“Jim-”
She was going to call for Jimmy, when someone clasped something over her mouth.
Turning around, she saw that it was Ricky, and her eyes widened in shock. “What are you. doing, Ricky?!”
“I don’t want to hurt you, sis-you’re my only family left after my mom died…”
“But I cannot forgive Diarmuid.”
His naive demeanor from before was completely gone-now, there was composure and maturity that Abigail had never seen before.
“I told you, he has no reason-
“He does,” Ricky said, cutting her short. “He knows that my mom used to make life hard for you and your mom, so he’s killed my mom for revenge.”
Abigail froze, but soon noticed a contradiction. “He doesn’t know about Samantha, Who told you about that anyway?”
“It’s none of your business. Just relax-I won’t hurt you.”
“Ricky-”
Abigail tried to reason, only to feel a dull hit on the back of her head. She quickly blacked out and fell unconscious, and Ricky promptly got his people to take her to his car on a stretcher.
Once he closed the door behind Abigail, he turned to look at the woman standing nearby under a tree, keeping her back to him.
“I don’t know what you want, but I won’t hurt Abigail. She’s my only family now.”
The woman only turned around after Ricky drove off-it was Chad Ross’s recently wed wife, and she was glowering!
She had tried to hurt Abigail along with Diarmuid, and she was now smart enough to deceive others for her own ends instead of doing things herself.
And this time, Ricky was the one she managed to deceive.
She thought that Ricky hated Abigail like Samantha did, but it turned out that he actually cared.
She murdered Samantha and framed Diarmuid with the crime. That way, she would have pushed Ricky over the brink, but although he was supposed to destroy Diarmuid along with Abigail, Ricky refused to hurt Abigail-it makes her efforts as puppeteer only half-successful.
But in spite of her dissatisfaction, she did succeed to some extent.
Moreover, she had planned this for a long time.
Chad’s wife had executed her plan meticulously-she even managed to misdirect Stan, who had traced the message she sent to Diarmuid back to lan’s casino ship.
Now that Diarmuid had turned against his family and were on the brink of conflict, she could naturally place the blame on the other Althoffs.
Moreover, everyone believed that she was dead.
No one would even suspect her.
Jimmy the chauffeur started looking around the hospital as the skies darkened, but Abigail was nowhere to be found.
Hence, he called Diarmuid, who had just returned home and was standing just outside the door, to inform him of that. “What?!”
“Mrs. Althoff is missing,” Jimmy repeated, sweat forming over forehead just then-he was worried that Diarmuid would be furious if harm came to Abigail.
“How long has she been gone?” Diarmuid demanded.
“It’s probably been seven hours now. I parked the car after she left, and I never saw her since. I thought she would be busy, so I waited, but she never came out, and she wasn’t anywhere when I looked…”
Diarmuid snapped, “Didn’t I tell you to keep an eye on her?”
Jimmy might be a chauffeur, but his main profession was as a bodyguard…
But he had lost her!
Knowing that he had been careless, Jimmy apologized. “I’m sorry.”
That was not what Diarmuid wanted to hear just then. “Where did you lose her?”
“Central Hospital, over at the Second Militarized Zone.”
Diarmuid promptly hung up and turned around, calling Stan even as he strode back to his car. However, someone called his phone before he could call Stan, and it was from Abigail’s number.
He quickly answered it.
“Abigail…?”
“It’s Ricky,” Ricky said icily over the phone. “Come to the unfinished building at Big Short. You’d better come alone if you want to save her, or I can’t promise that you’d actually see her again.”
“Don’t you dare hurt her,” Diarmuid said calmly and steadily.
There was a lack of emotion in his voice, and Ricky could not even see his face, but he felt an intangible yet suffocating pressure nonetheless!
Clearly inexperienced and unable to match Diarmuid’s assertiveness, Ricky had to feign composure. “That depends entirely on you.”
Diarmuid promptly got in his car and drove to the address Ricky gave. It was a grim and barren place, its surroundings littered with cracked boulders, moss-covered bricks, and rusted steel frames.
He alighted and strode into the building, but found no one.
That was when his phone rang again with another text from Abigail’s phone: [Sorry, wrong address. It’s the East Docks.]
Ricky had clearly sent it, and he was obviously messing with Diarmuid.
He scowled, but decided that he could not do anything to him, since he had Abigail.
Returning to his car, he drove to the East Docks, but his phone jingled again with another text from Ricky when he was about to get down.
[Oh, I’m so sorry. I made another oopsie.]
Diarmuid simply kept staring at the screen, knowing that Ricky would keep texting him.
[Go back to the first location.]
Restraining his temper, Diarmuid started his car again and returned to the unfinished building.
As he stopped, he did not get off immediately-who knows if Ricky was ‘childish’ enough to make another ‘oopsie’?
He alighted when Ricky did not, and headed upstairs via the bare concrete stairs. This time, he found Abigail!
Abigail was still unconscious. Ricky had tied her to a pillar, and there was a bomb tethered to her waist.
Diarmuid glowered when he saw that.
Ricky then showed up with a detonator in one hand, while holding his phone out at Diarmuid with the other. “Tell me, how did you murder my mother?”
“I didn’t,” Diarmuid replied.
“I really doubt that,” Ricky laughed coolly. “Why were you there where she died if you didn’t? Am I that young and gullible to you?”
“You’re young?” Diarmuid cast him a sideways glance. “Though you’re simply immature.”
Ricky growled in annoyance. “That doesn’t matter. The point is right now, what I say goes.’
Diarmuid did not appear upset. “Of course, though I really want to ask: is my being there proof enough that I did it?”
“Of course,” Ricky replied.
Diarmuid was on the verge of flipping out at Ricky’s sense of logic. “I was sent a text. That’s why I was there-check my phone if you don’t believe it.”
Diarmuid held it out to Ricky, but Ricky could not reach for it since one of his arms had yet to heal, while both hands were already busy with the detonator and his own phone. “You must be tricking me.”
That was when Abigail suddenly woke up, having realized that he never believed her.
‘Ricky! You have to believe me-Diarmuid and I didn’t do anything to Samantha. We would’ve killed her in prison if we wanted to, instead of getting her out of prison first! Wouldn’t that just complicate matters?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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