Zara sat on the hard, cold floor of the dark warehouse room. She did not move a single muscle in her body. She was like a statue made of ice. She just stared at Romeo with wide, frightened eyes. Her breath was coming out in short, shaky gasps that sounded very loud in the quiet room. Her brain was spinning around and around like a top. She was trying to understand how her life had changed so fast in just one single night.
Just a few short hours ago, she was sitting safely in the passenger seat of Henry's car. She had been crying and sharing her deepest, darkest secrets with him. She had told him everything about her past. She thought she was finally getting away from all her troubles. She thought she was finally free.
Then, everything went horribly wrong. Masked men came out of the shadows like ghosts. They were fast, they were strong, and they were very scary. They grabbed her and threw Henry into the trunk of his own car like he was a piece of old luggage. She had spent the whole car ride feeling terrified, her heart thumping against her ribs like a trapped bird. She had imagined many scary things during that ride. She thought maybe Aiden, the mean man from her past, had finally found her. She thought maybe her father was angry and had sent men to punish her for leaving his business deal. She had imagined many monsters, but she never, ever imagined this.
Romeo was the one who had brought her here. Romeo, the boy she had met on the street under the yellow light. Romeo, the father of the tiny baby growing inside her.
Zara felt her chest get very tight. It was hard to get enough air into her lungs. Romeo did not say anything at first. He just stood there and watched her. His eyes were dark and very, very serious. In the dim, flickering light of the warehouse, his face looked completely different. He did not look like the gentle, tired boy she had met that first night on the roadside. He looked harder. He looked like a stranger she did not know at all.
Zara wiped her eyes with the back of her shaking hand. She tried to make her voice strong, like a brave person, but it came out very small and thin.
"Why? Why did you bring me here, Romeo?"
At first, Romeo did not answer her. The silence in the room was heavy and thick. He stood up from his wooden chair very slowly. Because the light was behind him, his tall shadow stretched all the way across the floor and touched Zara's feet. He began to walk toward her. Zara was so scared that she moved backward without even thinking. She slid across the dusty, dirty floor until her back hit the cold, peeling wall. Her throat felt as dry as a desert.
"Tell me," Zara whispered, her voice trembling like a leaf. "Why did you kidnap me? What do you want from me? Why are you doing this?"
Zara felt a sharp poke of fear in her stomach. This Romeo felt dangerous. He felt sharp and cold, like the blade of a knife. Romeo looked down at the floor for a second. He clamped his teeth together so hard that his jaw muscles poked out on the side of his face. When he finally looked back at her, his eyes were cold. They were empty of the kindness she remembered from that night with the broken guitar.
"I want my baby," he said. His voice was flat and firm. It sounded like stone hitting stone.
Zara felt her heart skip a beat. She tried to act confused because she was so scared and didn't want him to know her secret.
"What baby?" she asked, her voice shaking. "What are you talking about, Romeo?"
Romeo did not look at her face. He looked directly at her stomach. "The baby," he said again. "The baby is growing inside you right now. That is my child. My son or my daughter."
Zara felt like the whole world was shaking under her feet. She could not believe he knew. She had told no one except Henry. Her eyes went wide.
"How?" she whispered. "How do you even know about that?"
Romeo did not give her a real answer. He just kept his dark eyes locked on hers. He looked like a man who had no doubts at all. He looked like he knew everything.
Zara shook her head as tears began to fall down her face. They felt hot on her cold skin.
"No," she said. "This is my baby. I cannot give my child to you. That night... that night was a mistake. We don't even know each other! We are total strangers who met once in the dark. It was just a terrible accident."
Romeo's jaw tightened. "Maybe it was an accident for you," he replied, "but it was not for me."
Romeo's voice turned even colder, cutting through the air of the room like a freezing winter wind. "I want my baby, and I will not allow you to take it away from me. I will not let you hide my child from me."
Zara's heart felt like it dropped all the way into her shoes. She felt like she was drowning in the middle of a deep, dark ocean with no one to save her.
"You cannot force me to stay here, Romeo! You kidnapped me! This is a crime! You are hurting me and you are hurting the baby!"
Romeo looked away for a tiny moment. He looked like he was fighting with himself on the inside. It seemed like there was a giant battle going on in his head between being a kind person and being a mean kidnapper. But then he looked back at her, and his face was like a hard mask again.
"I am not going to hurt you, Zara," he said softly, but his voice was still firm and scary. "But I am not going to let you run away with my child, either. You are staying right here where I can see you."
A big, salty tear rolled down Zara's cheek. She felt so helpless. "I am so scared... please, Romeo, just let me go home," she begged. She wanted her own bed. She wanted to be back in the city. She wanted to feel safe again.
Romeo stood up straight and tall. He looked very scary in the shadows of the warehouse.
"You are not going anywhere," he said. "I will not let you leave until you give me the child that you are carrying."
Zara's stomach twisted into a painful knot. She felt sick, like she might throw up right there on the floor. She hugged her knees tightly to her chest and curled into a small ball. She felt so tiny and weak in that big, dirty room. She felt like a little bird caught in a heavy metal cage.
"This baby is not a toy!" Zara yelled through her tears. She was starting to get angry now. The anger was helping her feel less afraid. "He is not an object you can just take because you want it! This is a human life!"
Romeo looked away again. It seemed like he did not want to see her crying, but he did not stop what he was doing. He turned back, and his voice was very steady.
"Then you will stay here," he said. He started walking toward the door, his heavy boots making a loud thump-thump sound on the concrete floor.
"You will stay in this room until the baby is born," he told her. "I will make sure you have food and I will make sure you have water. I will take care of you, but you cannot leave. Once the baby is born, I will take him. Then, you can go. You can go back to your old life. You can go back to being all alone, just like you were before I met you."
Zara felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her heart. It hurt more than any bruise Aiden had ever given her. "No!" she screamed instantly.
"Never! I will never leave my child! I am his mother! You cannot take a baby away from its mother! That is the meanest thing in the world!"
Romeo's face became hard like a piece of gray stone. He did not look like he felt sorry for her at all.
"You will," he said. It was just one word, but it was a very scary word.
Zara shook her head as hard as she could. Her hair flew around her face.
"You think I will just walk away? You think I will just give him to you and forget he ever existed? You are wrong, Romeo! You are so wrong about me! I will never let that happen as long as I am alive! I will fight you forever!"
Romeo stared at her. He did not even blink his eyes. Something very cold and dark passed over his face. "I am not asking you for permission," he said. "I am not asking if it is okay. I am telling you what is going to happen."
Zara's hands turned into tight fists. Her whole body was shaking with a mix of anger and fear. "You are a monster," she whispered, looking him straight in the eye.
Romeo did not have an answer for that. He did not know what to say. He turned around and walked all the way to the big metal door. He put his hand on the cold handle, but he did not open it yet. He stood there for a long second, his back to her.
"Maybe I am a monster," he said in a very quiet, scary voice. "But I am a monster who loves his child. And I will do anything to keep him. Even if it means being the bad guy."
Zara shouted at his back, her voice echoing off the high walls, "I will never forgive you! Never! Even if I live to be a hundred years old, I will hate you for this!"
Romeo paused. His back went very stiff and straight. "I am not asking for you to forgive me," he said. He sounded like he did not care about her feelings at all.
He opened the heavy door. A big, mean-looking guard was standing right there in the hallway. The guard was wearing dark clothes and looked very strong. Romeo spoke to the guard in a voice that sounded like ice cubes hitting a glass.
"Do not let her leave this room. Not for a single second. Keep the door locked at all times."
Zara heard the loud clicking sound of the key turning in the lock. Click. She ran to the door and pulled on the handle with all her strength, but it would not move. She was trapped. She was a prisoner in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere.
Zara fell back down to the floor and sobbed. Her whole body was shaking so hard she could not stop. She put her hands over her stomach, trying to protect her baby from the scary world outside the door. She felt the tiny life inside her and cried even harder. Her voice echoed in the empty, dirty room.
"What will I do now?" she sobbed into her hands. "How can I save my child from him? How can I get out of here when I don't even know where I am?"
The silence in the room felt colder and scarier than it had been before Romeo left. The walls seemed to be closing in on her. The flickering light made the shadows dance like monsters on the peeling paint.
At that moment, Zara realized the terrible truth. Her old nightmare with Aiden and her father was finally over, but a new, much worse nightmare had just begun. Romeo was not the boy with the guitar anymore. He was the man who wanted to take her child away.
Will Zara find a way to escape the warehouse before the baby is born? Can Romeo really be as mean as he seems, or is he hiding a secret deep in his heart? And where is Henry? Is he still locked in the trunk, or is he coming to save her?
To know what happens ahead, keep listening to the next episode of THIS STORY! The story is just getting started, and the danger is everywhere!