“You’ll be the first to know.”
“Are we job hunting for Zoe Hart or Amanda Clifford?”
“Amanda. It’s safer like that.”
He picks up my bag. “Let’s get you settled in.”
Following him down the hallway, I’m already like two people living in the chest of one. I’m a contrast of feelings.
I’m both hopeful and falling apart.
Chapter 3
Maxime
Where is Zoe?
I’m going out of my goddamn mind.
We traced her car to the pound. It was towed away from a bus terminal. There are fifty or more busses leaving daily from that terminal with varying routes, but all of them lead around Marseille. The logical checkpoints are the harbor and airport.
Zoe had enough money on her for a plane ticket to somewhere in Europe—Spain or Italy, or maybe the Netherlands—but she doesn’t have a passport. The one I forged to steal her from South Africa is still in the safe in my office. To be sure, I check the passenger lists of all flights that have left since Saturday. With my connections, it’s not difficult to get the information. Zoe Hart didn’t board a plane.
She could’ve tried to get away by boat. It’s easier to smuggle someone on board a ship sailing to Africa or the States. On this, I can’t rely on help from the Italians. That door has closed for me. However, the Balkans owe me a favor. I call it in, sending pirate boats after the ships that have sailed to search each and every one. We track every vessel via satellite. No one escapes, not even the sailboats cruising the Atlantic or crossing the Mediterranean Sea for Corsica and Greece.
At the same time, I run teams through the city and surrounding villages, questioning people and offering a reward for any information about Zoe, which accounts for a lot of false leads from people who are just after the money.
I consider all options—hitchhiking, leaving on bicycle, and hiding right here under my nose. Sparing no expenses, I turn over the south of France, but the search is fruitless. It’s impossible for a woman without resources to disappear like this. If my enemies had caught her, they would’ve dumped her body on my doorstep by now.
At first, that thought gives me nightmares. Then, it makes me an insomniac. I haven’t slept more than a couple of consecutive hours in weeks. My life is falling to pieces. Everything around me is going to hell. The pain is insufferable, like nothing I’ve felt. It’s cruel in design, both beautiful and punishing. It’s a dualistic pain, a two-headed monster that teaches me the joys of having found something precious and losing it.
It makes me both alive and dead.
Going for a different approach, I start rumors. I plant messages with an evil tiding, saying I’m going after her brother if she doesn’t give herself up.
When no clues come up for several days, it leaves me with only one conclusion. Someone helped Zoe escape. She had an accomplice. If not, my threats would’ve smoked her out like one smokes scorpions out from under rocks. That means she had to communicate with someone. With her only dialing access Sylvie’s and my numbers, she would’ve had to borrow a phone. My guards swear she didn’t use theirs, and they never let her out of their sights. There’s no chance she used the phone of a random person in the street. I don’t get it, and as furious as I am, I can’t help but admire this flower of mine for managing what no one else has to date—to slip through my fingers.
The only option left is that she somehow made it back to South Africa. If she did, she didn’t do it in her own name, because nothing comes up in my search for Zoe Hart. If she’d made it back to her brother, she would’ve spilled the beans. By now, he would’ve pulled the plug on our deal and started a war to avenge her. Yet Damian Hart is oddly quiet, carrying on just as before.
Maybe too quiet.
Hope rises with my suspicion. What if Zoe somehow managed to contact him and asked for help? Hart has his own connections and shady ways of accomplishing things. What if he provided her with a false passport and airfare? If she wants to stay hidden, he won’t stir the waters by changing our deal. He’d keep it exactly as is.
I put a detail on Hart, but Zoe doesn’t show up on his doorstep or at his office. It looks like just another dead-end strategy. Unless I’m having the wrong person watched. Unless it’s not Damian who’s going to lead me to his sister.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I’ve eliminated all other options. Without wasting more time, I book a plane ticket to South Africa.
Chapter 4
Zoe
My days are empty and my nights even more so. Not a minute goes by that I don’t think of the man who kidnapped me. At night, I lie awake and torture myself with imagining his new life. Was the wedding big and flamboyant? Did he wear one of his tailored pinstriped suits or one of the fitted dark ones? Is the diamond Izabella wears on her finger from my own brother’s mine? Are they happy? Are they making things work like we somehow managed toward the end before I found out Maxime had a future wife? Did she move into Maxime’s bedroom or the femininely decorated one next to his? Are they fucking? Does he make her come? Is he tender and rough with her like he was with me? Does he drape her over his lap and ask what she’s done with herself all day? Does he teach her lessons? Does he reward her vulnerability with kindness?
The questions torment me, but I can’t stop. I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with Maxime Belshaw like only a woman in love can be.
I got a job as a medical receptionist thanks to Lina. The psychiatrist she works for knew someone who needed a quick replacement for a staff member who went on maternity leave. It’s not a permanent position, but it’s a start. At least I’m earning money while looking for long-term employment. The salary allows me to rent a small first-floor apartment in Fourways. I didn’t have a choice but to let Damian pay the deposit to secure the lease. I needed to get out of Lina and Damian’s house fast, the very next day after my arrival.
Damian and I are discreet about how and where we meet. He sometimes sends a driver to pick me up after work. We go to restaurants or bars where Damian trusts the owners. I dyed my hair blond and apply a self-tanning lotion on a weekly basis to give my pale skin a darker tone. Contact lenses change my eye color to brown. I’m different on the outside, and even as my new life slowly but surely starts again, what’s on the inside doesn’t change. The hurt doesn’t fade. I’ve just grown more used to it.
To give myself a jumpstart in the right direction, I set new goals. I want to save enough money to afford a bigger place. I don’t want anything fancy, just a place I can call home. A small garden would be nice. I can’t get too attached to any place. I always have a bag packed with my fake passport and money so I can flee on a moment’s notice.
I still find it hard to make friends. I can’t reach out to anyone who knew me as Zoe. The people who meet me as Amanda have questions about where I come from and why I’m not dating. It’s hard to answer those questions without lying, and it’s easier to simply avoid the curiosity by avoiding people altogether. It’s not healthy, but trust doesn’t come easily for me. It’s difficult to make friends when you’re secretive about your past and spending most of your nights alone, bleaching your roots so no one notices it’s not your natural color.