Chapter Twenty-Two

Madelyn

“Madelyn,” she heard Xavier call to her through the video.

She closed her eyes at the sound of his voice so full of concern. A few stray tears rolled down her cheeks, soaking into the cloth wrapped around her head that was being used as a gag. She had cried so much since she had been taken that she was surprised her eyes hadn’t dried out completely.

“Little dove, look at me.”

Even though it pained her to do so, she hesitantly lifted her head to the camera and opened her eyes. She couldn’t say no to him, and if this was the last time she was going to get the chance to see him, she was going to take it. Even if it was selfish of her. However, the sight of Xavier, the father of her unborn child, in his current state, nearly made her legs give out on her.

His face was covered in cuts and bruises, all in various states of healing. His chest was the same, and she could only see that much because he was wearing a zip-up hoodie with no shirt underneath. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see how bad the head wounds were due to the beanie he was wearing, and she could also tell that he was in a lot of pain even if he was trying to play it off that he wasn’t, for her sake.

It also took her another moment to realize that he wasn’t alone in, what seemed to be, a home office of some kind. However, it wasn’t Isabelle who was with him, as she had expected. It was Melanie, which was an odd thing to see.

Instinctively, she wiggled her wrists, once again testing the zip ties that bound them together. Her hands were cold and a bit numb from them being on so tight. It wasn’t enough to cut off her circulation completely, but it was enough to cause massive amounts of discomfort. Her lips and the inside of her mouth were dry as a bone from not being able to close her mouth, and she was filthy from all the times she had fallen on the hike up there from the service road. Colby and his guys had gotten a good laugh out of that too. Thankfully though, they hadn’t touched her. At least, not yet. Somehow though, she knew that was about to change.

Madelyn had no idea what Colby had planned for her, but she knew that this video call to Xavier was a part of it. It had to be. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

It had been a long time since she had felt this helpless. She had spent most of her life working her ass off to make it so that she never had to feel this way again too; hours of therapy, dozens of self-defense classes, and gun training. But it had all been for nothing. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this, least of all Xavier, whom, she discovered, she had severely misjudged. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to have a choice.

Xavier’s eyes flashed, drawing her attention back to him. He appeared to be struggling to remain calm. “Hey, baby. Y-you okay?”

Madelyn shook her head rapidly, her eyes filling with tears once more. Xavier didn’t usually stutter, which further solidified how dire her situation was and amplified her fear and guilt.

Colby liked to hear himself talk, she had learned that over the last twenty-four hours. While she hadn’t heard anything about what he was going to do with her, he hadn’t stopped boasting about how he and the guys had nearly beaten Xavier to death the same night she had thought he had run back to Isabelle. The only thing that had stopped him from cracking Xavier’s head open with a bat was Isabelle showing up with some former associates of theirs.

How messed up was that? She had thought the worst of him when he had been fighting for his life. That was another reason she couldn’t face him. She didn’t deserve to, and she would never forgive herself for thinking the worst of him.

Madelyn knew how this was going to go. Xavier was going to do whatever he could to get to her in time, and she couldn’t let him do that. While she may only have a few hours left to live, she didn’t want anything to happen to Xavier. However, with the gag in her mouth, she couldn’t say anything at all to stop him.

“Oh, come on,” Colby interjected, gripping the back of her neck and making her whimper. “She’s fine. For now. But she’s not going to stay that way, and I think you know that.”

Xavier swiped his arm across the desk in front of him, sending several things flying and making Melanie jump beside him. “Damn it, Colby. This is between you and me. She has nothing to do with this.”

“It may have started out that way, but that’s not the case anymore, is it?” Colby asked, cocking his head to the side. “Do you know how many of my guys were killed that night, thanks to Isabelle and those other assholes?”

As he spoke, his grip on her tightened, making her wince. She was definitely going to have bruises if he didn’t kill her first.

Xavier’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t ask them to show up. I was ready to take all of you on myself, and you know that! What’s it going to take, huh? Do you want me to give myself over to you? Done. Just tell me when and where, and for the love of God, let her go!”

Colby chuckled as he reached forward and brushed a strand of hair out of her face, the touch far too intimate for her liking. “It’s too late for all that. The whole point of this call is to give you the chance to say your goodbyes.”

“Colby, please!”

A sob escaped Madelyn’s dry and cracked lips. She knew how hard that had to be, for Xavier to use the word ‘please’ as it wasn’t in his usual vocabulary. She hated that Colby was using her to hurt him, and she wished more than anything that things were different.

Colby reached up and tugged the gag out of Madelyn’s mouth. She winced at the pain as well as the relief of being able to finally close her mouth.

“Say what you have to say, sweetheart,” Colby told her. “Because, once this gag goes back on, it stays on.”

Madelyn looked back at the camera. There were so many things she wanted to say, so many words left unsaid both to Xavier and Melanie. But which of those things were the most important? What did one say when their time of death was rapidly approaching? She had never been good with words, and that obviously hadn’t changed.

Licking her lips, though it didn’t help much, she nodded mostly to herself. “I love you. Both of you,” she began, her voice cracking and hoarse. “The two of you were the best things to ever happen to me, and I’m sorry that we didn’t get more time.”

“Madelyn, don’t do that. Don’t act like this is goodbye,” Melanie sobbed, leaning over Xavier’s shoulder. Xavier didn’t even seem to mind, even though she knew how the two of them felt about each other.

“It is goodbye, Mel,” she replied. “I wish it wasn’t, but it is. I always knew my life was going to end something like this.”

“No, it won’t. I’m going to find you,” Xavier growled. “I will always find you!”

“No!” she exclaimed quickly, shaking her head. She tried to take a step toward the camera, but Colby’s grip prevented her from doing so. “You can’t. You need… you need to save yourself, Xavier. You need to get as far away from here as possible.”

Xavier gave her a sad smile. “I’m sorry, little dove, I can’t do that. I can’t live without you.”

“Alright, time’s up,” Colby interjected. “Now it’s time for me to show you the fun part!”

Xavier’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything, which made Colby’s smile grow. Madelyn watched as Colby passed the phone off to one of the guys, a man she learned was named Richard.

“Now that you’ve said your goodbyes, I think it’s time we get to the main event,” Colby said almost cheerfully. Without waiting for a response, he once again grabbed her by the back of her neck and began leading her out of the room for the first time since she arrived.

The rest of the station was empty as they moved through it, though she could hear everyone outside. As they exited the back door, she blinked against the blinding fire they had going and nearly stumbled down the stairs because of it. Thankfully, Colby had a firm grip on her neck and was able to keep her upright.

It was a stormy night, and a few raindrops pattered against the top of her head, seemingly mirroring her current emotions. If either Xavier or Melanie said anything since they left the room, she couldn’t hear over the cheers and hollers of the small crowd before them.

As they crossed the grass, the crowd parted, and what Madelyn saw behind them turned her blood cold and caused bile to rise in her throat. There, about three feet just outside the treeline was a freshly dug hole, and sitting beside that hole was an old refrigerator that was lying on its side with its lid open ominously. It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together, and everything clicked in her mind. Colby planned on burying her alive and letting her suffocate to death.

What better way to torture Xavier than with the knowledge that she was suffering? She would be alone in the dark with only a few hours of oxygen at most. It would give him the slightest bit of hope that he would be able to find her in time, but then it would tear him apart on the inside when he discovered that he was too late. It always varied how long someone could stay alive when they were buried because it was contingent on how they were able to control their breathing. If people panicked, they had far less time than those who were able to remain calm in such a terrifying situation. She was definitely the former. There was no way she would be able to remain calm.

As soon as Madelyn realized the plan, she dug her heels into the soggy ground. “No!” she screamed. “No! No, please!”

The crowd laughed at her pleading, every one of them looking giddy and excited. Monsters. They were all monsters, and she silently prayed to whatever god was listening that they all got what was coming to them.

Colby and another man she never caught the name of managed to drag her to the refrigerator despite her struggling. Colby spun her around to face the camera, gripping her jaw in one of his hands. Both Xavier and Melanie were screaming at the camera, and Melanie was sobbing, but Madelyn couldn’t hear either one of them over the cacophony of noise. Nor could she look at them any longer.

“Say goodbye to the woman you love, Xavier!” Colby yelled loudly. “Because this will be the last time you see her alive! And then, I’m coming for you!”

With that, Colby and the other man lifted Madelyn off the ground and dropped her unceremoniously into the refrigerator. She landed face first, her arms slamming into the hard metal back. She cried out as pain seared through her whole body. She was pretty sure her shoulder had been dislocated, but her main concern was her baby as she had landed on her stomach fairly hard.

A sob wracked her body as she rolled over onto her back. She could see all of them crowding around to get a good look at her before they put her to death. Clint focused the camera on her face as he laughed and laughed while Colby reached out and grabbed the lid. The last thing she saw was the triumphant smirk on Colby”s face as he slammed it shut, shrouding her in a never-ending darkness.

Once the lid was closed, everything else became muffled, and all Madelyn could hear was the rapid beating of her heart in her ears. Then, she was moving. She could feel the refrigerator being slid across the ground before she was finally shoved into the hole. Madelyn was thrown around the inside of her makeshift coffin like a rag doll, her head slamming into the sides before once again coming to a stop.

This was it. This was how she died. No matter what she did or how hard she fought, death was imminent, for both her and her baby.

Madelyn squeezed her eyes shut, pushing a few more tears down her cheeks as she began to mourn her child. They were going to die before they even had the chance to live. They wouldn’t get to experience crawling or their first steps, they wouldn’t learn how to drive or go to prom. It wasn’t fair and she didn’t understand how fate could be so cruel as to give her such a gift only to take it away just as quickly. But she guessed fate was a cruel bitch sometimes because, in just a matter of a few hours, she would be dead, and so would her child.