Page 1 of Potent Desire 5

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Maddox

It’s human nature to know one thing, but to believe another.

I know Isabella isn’t in the church anymore. Her voicemail is confirmation of this. Even as I hold the phone to my ear, while I’m running into the women’s bathroom – expecting to see her weeping – I know she isn’t there.

She’s long gone. Vanished. And I’m the fool who let her go.

You are a good man, a great man, and this life is swallowing you whole.

“Isabella?” I scream her name to the heavens above, hoping that, in this holy place, God will give me an answer.

Get out while you can.

Is getting out even a possibility for me? Am I so brainwashed by the horrors of this criminal world that it has become ingrained in the very fiber of my being?

“Isabella? Are you here?” my desperate calls echo in the bathroom, but are met with silence.

I don’t know if I love you, Maddox. And I don’t know if I ever could.

I never wanted her to love me. I never wanted this burden to begin with. My heart overflows with love for Isabella, but I don’t expect it to be reciprocated. I’m a worker bee and she’s the queen. Everything I do is for her.

Now it feels as if my heart is being torn apart, one piece at a time, while nervous uneasiness fills my guts with bile.

But it pains me to leave your side. Even now. That’s why…

Before Isabella can finish her sentence, I hear the horrific sound of smashing metal. Isabella screams. Skidding tires screech before I hear a heavy thud. A car accident. Going on her own was dangerous enough with what happened to her father. Getting behind the wheel of a sports car in her state, more so.

I start running to my Bentley. The priest is outside the church and I nearly knock him down as I sprint through the door.

“Mister Braddock? Where are you going?” he shouts, but I ignore him. “We need to proceed, damn it. We need to get on with it.”

I need to find Isabella. What if she’s hurt? Or worse…

I can’t think about that, lest I want to suffer the same fate. My car slides and spins onto the main road as I pull out of the church’s driveway. Right takes me home, which means left is the direction Isabella would’ve taken. As far away from Hannibal city limits as possible.

I keep the phone against my ear, even while I’m driving like a maniac. There’s silence for a while. I just want to hear her voice again. If anything happened to her, how could I live with myself?

“Jesus Christ, did you kill her?” a male voice comes through the phone.

“Looks like she’s still breathing,” another voice replies.

Isabella’s alive. That’s all I need to hear. Whoever her assailants are, they will be met with the full ferocity of the new mafia king...

“Hurry then, get her out of the car. We need to get her back to—”

The line cuts out there. “To replay the message, press 1. To delete the message, press 2.”

I throw my phone aside while the automated voice reads further instructions. The way I’m driving, clocking over a hundred miles an hour, I need to focus on the road. I have to get to Isabella.

I must save her.

It doesn’t take long to catch up with the accident. Isabella’s Ferrari is lying on its roof, shattered glass leading from the wreck to the road. Tire tracks in the dirt lead to and from the scene, but it’s deserted now. An empty wasteland, with nothing but green grass, trees, and harrowing silence.

I can’t fight my nausea any longer, and I am forced to my hands and knees, expelling the contents of my belly beside the car. When I regain some small semblance of composure, I roar out to the Heavens, feeling forsaken by God in his house of worship. I’d have cussed and sworn, blasphemed, and more if I hadn’t known better.

But I did know better. This act of chaos and entropy wasn’t the work of an unjust God.