Heartprints in the Void
⊰ 32 ⊱ Confronting the Past

**Content Advisory: Contains themes that may be triggering. Reader discretion is advised.**

There are times when you know something's wrong, but you can't quite put your finger on it. More often than not, it's something trivial like leaving the TV on or forgetting to turn off the lights. Occasionally, it might be forgetting to lock the front food or leaving the stove on-perhaps even the water running.

None of which would happen to me.

It can't. I'm too thorough to let it.

It's an innate feeling a warning.

So you can imagine my surprise when I find myself unlocking the front door, only to be forced into my living room and onto a dining room chair in the next moment.

I gasp loudly, and before I can fully register what's happening, adrenaline and instinct kick in, and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. Unfortunately, my screams are quickly muffled by one of the sets of hands holding me against my will. "Shut up!"

My widened eyes snap to the man as he snarls and lowers himself before me. His brown eyes hold my own as his hand continues to press a cloth over my mouth, the other holding the back of my head steady. He's not alone.

Behind me, a pair of strong hands hold me in place, assuring me that whatever fight I may want to or hope to put against will be rendered useless in an instant.

"If you scream again, it'll be the last time you scream," the man in front of me threatens. He stills for a moment, studying my eyes as though waiting for me to answer him. *Okay. I won't scream. I won't scream...*

I draw a shaky breath and nod ever so slightly. An involuntary whimper emits from the back of my throat as he reluctantly draws his hand and the cloth away from my mouth.

Tears I hardly notice roll down my cheeks, my eyes following him as he moves to stand beside me. The hold on my arms is relinquished, and I'm quick, snapping my head to the side to find that the man who once stood behind me is now on the other side, looking straight ahead.

"I was hoping that it wouldn't come to this."

My blood runs old, a string of chills shooting down my spine as I snap my head toward the couch to find none other than the devil himself, sitting with his legs crossed and a smirk plastered on his pale face.

*David.*

His hazel blue eyes bore holes into me, studying me as the two men in black suits stand on either side of me, prepared to stop me if I so much as *try* to run.

My hands shake on my lap, my heart pounding in my chest. "W-What do you want?" My voice is shakier, weaker than I'd like.

The wrinkles etched on his face deepen, his smirk shifting to a sinister smile. He leans back on the couch, his arm bent over the armrest as his predatory gaze studies me.

"I thought I got rid of you," he says, his voice tinged with disappointment. "See, I knew that you looked familiar when I saw you a couple of months ago, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then, I ran the license plate of the car parked outside of my son's house, and what do you know?"

*I should've ran the day that I saw him at the office...*

He pauses momentarily, tsking as he shakes his head. His eyes narrow on me, challenging me. "You just can't stay away, can you?"

I know that I don't have a lot of options. I can try to reach for my phone and call for help, although I'm sure that the two awfully large men standing beside me are prepared for that. I can sit and hope that Bubbles will tear down the closed door from my bedroom and scare them off, but I'm sure that I have a better chance of fighting them off myself.

*Cade will walk through the front door any minute now. He has to.*

As much as I try to convince myself that he will, I know that he won't. I'm sure that the last thing he'll think is that I'm in trouble. He'll first believe that I bailed on him than that I'm being held hostage by his psychotic father and his two minions.

*He wants to get rid of me without Cade knowing...*

...

*He's gonna kill me.*

My voice hardly sounds like my own as I mutter, "I don't know what I did to make you hate me so much, but I-"

"What *you* did?" He cuts me off and chuckles darky, raising his eyebrows. "You're pretty good. I see how you managed to get under his skin."

I furrow my eyebrows, confusion and fear warring inside me. "What are you talking about?"

He doesn't budge, doesn't tell me his motives.

"Stay the hell away from my son," he demands. "And you tell that bitch Irene that if she wants something from me, she can come to me herself." *Irene..? My aunt Irene? *

I shake my head, trying to hide the quaver in my voice. "How does my aunt have anything to do with this?"

He doesn't respond.

Instead, he rises from the couch, straightening on his feet as he fixes his suit jacket while his eyes hold my own. I'm not prepared, and if it weren't for the man standing beside me, the force of the back of David's hand would've forced me out of my chair.

A yelp rips from my lungs, my hand instinctively coming up the sting throbbing through the side of my face. And if I wasn't terrified before, I am now. "Don't make me come back here..." he growls.

I'm almost relieved when it seems like he's about to walk away, but then he stops. "It was easy for me to find you," he tells me with a certainty in his voice that sends a shiver down my spine. "Almost as easy as it was for me to find a way to get into this little apartment of yours."

He waves his finger in my face, that arrogant sense of superiority rolling off him in waves. "You come near my son again and it'll be you lying on that bedroom floor."

With my breath caught in my lungs, I sit utterly still while I watch them move out of my sight. Tears gather at the brim of my eyes as I hear the door behind me open. I shift my gaze to the side, looking over my shoulder until the sound of the door slamming shut makes me jolt.

A soft sob breaks from my lips. But it isn't until I'm standing up from my chair that I realize that my body's coated in light sweat and I'm almost trembling too hard to move. It's as though I'm living my worst nightmare, and the nauseousness that settles at the pit of my stomach is almost too much to bear.

Fortunately, with an empty stomach, there's nothing for me to part with, and before I can give myself the opportunity to contemplate what I should do, I walk to my bedroom door. It isn't until I'm pushing the door open that I realize exactly what David was threatening.

My heart stops in my chest, my blood turning to ice in my veins as my eyes land on Bubbles' lifeless form, lying in a pool of his own blood, a single bullet wound marring his once beautiful face.

I can't think.

I can't move.

I can't breathe.

*This isn't real...*

"Bubbles..?" My voice is a broken whisper, barely audible over the roaring in my ears. I'm frozen, rooted to the spot, my mind refusing to accept the grim truth before me.

He won't ever run to greet me again, his tail wagging with unbridled joy.

He won't ever bark again, his voice a comforting presence in the silence of my home.

He won't ever be there to chase away the loneliness, to love me unconditionally.

*They killed him.*

*He* killed him.

...

*He's dead...*

The tears that fall from my eyes don't stop, and my legs give out beneath me before I can catch myself. It feels as though the air has been sucked from my lungs and no matter how hard I try, all that I can muster is the hard sobs that hiccup from my chest.

*What did I do..?*

I kneel there for an eternity, the incessant buzzing of my phone and the shifting light from the windows the only indications of the passage of time. But I don't care.

I don't want to move.

I don't want to breathe.

*I should've known better.*