as I followed him into our bedroom.

“How is it bullshit when all I'm trying to do is find a way to get my son back?”

“You think I'm not doing the same thing?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me to which I only rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest.

“You're not doing a very good job of it,” I said, making him stand there in silence for a full minute and only giving me a stone cold glare, as if he was so shocked by my words that he couldn't even find anything to say back to me before he let a slow breath blow out from his lips and he very carefully made his way into the bathroom.

“Daniel—” I tried to call after him before he could slam the door in my face, but he only whipped around to glare at me, a cold look in his eyes before he yelled at me louder than I had ever heard him yell at anyone in my life.

“I won't give you to them for them to kill you off so stop fucking asking me to do it before I lock you in this house completely!” he said, his voice booming around the room and freezing me in my spot as I could only stare at him with wide, surprised eyes.

Before I could say anything back to him in response, he had fully stepped into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him, leaving me to fall onto the floor in exhaustion as tears began to roll down my cheeks. I was so tired of all of this. We had been fighting for a couple days now and I realised that it was mainly me that was starting them but it was only because he was shutting me out of everything.

He didn't want to give me information because he knew I would go and turn myself in to Lola just so Mateo would be okay, but it only made me feel even more alone when I was left in the dark. It felt like I was doing absolutely nothing to help and what he didn't realise was that the more he shut me out, the more I looked to give myself in because it was the only way I knew how to get Teo back.

To my surprise, the door of the bathroom had creaked open and out stepped Daniel as he looked down at me with eyes filled with guilt. He got down to my level, gently moving me so I was positioned on his lap as he pulled me tight into his body and let me cry on his shoulder.

“I'm sorry,” he said as he rubbed my back, quietly soothing me like he did every night when I couldn't do anything else except cry myself to sleep. “I shouldn't have yelled at you, I'm sorry.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, not knowing why he was apologising to me. After what I had said to him, it was expected that he would have some kind of a reaction to that. “I shouldn't have spoken to you the way I did.”

“It's okay,” he said as he let out an exhausted breath, the eyebags under his eyes now extremely prominent. “I just need you to stop fighting me, okay?” he spoke softly. “We're both already so stressed. We don't need it from each other, hmm?” he asked as he extended his hand for me to take and slowly I did. “We're the dream team.”

I couldn't help but smile at the memory his words had brought to my head; the night we had both confessed our love to each other. It was the first time I had smiled at all in two weeks.

“Danaceli,” I muttered quietly under my breath, making Daniel's chest vibrate against me as he hummed. He lightly pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Just promise me that you won't ever leave me, okay?” I said as I looked up at him only to have his deep brown eyes already staring down at me.

“I won't leave you,” he said, even his voice sounding hopeful yet unsure. “I'll do all that's in my power to make sure you're fine.” He gently took a hold of my chin and tilted my face upwards so he could kiss my lips this time. “We'll be fine.”

***

A couple days later, I had stood at the top of the stairs silently watching as Pablo and Guillermo had been quietly discussing by the front door about something that seemed very serious and I assumed it was. I wasn't really listening to their conversation though. Instead, I had been waiting for one of them to notice me so I could ask them both where the hell Daniel was.

He hadn't come home last night and since morning he hadn't been picking up any of my calls or responding to my messages. If I didn't know him better, I probably would've assumed the reason was that he just needed some time off but I did know him better and I knew this wasn't like him  I didn't want to start worrying all over again, but it felt like something was definitely wrong.

The two men had reduced their voice so much until they were no longer speaking anymore and instead staring blankly at the spaces in front of them, clearly deep in thought before Pablo had finally broken out of his trance and looked around briefly as he opened his mouth to speak to Guillermo but then his gaze had fallen on me, making his eyes widen in surprise.

“What are you doing there?” he asked, not even greeting me which had made me roll my eyes as I slowly descended the steps. “Have you been eavesdropping?”

“You think I would sit out in the open just waiting for you to spot me if I was eavesdropping?” I asked, making Pablo roll his eyes but only because he knew I was right. “Besides, you shouldn't be keeping anything from me anyway.” With a guilty expression on his face, he glanced down towards the floor instead of meeting my eyes, making me suspect that he had actually been keeping something from me but that wasn't what I was interested in at that moment. “That's not important right now. Do you know where Daniel is? He didn't come home last night and hasn't made an effort to answer any of my messages.”

“If you don't know, how do we know?” Pablo asked, immediately getting defensive and further heightening my suspicion. And they said I was bad at lying. Clearly, I had learnt from somewhere.

“I was just asking, Pablo,” I said as I slowly made my way down the stairs so I could quiz him better. “But now I think you do know.”

Pablo let out an exhausted sigh as he leaned back against the wall and looked at me with tired eyes. “I don't want you getting sick again, Celi,” he said, making me raise an eyebrow at him. What did that have to do with the conversation we were having? Unless... “You already weren't doing well when Daniel was here. Now that he's...” he trailed off, reluctant to tell me what exactly he was but even I wasn't that stupid. By now, I could tell what he was trying to say to me. “He's gone.”

I stared blankly at him as I took the time to think, unsure of what I was supposed to say to him. How was I supposed to react to this kind of news? That wasn't even important, what was I supposed to do now?

“He's gone,” I repeated after him with a blank expression on my face, still trying to process the information. “He's gone as in... they took him?” Pablo only nodded his head slowly in response to my question, making my heart drop to my stomach and all hope of everything being okay in the end completely dissipate from me. Why was this happening to me? Why couldn't I just be happy for once in my life? Didn't  I deserve it? After all the shit I had been through, didn't I deserve happiness?

Before I had even noticed, my knees buckled beneath me and I had went falling to the floor, but thankfully, Guillermo, who I had been standing closest too, had caught me by the arms and carefully walked me to the stairs where I sat down.

I couldn't help but burst into a fresh set of tears as memories of Teo sliding down the same stairs on his belly filled my head. Now, I had no one. Not my son nor my husband and the worst was that it was all my fault. Lola had been right. They had nothing to do with this but carelessly, I had put them in danger. Now nobody knew if I would ever set my eyes on them again. If they would ever even live to see another day.

“Ara,” Pablo had gently said, trying to soothe me but I only pushed him away because who was to say that they wouldn't come and take him and Guillermo and Celeste and Emma away from me too if I didn't comply? At least Anna was safe, far away from here, but did that matter in the grand scheme of things? Was I just supposed to sit and wait for them to take away my whole family before I did something? “The important thing is that you don't do anything stupid, Ara,” Pablo said but even though I heard every single word that had left his mouth, I decided not to listen to them.

Instead I rose from where I was sitting, tears still staining my cheeks and made my way passed both Guillermo and Pablo to my office. If it was me they wanted, then it was me that they would get. But they needed to prepare themselves for all of me because I was ready to show them just how ugly I could get. I didn't care if I would end up dead in the end. They messed with my family and that would lead to their downfall too.

***

Jorge was obviously a part of the people who were out searching for Mateo and Daniel which meant that he had information this whole time. The only reason I had never gotten anything out of him was because Daniel closely watched him like a hawk to make sure he didn't tell me anything he wasn't supposed to. Unfortunately, Daniel was missing and neither Pablo nor Guillermo knew of my close friendship with Jorge so neither of them knew to prevent me from talking to him.

“We know that they're south of us,” Jorge told me as I quickly scribbled the information down into a notebook. “Somewhere close to the border, but we're unsure where. We have men there, currently searching the area.”

“Have they contacted you since then?” I asked, to which he nodded.

“Many times,” he answered. “We tried tracking, but it's hard because it's never from the same place they'd call. Some places would even be from the likes of Canada and it'll be different people,” he answered, making me frown in frustration. It was clear that these people were extremely careful. I just wish that they would slip up.

“If we somehow found a way to get in touch with them,” I began slowly, making Jorge give me his full attention. “And they told us where to meet to take me, would that—”

“No,” he said, not even letting me finish before he cut me off. “The addresses they give us to bring you to is always a very barren place with no buildings in sight. They stay well hidden and even when we captured one of the men, we found out that they don't know anything either and are just meant to drive you to a different empty location where the actual people will pick you up,” he explained,making me bury my face in my hands in exhaustion.

“Ma'am,” Abigail said to call for my attention as she entered my study. I looked at her to show her I was listening but didn't say a thing. “There's a man outside demanding to speak to you.”

“Is it Lucien?” I asked, already knowing who it was because who else would have the confidence and audacity to go to somebody's house and demand to speak to them except for Lucien? She nodded her head in response to my question, making me let out a small sigh in exhaustion. I had every mind to tell him to fuck off, but I figured I wouldn't. Maybe he'd have information. “Let him in.”

Abigail nodded before leaving my office and making her way back out to meet Lucien. Jorge turned to me with a frown and spoke. “Should I stay?” he asked, making me nod my head.

“Make yourself out of sight when he's entering the office,” I said as I slid further down my chair, “but once he's in, stand by the door and listen.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Jorge said before making his way out of my office and closing the door gently behind him.

Before Lucien could come, I worked on getting the place ready. First, I had put away my notebook of information so he didn't know what I was doing and so he couldn't try to use it against me and then I went to the voice recorder on my phone and pressed play before turning my phone upside down and leaving it on the table so it could pick up his voice clearly.

In that second, Lucien had burst into the room, his eyes narrowed in a glare until he had set them on me. Once he had set his eyes on me, his lips had lifted into a smirk and a small chuckle escaped his lips.

“What are you doing here, Lucien?” I asked as I narrowed my eyes at him, but he didn't seem threatened. Amongst all these men that now listened to my command, he acted like he was right at home.

“I wanted to see you,” he said, his voice soft yet the mocking tone in it wasn't hard to miss. “I wanted to ask you who's going to protect you now, hmm?” he asked me as he watched me watch him tiredly. He was standing up, towering over me to show me just how domineering he was over me. It was pathetic act that I wanted to laugh at. I just remained silent though. “Who's going to keep you safe from me now that Daniel is gone, huh?” He approached me, his eyes darkening as he let his lustful gaze run over my body. “Who's going to keep you away from me now?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, pursing my dry lips together as I carefully thought through my next words. Instead of cursing him the fuck out immediately like I had wanted to do, I decided to feign innocence. “What are you talking about?”

“I could have my way with you right now,” he chuckled, his voice low as he walked around to the back of me and placed his hands on my shoulder. I refrained from expressing any form of emotion although internally, I was disgusted. “Fuck you as hard as I want, and who's going to stop me?”

I furrowed my eyebrows at his words, but chose my own carefully. I wasn't scared because I knew he wasn't going to do it. Not with all the people present in the house already. Even if he tried, I had fully loaded guns in every inch of this room so he wasn't going to achieve much before he got pumped full of lead. That being said, his lack of care for his words wasn't what bothered me the most.

It was his lack of worry.

“Your son is missing, Lucien,” I said, making my voice wobble as if I was on the verge of tears when in reality I wasn't. The last thing I was going to do was cry in front of him. Anybody but Lucien. Not after he tasted my tears that one time, the fucking weirdo. I bet he was the child that hissed and bit everyone in elementary when he was younger because he thought he was a werewolf or something.

“Don't talk to me about Daniel,” he hissed, squeezing my shoulders and sending a surge of pain down my spine that I had managed to endure. “Everything that's happening to him, he did to himself. I told him not to put so much trust in you, but he didn't listen. Now he has to rely on you, a woman, a whore of one at that, to run his empire and somehow save him.” He chuckled as he took his hands off me. “How does he expect anything but failure from you?”

“Instead of putting me down, you could at least help me,” I hissed, making him laugh again. “Even if you don't care for Mateo, you at least have to care for your own son.”

Lucien stayed quiet for a while, his gaze trained on the view outside the window before he reached into his suit pocket for something. At first, I had thought it would've been a cigarette or something along those lines, but was surprised to see him pull out a white envelope instead.

He opened it, revealing what seemed to be a typed letter and a picture. He kept the letter inside but took out the picture and placed it on the desk in front of me, making my eyes widen and my breath hitch at what I was looking at.

“This is what you want, no?” he asked, tauntingly as he waved the letter over my head. I was too busy staring at the recent picture of both Daniel and Teo, drugged, tied up and locked up in separate cells like animals to really hear him taunt me. “This is what you did to my son,” Lucien hissed, his voice writhing with anger as he grabbed my hair tightly and forced me to stare closely at the picture. “Look at him. Tied up and treated like an animal. The boy that I invested my sweat, my money, my time into making the most powerful leader in the country, you seduce and you destroy all that I had worked for,” he said, his voice holding nothing but hatred for me as he gripped my hair tighter, sending pain through my scalp. I refrained from making a sound so I wouldn't alert Jorge. Not yet. “Think of Daniel when you first met him and look at the shell of a man you've reduced him to now.”

I shot up out of my seat, fimally pulling my hair away from his disgusting hands. My eyes were stinging with tears but my veins burned with fury as I focused my hard gaze on Lucien. Without warning, I reached out for the envelope. “Give that to me,” I demanded, reaching for it but he pulled it out of my reach and held it far away from me.

I tried to tackle him but he grabbed my neck and squeezed, cutting off my air supply and making me claw at his hands with my nails. “Give it to me,” I still demanded, but Lucien tutted and shook his head.

“Take off your clothes, Araceli.”

I froze in shock at his words, my eyes widening in surprise and an inability to believe he had just said what he just said. “What?” I asked as I narrowed my eyes at him.

“I said take off your clothes,” he repeated slower this time as if mocking me for not understanding him the first time. “If you want the letter so bad, start stripping and then I might consider giving it to you.”

“Do you lack morals?” I hissed as I glared at him. “Your son has been kidnapped,” I tried to spell out for him but it was clear that he didn't care.

“And he can die there for all I care,” he hissed, almost making me take a step back at his words. This is what Daniel had to tolerate for years of his life? “He's only going to run back to you if I get him out. He's no longer of any use to me. He may as well die and do so knowing he accomplished something with his stupid life.”

“So then what after that, huh? Who's going to run this cartel?” I asked because clearly Daniel was the leader and if Daniel died, as his legal wife it went to me and I wasn't going to give it back to Lucien.

“Emma's husband is a wimp,” he began, making me furrow my brows at his words. “He's very loyal to me. I know when it goes to him, he'll listen to everything I tell him to do.”

“I'm Daniel's beneficiary. He's already willed everything to me,” I hissed, narrowing my eyes at him but Lucien only chuckled.

“You were Daniel's beneficiary,” he said which only made me even more angry. “But you won't be for long. Not after I hand you back to your family.” Taking notice of the obvious confusion on my face, he only chuckled and shook his head. “The people after you?”

“What do you know?” I asked narrowing my eyes at him, but he only shook his head and chuckled.

“That's not important,” he said, his eyes going soft at the genuine look of fear in my eyes. “It doesn't have to end like that, Araceli. Despite all I've said, I am quite fond of you. I mean, I don't hate you.” He put his hands on my waist and gently pulled me closer to his body. “I could treat you so well; better than he did,” he said almost sounding desperate. “Just give your body to me. Let me have you just once and I'll give you everything you could ever want.”

This was different now. It was no longer Lucien being insanely attracted to me. I knew he didn't like me that much. He wanted to sleep with me so much because he absolutely hated my guts. He wanted me to give in to him because it had been the one thing I had never agreed to do. He wanted me to be completely powerless against. He wanted to sleep with me so he could humiliate me.

“I am not a prostitute,” I said as I gritted me teeth and tried to pull away, but he only pulled me back to him by force

“No,” he chuckled, agreeing with me. “Not yet.”

Lucien began slowly unbuttoning the buttons of my top, making me heave in a sigh because I knew exactly what I needed to do. “W-We need to lock the door,” I stuttered in fear as I took over from him and began unbuttoning from where he had left off. “Someone might come in.”

Lucien, elated that it hadn't taken much for me to give in to him, let go of me and made his way over to the office door to lock it. With his back turned to me, I wasted no time before I acted fast.

I picked up one of the chairs by the desk and followed his footsteps until he had turned around to me. Not missing a beat, I raised the chair as far over my head as I could and smashed it down on his head.

It hadn't knocked him out which I wasn't expecting it to do, but it disoriented him enough for me to take the opportunity to grab his head and slam it into the wall a couple times. His blood smeared against the white plaster and for a brief second he fought back, only managing to cut my arm with his finger nails before he slid across the floor, smearing a fresh trail of blood in his wake as he sat against the wall unconscious. Not dead yet. Certainly not; it would be too easy a way for him to go.

The sound of Jorge banging on the door wanting to get in filled the room, but I ignored it for now, instead crouching down to take the letter out of Lucien's pocket and stashing it in my bra before I finally went to open the door for him, only for the door to come swinging open in my face. As soon as his eyes fell on mine, we both stood there, staring at each other in surprise before I let out a humoured chuckle and went over to my phone to stop the recording.

“You better get someone to fix that door that you've broken,” I said, keeping my voice light so he knew I wasn't actually angry at him. It was actually rather nice to know that he would still be able to defend me even if I could defend myself.

“Is he still alive?” Jorge asked as he cautiously approached the unconscious man.

“Unfortunately,” I answered before joining him to stare down at Lucien before hitching down to drape one of his heavy arms over my shoulder. “Here, help me bring him down to the basement,” I said, making Jorge carefully pull me away from Lucien and assume my possession.

“Don't go near him, I'll take care of everything,” he said as he began to drag Lucien's limp body out of my office, leaving me to get the rope and the zipties instead.

***

Night fell and the house had quickly become desolate to me and the silence that seemed to follow everywhere I went had become so eerie and gut-wrenching. Before now, I had never felt as alone as I did in that moment. Even when Mateo would be at daycare and Daniel would be out working, I may have been alone but I had never been lonely. I knew that at the end of the day, I would get to see them again.

Now with their whereabouts unknown, I struggled to accept the fact that I may never see them again. There was an empty space in my heart that only the both of them could feel and if I would be made to live life without them, I would remain the shell of the woman I used to be. I had nothing without them.

Standing under the pouring hot water of the shower, I willed myself to blink the tears away as the water beat down on my aching muscles; providing me a relief I knew wouldn't last. I placed my hand on the glass to hold myself up, finding that the steam from the shower was making it difficult for me to breathe yet a part of me didn't want to do anything about it. That part of me wanted for me to suffocate myself to death so I no longer had to live a life without two of the most important people to me. That large part of me wanted me to put an end to it all.

Yet, I had reached out for the knob and turned the shower off completely anyway putting a hasty end to all of my fantasies. For a second, I considered all that I could do now that I was alone with the power to do it, yet I still didn't. Instead, I slid all the way down until my butt touched the floor of the shower and finally let myself break down with all the tears I had been holding in. I pulled myself up into a ball, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around my legs as sob after sob broke through me. I was so lonely, but on top of that, I was also scared. The unknown had been easy to venture into when I knew that I at least had my family by my side and they would always have my back. Now, the unknown was an obsolete, undesirable place. All I wanted to do was move back in time, but I knew how physics worked and I knew that was unrealistic.

On that shower floor, I had sat and cried for the greater part of an hour, but when my tears had finally run dry and the self-pity I had been basking in had decreased, all that was left was a fury so deep, I could barely think straight. I was angry; not just at Lola and her goonies for thinking they could mess with my family but also with life itself for never allowing me have anything good. As I picked myself from the floor, my lips set in a frown and my eyes red with fury, I made a vow that anybody who wanted to take me down was going to burn before I did and the first person I was going to start with was the man I had locked up in the basement.

*****

Hey yall hey...

So I know some of yall might be looking for an explanation. Most of yall probably don't care buuuuuttt I'm still going to explain myself since this actually has something to do with you guys. Not literally, I suppose, because like I said, the people reading this book are pretty sweet but I suppose I'm referring to my "viewership" for lack of a better term.

Now just to preface, I don't want this to seem like I'm trying to remove the blame from myself and put it on other people. I am 100% completely in control of my own emotions and the way I react because of them. Taking a "break" from wattpad was all on me although I'll admit, I had done so subconsciously. But anyway, here's the honest reason I went ghost on yall.

It was the comments. Idk but I get a lot of shit comments man, especially in the first book. And its not just downright hateful comments. It's like people genuinely misunderstanding and misreading what I write and thus forming their own opinions that are nowhere near being true. It's people missing key elements of the book that I had thought had been clear and then me trying to adapt to that by "dumbing" the narrator down (in this case, our girl Ara) so most can follow along only for her to be called slow and dumb. It felt like nothing I did was right. No matter how hard I tried or what I tried, it seemed like no one seemed to get the meaning of what I was writing and as a writer, that shit hurt. I didn't even consider that people just thought different and instead immediately saw it as a flaw within myself. I became extremely insecure and felt like I would never be able to write anything good. I felt like I had six years of practice under my belt and I still hadn't improved. That shit was gut-wrenching.

I wanted to keep uploading for yall, but I couldn't even bring myself to open the app and look at the chapters I already had pre-written. It reminded me of my failure so I just avoided it. From the last time I updated, I haven't written a thing. The comments on wattpad genuinely ripped the joy out of me. I was actually considering just giving up on writing all together and honestly yall are lucky because if it wasn't for the contract I signed that literally told me not to take His Woman down, both of these books would've been deleted by now.

All of this was happening on top of getting my results out and then not getting the college place I wanted, feeling like I had ruined my life and it hadn't even started before realising that I didn't even know where I was going to get the money to pay my tuition. I just completely shut down.

But then I had a lovely conversation with my best and dearest friend who I'll probably mention in the comments because I don't remember their @ and I kind of just... calmed down again.

They helped me remember why I had not only started writing but also why I continued writing as well. I write for myself. And I write for the people who enjoy my writing just the way it is without wanting me to change a thing about it. I love writing and there's nothing in the world that can or should stop me from doing what I love. Especially when I'm hurting nobody else. It's especially hilarious to me when the people who judge me have absolutely nothing posted on their page.

But anyway, consider this me coning clean to yall. I've left wattpad for this same reason one other time before now but I was too ashamed to admit it. (No it wasn't the time where I was only making 7.80 an hour. That time I was just genuinely being overworked).

That being said, I can recognise that I still need to do a lot of work within myself, both as a writer and also as a person but I just hope this tiny dose of truth will help yall at least understand why I went MIA.

NOW 👏 if you stuck around for all that and actually read through it, well first of all thank you. Second of yall, consider yourself the first to know that ya girl is now a part of wattpad's creators program! I've actually been keeping this in for a whiiiiilllee now like over two months but now you know. I'll talk more about this tomorrow!

Anyways guys, I'm going to go to sleep now. Yall BET NOT flame me or else 🔪

Haha just joking 🙃