My Fault (Culpable Book 1)

I hadn’t seen Noah in twenty minutes, and already, I was missing her. I looked around and couldn’t find her anywhere.

“Jenna, you seen Noah?” I asked, walking to a corner where she was drinking and dancing. She stopped to look at me.

“I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, she wasn’t here. Sophie said she was asking if anyone had seen her phone.”

I decided to go outside to look for her. It was freezing, and there was no one around. I looked left and right, even toward the woods behind us, but there wasn’t a trace of her. I went back in and checked the bedroom with an uncomfortable pressure in my chest; she was nowhere to be found. Finally I checked every room one by one, shouting her name and dialing her phone. Nothing. Not a single sign.

I ran downstairs and found Jenna and Lion by the front door.

“I don’t know where she is,” Jenna said, now worried.

A horrible fear overtook me, and I ran around the corner, with Jenna and Lion close behind me. Turning the corner on the way to my car, I saw footprints on the grass. I followed them, my heart in a knot, and when I reached the place where they ended, I found her high heels lying there as if they’d been thrown down.

“Noah!” I shouted desperately, looking from side to side. “Noah!”

Jenna and Lion shouted, too. No response.

I remembered Ronnie’s threat. Had that son of a bitch taken her somewhere?

“Call the cops,” I told Lion when I got over my panic.

Lion looked surprised, but he took out his phone. As he dialed, we went back inside. I walked into the DJ booth and made him cut the music. Everyone hissed and jeered, but I didn’t give a shit. “Has anyone seen Noah?” I shouted. I got up on a chair and stared out at the crowd, wishing I would see her there and hating myself for leaving her alone.

Everyone jeered and shook their head. I got down and clutched my head in my hands. Dammit… Dammit…

“Nicholas, calm down,” Jenna said.

“You don’t understand!” I screamed, not caring if anyone heard. “Ronnie’s been threatening her.” Just then, Lion grabbed me.

“Nick, the cops,” he said, handing me the phone. “They want to talk to someone from her family.”

I grabbed it and put it to my ear.

“My girlfriend’s disappeared. I need you to come right away,” I said, knowing I should control my tone better but unable to.

“Sir, calm down and explain to me what happened,” the voice on the other line responded. The person was calm, as if we were talking about the weather and not the entire purpose of my life suddenly vanishing.

“What happened is my girlfriend disappeared, that’s what’s happened!”

“Calm down, sir, we’ve already sent a patrol car, and when they arrive, they’ll search the area, but for now, I need to you to tell me exactly where you saw her for the last time.”

I told the operator what happened, but it was as if I were in a bubble and none of what was happening were real.

Soon a cop car pulled up and everyone in attendance rushed out. I didn’t care; I already knew who had done this.

“You are…?” the officer asked after taking my statement. I couldn’t believe he was dragging his feet like this; something needed to be done, and now.

“I’m Nicholas Leister,” I said for the second time that night. All these questions were absurd; what we needed to do was go find Ronnie wherever he was and rescue Noah.

“So you’re her boyfriend?” I nodded, impatient, while Jenna and Lion talked with two other cops. “Noah Morgan…is she a minor?” the officer interviewing me asked. Shit. I hadn’t thought of that.

“She’s seventeen. Look, she’s my stepsister, our parents got married a few months ago, and I already told you, I know who’s behind this. Please, we’re wasting time and they could be hurting her.”

The cop frowned at me.

“To start with, you’re not immediate family, so we don’t need to tell you anything. What I’m going to ask of you is that you call her parents or legal guardian and inform them of what happened. The law says we can’t file a missing person report for twenty-four hours, so—”

“Are you not listening to me?” I shouted, losing my nerve. “She’s been kidnapped. Now stop fucking around and do something!”

I didn’t realize how close I’d gotten to him until he grabbed me and slammed me against his car.

“Calm down or I’m going to have to arrest you,” he said.

I cursed between my teeth until he let me go.

“Now call your parents or I’ll do it myself,” he said, puffing out his chest and trying to intimidate me.

I turned around, took out my phone, and dialed. Dad picked up on the fourth ring.

“Dad…I need you to come. Something’s happened.”

Four hours later, we were back at home. Nobody knew where Noah was, but there were people milling all around and plugging in machines to trace our calls in case her captors tried to get in touch with us. William Leister wasn’t a nobody, and when his stepdaughter disappeared, the first thing people thought was that it was a kidnapping for ransom. I’d already told ten different cops two hundred times about Ronnie’s threats, but what I didn’t know was that they’d found the threatening letters in Noah’s desk drawer. When I realized her father was the one who’d kidnapped her, I nearly lost control.

I was a disaster; I couldn’t believe what was happening. They’d had to give Raffaella a tranquilizer when she’d found out, and now she was in one of the bedrooms with a friend trying to calm her down. My father was on the phone the whole time, talking to cops and officials. All I could do was smoke one cigarette after another and try to ignore the hundreds of horrible images flashing through my head.

Lion and Jenna had come over, Jenna’s parents, too, but I had no idea what they were up to. It was past five in the morning, and no one had heard anything.

“If something happens, I’ll never forgive myself,” I said, almost hyperventilating. “All this is my fault… Dammit! Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Nick, if Noah decided to cover this up, she had her reasons,” Jenna said. “I’ve been her friend for a month, and I had no idea her father was in jail, let alone that he was an abuser.”

“If he lays a hand on her…” I said, hearing my own voice crack. I couldn’t just sit there doing nothing. I wanted to beat my head against the wall, anything, just to get my life to go back to where it had been earlier that week. I’d been happy for the first time in years, and all of it was thanks to that incredible girl who for some reason had chosen me… Just imagining Ronnie touching her turned my stomach. I knew Ronnie was in on this. I’d bet my life on it.

Just then, the phone started to ring. Everyone was running around like crazy. I went to Dad’s office, where everyone fell silent while he picked up the phone when the police motioned for him to do so. The speaker was on, so every word of the conversation was audible.

“Leister,” he answered.

“Mr. Leister…it’s an honor speaking with you,” said a voice I’d never heard before. It was deep, cheerful, as if all this were amusing. “The man who took my wife and daughter to the other end of the continent so I couldn’t find them. You’re an intelligent man, yes siree. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have your business empire and my wife would have never spared a thought for you.”

I looked to the left and saw Raffaella covering her mouth with her hand, repressing her tears, and shaking her head.

“Where’s Noah?” my father asked in a tense voice.

“We’ll get to that. But honestly, the location of my daughter isn’t your concern, Mr. Leister. All you need to worry about is how much money you can come up with to get back a person who honestly isn’t even part of your family.”

My father looked over at me.

“I’ll pay whatever it takes, you bastard, but don’t you dare lay a finger on her.” That was exactly what I would have said, and I felt grateful to him.

“A million dollars in used bills in two backpacks, to be handed over by you in person at midday,” Noah’s father said. “If you screw this up, I’ll leave the consequences to your imagination. And come alone, Mr. Leister—that’s an order.”

“I want to talk to her,” my father said tensely. “I need to know she’s all right.”

“Of course, Mr. Leister.”

I heard her a second later.

“Nicholas…” That was all she said. She sounded horrible. I couldn’t help taking a step forward when I heard her on the other line.

But right then, it went dead.