48

"What do we do now?" Keeva whispered to Rian when we got down one floor and saw a wide glass door at the end of the long, gloomy corridor. It must have been the exit from this hell and immediately Rian turned around to put his free hand on Keeva's cheek.

"You're going," he said, but Keeva just looked at him in horror and shook her head violently.

"Absolutely not!", she hissed and broke away from his touch. "My daughter is here somewhere! I'm not going anywhere!"

"Yes!", Rian warned and got this expression again, which didn't allow any contradiction... At least from nobody, except his wife.

"I said no!" Keeva emphasized, crossing her arms. "I'm not going to sit somewhere and hope that everything will turn out well! You can forget that!"

"You don't understand!", Rian got louder and stood right in front of her. "I can't think straight when you're around! If something happens to you... I can't bear the thought alone!"

"But you-"

While the two of them talked on and on, I ran back up the stairs behind us and looked back down the hallway from where I had heard the screams. It was incredibly devastating to know that my father was a few doors away, but I didn't have time to grieve now... I cared about other people who were still in danger.

I purposefully opened the front doors, but in each room there was only office furniture and small windows...

Except for the room opposite my father's.

I peeked in, took in the wide desk, and glimpsed the sun peeping through the window, very faintly. I was just about to close this door again when I heard a smack, which made me widen my eyes, overwhelmed.

"Esme," I breathed, stepping across the creaky wooden floor into the room, where I walked around the desk and found her lying on the chair, wrapped in a white blanket.

When my eyes met hers, she smiled so sweetly that despite everything, my heart opened. Her beautiful eyes, which had this special mixture, shone incredibly pretty and in addition the cute snub nose, which thank God she didn't get from Rian.

"You have no idea how much I missed you," I whispered and was about to take her in my arms when I felt an aura next to me and heard the crunching of the wood again.

Very carefully, I put my hands up while my heart was beating fast again and turned to the side, where a man, dressed all in black, who was completely unknown to me, was standing.

His blond hair was slicked back while his beard was almost gray, and then my gaze drifted to the gun in his hand, which was pointed right at me.

"Stop, please," I breathed immediately, stepping protectively in front of Esme, continuing to hold my hands in the air in surrender, which apparently wasn't necessary.

I thought I was going to die, but when I looked deep into the guy's eyes, his suddenly widened and I watched as he parted his lips slightly, took a last breath and just fell over.

"Can we please stay together!" Rian warned me and pulled the knife out of the guy's chest to put it next to his body and take the gun.

"Sorry," I replied, panting heavily, lowering my hands to turn to Esme again. "But I found someone."

I felt Rian's eyes on me and bent down to his daughter to carefully lift her into my arms while my eyes searched Rian's.

"Oh god," he breathed, almost stunned, and immediately came over to me, tears in his eyes, to hug Esme tightly. "My angel," he whispered against her cheek and kissed her gently on the forehead, then, just like me, he looked at the door with wide eyes.

Keeva sat on the bottom's bottom and rammed the knife into his back like a lunatic, making that disgusting sound that sent chills down my spine.

"Keeva!" Rian addressed her and carefully handed Esme over to me to approach our little gypsy who seemed to be having a nervous breakdown. "He's dead, you can stop!"

He put his hand carefully on her shoulder and only when she looked at him did she let go of the knife and took several deep breaths.

"They always get up in horror movies. I thought we were on the safe side that way. Besides, he might have killed Cathan," she explained, wiping the blood from her hands on her light-colored top. "He should pay for that..."

"I know," Rian said thoughtfully and then glanced at me, which Keeva did the same and apparently only now did she realize who I was holding in my arms.

She jumped up with big eyes and immediately came to me at breakneck speed to look at her daughter overjoyed.

"My princess," she sobbed, taking Esme to hold her against her body with my eyes closed while I eyed her with a smile on my lips until I caught sight of Rians, who was reloading the gun in his hands and I realized again that this was not over yet.

When he noticed me staring at him, he gave the slightest of nods down to the knife, and after my glimpse of Keeva again, I turned past her and ran to Rian and the lifeless body on the ground to get the knife out of his grab back.

"Keeva," Rian addressed her, waiting for her to turn around to give us a stern look. "Now there's a reason you should leave immediately."

She nodded, although you could tell she didn't want to let us down, but Esme was more important to both of them than anything else, so she came over to us with her in her arms and ran ahead of us back into the hallway, where the three of us went up the stairs.

"Get out and no matter what, you won't come back! Call the police! Call for help and don't stop for a second!"

Keeva nodded again and was almost speechless with excitement, but she gave Rian another kiss, told him that she loved him and disappeared down the stairs to lead her daughter to the freedom she longed for.

"And what do we do now?", I asked Rian and turned around to the hallway again. "There's just no one here! I've searched all the rooms... And upstairs there are motion detectors... It doesn't make any sense!"

"It doesn't make any sense because that Fiore is a total idiot," Rian retorted, turning to face me. "I try to think about what I would do all the time. But Fiore isn't a smart man. He's impulsive and stupid. A mix that can be deadly. But look at what he did to dad... He "He's a sadist! The thing about Esme, just lying there alone in a room, just goes to show how stupid he is."

"And what does that mean?"

"That he certainly didn't expect us to notice motion detectors... Otherwise it wouldn't have been so easy that we just found the front door downstairs. Otherwise Esme wouldn't have been unguarded! And Cathan... He shouldn't be by us be found. I rather think he let Mandy and Chiara watch to scare them."

I thought about his words, but I really couldn't get a clear picture of Fiore. Somehow he was still the half-dead zombie with sunglasses and hat to me...

"He will be upstairs. On the floor where Odran is and where we are going now."

"But the motion detectors!" I protested and immediately Rian put on an ice-cold smile and held up his gun. "He does not know that we are free and armed."

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