Shattered Obsession: Book 3 of the Obsession Trilogy

by Sinclaire, Roxy

  You’re barely allowing me enough food as it is, she thought sarcastically to herself. And is this how far your ‘husband and wife’ play is going to go? What a heartless husband.

  Out loud, she pointed out, “That’s not really logical, Adrien. I thought I was getting better, too, so it’s not like I’m doing this on purpose.”

  Adrien glared at her for a moment longer, then huffed and turned away. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought he was sulking.

  Still, with her stomach feeling the way it was, she started to worry that she wouldn’t be able to eat anyway. She didn’t dare move from the window as she turned around, and saw Adrien lift the spoon and start eating. Her nose wrinkled and her stomach churned, but he didn’t seem to mind the smell. Or he was too drunk to care about it, anyway.

  Maybe…that’s not all it is.

  She watched him a little more carefully. He finished eating and left the bowl on the table, then leaned back on the couch. One of his hands moved to wrap around the bottle of alcohol, another one of whiskey it looked like, he hadn’t opened it, but hugged it to his chest, almost as if in comfort.

  He was showing signs of feverishness, she was sure. His breathing was heavy, his eyes were half-lidded. His cheeks were dark, and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. She wouldn’t dare try to go near him after the last time, but he looked weak. Every few seconds, she saw his lips twist in a grimace.

  Adrien was clearly in a lot of pain.

  Camila startled when Adrien suddenly lurched up. He stood, heavily placing the bottle of alcohol on the table. She held herself stiff, wondering what had triggered him, but he didn’t come her way. Instead, he turned and walked further into the house. Even though he was clearly drunk and sick, he moved surprisingly well.

  She didn’t dare relax.

  Adrien wasn’t gone long. A minute later, he came back, clutching something in his hand.

  “I was hoping not to use this yet,” he muttered to himself. “I can't guarantee when I’ll get more…”

  She saw him set whatever it was on the table, then reach into his back pocket for his wallet. He took out a bill, then put the wallet back.

  Camila watched him set everything up, but it didn’t occur to her what it was until a moment later. He had white powder in a small plastic bag that he poured onto the coffee table, then using the bill, separated the powder into several long columns, and rolled up the bill. One end of the rolled up bill was at his nostril, the other end touching to one column of white powder.

  He… couldn’t be…

  Oh, but he was. He’d clearly had it on him for a while, and he was using it now. Adrien wanted to try and compensate for his weakness and exhaustion with cocaine.

  Camila was completely horrified.

  What the hell is this bastard doing!

  This was bad. This was going to be really bad for her. There was no saying what would happen once he started taking drugs, on top of his drinking and his infection. She didn’t know the effects of cocaine, but she did know drugs could make people irrational.

  Adrien was insane enough as it was. Him getting crazier didn’t spell out good things for her. She would have to be even more careful now.

  Camila didn’t know how many days it had been, probably more than a couple weeks. But in all that time after she’d been taken captive, she had learned to manage her steady nausea enough that she could pretend to be sicker than she actually was. She didn’t always feel it, but the days it didn’t happen were rarer. Thanks to the smell, though she hadn't felt it much the past couple days, it was coming in full force. With Adrien taking drugs now, she knew she was going to have to be careful.

  Meanwhile, Adrien was continuing to slowly fall apart in both health and rationality. The drugs certainly weren’t helping, and she knew it was a good idea to stay away from him. There were times when she was in her room, and she heard him talking to himself or yelling at someone she was pretty sure wasn’t there.

  He hadn't hurt her, but she was sure it was because he was getting distracted by his own thoughts. Not that he forgot her completely.

  Camila ended up genuinely taking care of him to make him more dependent on her, coaxing him to let down his guard. Until she had the remote, she wouldn’t try to run. She wasn’t in the best shape herself, so she knew she wouldn’t get far. The best case scenario, was if she managed to get his phone and call for help while he was unaware, then find somewhere to hide out, or incapacitate him somehow. She just had to stay well until someone came.

  Soon, she would be going home.

  Chapter Eight

  Samuel

  A week earlier

  Samuel shoved the box of ammo in his pocket, checked the Glock once more and put it in the back of his waistband. He was going to find Camila. He looked at Morganna and his sister.

  “I’ll find her, I’ll bring her home, Morganna.”

  Morganna approached him cautiously and reached for his arm. “I know how you feel, Samuel. She’s my daughter. If I thought going off half-cocked without a real direction would bring her home any sooner, I would be out that door. But just knowing he took her ‘Upstate’ somewhere, doesn’t really give us where she is. We need to be smart about this. Call you officer buddy, tell them what you’ve found out. Let them do their job. When we have more information, then we can move.” Morganna gave him a hard look. “Be smart, wait. Because if you get my daughter killed, I will never forgive you. And do not doubt for a second that I would allow that to go unpunished.”

  The muscle in Samuel’s jaw ticked. He knew she was right. ‘Upstate’ really consisted of a whole hell of a lot of territory. He rolled his neck and nodded. “Fine. We’ll do this your way. For now.”

  * * *

  Samuel slammed down the phone in his study, not caring that he might have possibly broken it. It wasn’t his cell phone, at least. He pulled that out of his pocket and checked to see if he had any updates.

  He had gone past impatient a while ago. Instead of just letting others go out to look for Camila while he sat at home, he was out every day himself, looking for clues. Chasing leads. Not that he let Morganna and Bri know that. If he were to find them, he knew he’d kill Adrien without a second thought. He’d do just about anything to have Camila back with him.

  Knowing the general direction Adrien could have gone in was incredibly useful, but it had its drawbacks. The territory was too big for the state police to cover, they couldn’t all go out to look for Adrien, they had other crime to deal with in the city. And it wasn’t as if they could go to every home along every road to ask if anyone had seen his psychotic brother. Plus, knowing how dangerous Adrien had become, if any of those people had seen him, they’d probably be dead and that would have been big news. He could see the headlines now… Serial Killer on the loose in Upstate New York. That hadn’t occurred, so he was pretty sure his brother had made it to where ever he’d planned to go. The problem was, he had no idea where that could be.

  He had men on every property he’d found in both Adrien’s name and his own, a few that he hadn’t even known about! His brother had been a busy little shit while he’d been in the Army. Setting up properties all over the country. His stomach had turned when he’d found the loft in the city with an entire BDSM playset set up in it. Grey’s Red Room on steroids, according to one of the mercs who’d located it.

  The lawsuit from the coffee shop waitress now made more sense. He’d had his lawyers pay her off, but he’d always wondered about the details in the lawsuit. He had thought she’d exaggerated the extent if Adrien’s depravity. Apparently, she hadn’t. It frightened him to think Adrien was doing some of that sick shit to Camila.

  Keiko, her name had been. He recalled she was a tiny little woman, Asian, Japanese, if he remembered correctly. There had been pictures of the scarring Adrien had left on her backside, but he hadn’t taken the time to look at them. He’d just cleaned up the mess. He should have done more. He should have had Adrien committed inste
ad of just making sure he’d gone back on his meds.

  His psychiatrist had assured him that all Adrien needed were the meds and an appointment with him once a week. He should have known the minute he left his guard down, Adrien would return to his previous behavior. This was entirely his fault.

  No, this is Adrien’s fault. He knew enough to put the blame squarely where it should be. Blaming himself wasn’t what was needed. Because if he blamed himself, he’d take the punishment and it wouldn’t be on Adrien’s head. Which was where it needed to be.

  It worried him that it had been weeks already. If someone really had seen something, wouldn’t they have reported it by now? Or even if they chose not to, it might be too late to do a thing about it. Samuel knew his brother wasn’t stupid, he wouldn’t bring too much attention to himself with people currently after him.

  So, Samuel figured that his brother was hiding out in some isolated area. Homes, they couldn’t check one by one. Even if they did, there were too many in too many directions. He had the man power, but without an idea of where Upstate Adrien had gone, it was pointless. The police wouldn’t mobilize even close to half of their team to go look either, since their people were still needed to in the city. Without going public, he was stuck. He couldn’t ask people for help in looking for Adrien, because they’d ‘find’ Samuel and then it would be a big cluster fuck. Being a twin sucked.

  “Things can't keep going like this,” he growled to himself. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. It had been too long since Adrien had run off with Camila. He could only hope that she was still alive, still okay, but without seeing it, he couldn’t help but worry. He knew it was the same for Morgana and Brianna.

  Samuel felt his phone buzz in his pocket, and he pulled it out quickly. It was Chris, one of the mercs who’d given him the ‘Upstate’ lead. Samuel hoped that Chris actually had some news. He answered the call quickly and put it to his ear.

  “I’m listening. What have you got?”

  He silently prayed they had found more clues. Since Chris and Brandon were the first to have an idea of where Adrien might have gone after he took Camila, Samuel was inclined to trust them more. Not to mention the hefty bonuses he’d already paid out to the both of them.

  “We’re not sure. It’s a possible lead though. Or might be. We believe your brother must have had outside contacts. Not just the ones who helped him escape, or he wouldn’t have gotten away with the kidnapping. According to Jacobs, the police didn’t notify anyone about sending a unit to protect your house. There was no internal order, just a verbal one that Jacobs gave to the patrol unit off radio. Also, Adrien knew to find the young woman at your estate. So he likely knew she wasn’t staying in her own home. We believe it’s possible Adrien has people keeping an eye out for him.”

  “Still?” Samuel frowned. “You think he’s still having us watched?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Okay, so how does this get us closer to finding out where he’s hiding? We know a general direction, so why are we not just going door to door?” Samuel suggested, even knowing it was not the smartest plan.

  “Because, as you know, sir, there is too much territory to cover that way. Even the police aren’t having any luck with the search. Looking for his people isn’t much easier, since it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, but we think we can track them down a lot faster. And if we can find someone who knows something, knows Adrien’s plan, we can… encourage… them tell us where he went with the girl.”

  Samuel flattened his lips. He knew it wasn’t easy. The police weren’t actually incompetent; they were doing everything they could through legal channels. If Adrien was anywhere to be found, people would have noticed. Finding him would have been easy once they knew where he was going. The problem was that Adrien had been prepared and had chosen his playground all too well.

  Depending on where he had decided to hide himself, Samuel knew they would find him, sure, but would it be in time to save Camila? Or would their searching give Adrien enough time to plan and plot his next move.

  And there was always the possibility that they would make the wrong call and tip him off. Samuel sighed, his thoughts a mess in his head. Maybe Adrien didn’t actually stop anywhere in Upstate New York, maybe he kept going, driving up into Canada or further north in the States, since he probably didn’t have his passport with him. Maybe. Samuel frowned. Adrien wouldn’t have gone through an airport or anything public, would he? He had a hostage with him. He’d try to be more careful. Just careful enough not to get caught.

  Samuel shook his head. No. He was sure Adrien would have stopped somewhere. Morganna swore she hit him with one of her shots, and there was blood on the car seat. No, Adrien would have stopped. The police were certain that he wouldn’t leave the state that he would stay fairly close, this was territory Adrien knew, he’d stay in familiar places. Even the people he hired agreed. Going too far carried its own risks especially since he was carting someone around with him. It only made sense that he would have stopped somewhere and was now laying low.

  Now, all they had to hope for was that Adrien was at least partly rational, because if their assumption was wrong, then they’d wasted some time since they found out about where he might be.

  “Okay, say you’re right. He had someone or someones watching the estate. How do you track them down?”

  “We have a lead. An unfamiliar vehicle showed up in your neighborhood prior to all of this. We went back through several days of surveillance feeds on your cameras, as well as your neighbors. We’re having Jacobs run the plates, see if anything pings. I just wanted to keep you updated.”

  Samuel listened. It was something, at least, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel excited anymore. "Okay, keep me in the loop.”

  “Roger that.” Chris disconnected the call.

  In the end, he decided to check a few things himself. Adrien had to have been paying these people somehow. Maybe he could follow the money.

  Just like that, he distracted himself following up on leads that went nowhere for a few more days. They had all seemed pretty solid when he’d found them, but none of them led to anything feasible. The bank records only led to fake corporations and dummy accounts that were non-existent when he tracked them down, or to names on accounts that had already been drained and closed and the paper trail ended there.

  Samuel once again ended up in his study, wanting to throw something, only to realize his house phone had yet to be replaced. He couldn’t risk throwing his cell phone, it was the last thing he could stand to lose, and there wasn’t anything else in there that would be satisfying to throw.

  He was frustrated at himself, at his men, and at the police, who continued to be of very little help. Well, not so much toward the police, since he hadn’t expected much from them to begin with, with all the bureaucracy crap they were buried in that wouldn’t allow them to use up a significant percentage of their force just for one person.

  At this point, they would have to cross their fingers that someone paid attention to the APB on both Adrien and Camila.

  He really was starting to lose hope, though. He finally relented and allowed the police to put out an all points bulletin with Adrien’s face on it. It went live on all the crime stopper shows, and much to his regret, it only led to confusion with the general public.

  Samuel his reluctance had been well founded, but he knew the good of having Adrien’s image moving around, so they tried to do it in a way that allowed the public to know that they were looking for Samuel’s twin, Adrien. The only problem was, he was still mistake for Adrien, and it was only because he was out in public searching for signs of Adrien and Camila. He ended up gently setting a confused grandmother straight about being Adrien’s twin, not the culprit they were searching for.

  Jacobs , when he showed up to apprehend ‘the miscreant’ as the grandmother had dubbed him, had thought the situation was some sort of humorous twist, and had laughed himself silly.

 
Samuel just found it even more frustrating. Afterwards, he ended up back home, feeling exhausted, both physically and mentally.

  Morganna and Brianna took one look at his face and didn’t ask how it went. Instead, Morganna patted his arm, attempting to comfort him. “Why don’t you go get some dinner? Maria made chili. I’ll take Bri up and get her settled.”

  Samuel nodded. He walked into the kitchen to grab a bite of the food Maria had left out for him, and then went to his bedroom. Brianna had been feeling well enough to move back into her own room, so he had it to himself again.

  Morganna, he knew, had moved the trundle bed into Bri’s room and was staying with her so she wouldn’t feel afraid.

  Having his bedroom to himself again was nice, but he didn’t want to sleep. How could he when the last time he’d slept in his bed, Camila had been there with him? Thoughts of her, of what she was going through wouldn’t allow him to sleep well anyway.

  Even if he could sleep well, Samuel wouldn’t waste his time with something as useless as sleep. Not that his body would allow him to go without. If he didn’t sleep, his body would start to shut down. He wasn’t that old, but he wasn’t young, either. If he pushed himself too hard, he might not be able to keep up, and he wouldn’t allow that to happen. He had to stay strong. For Camila.

  He had to be fit and healthy for when he finally found Adrien, so he would have the strength to save Camila. And kill Adrien.

  It took a while for him to fall asleep. His mind wouldn’t stop running thoughts around, and most of them were negative, wondering what would happen if they hadn't guessed Adrien’s true motives, what he could possibly have been doing with Camila in all that time. It was obviously nothing good.

  What if she isn’t still alive?

  He quickly shook that thought off, though it was the loudest one going through his head. Even if he was lying to himself, he had to believe she was at least okay. He would know if the woman he loved was dead, wouldn’t he? Yes, his heart shouted. He held onto that thought.