Chapter 33: Disappear

Outside the restaurant, Callahan drove off, his expression carved into an unreadable calm. There was something unnerving about the air around him.

Just as he passed the narrow alley beside the restaurant, something caught the corner of his eye and his gaze shifted.

His foot slammed onto the brakes. The tires shrieked against the pavement as the car came to an abrupt stop.

Callahan’s finger tightened around the steering wheel.

...

"Mew-meeeeew-mew! Mew! Meowww!"

Inside an overturned cardboard box, three tiny kittens huddled against one another, their eyes barely open and their cries thin and frantic.

"Oh, you poor things..." Sienna reached out to stroke them but seeing how tiny they were, she retracted her hand.

She crouched beside them, shrugging off her suit jacket and carefully draping it over the box to shield them from the cold.

The kittens immediately burrowed beneath the warm fabric, their tiny mewls muffled against one another.

"Where is your mother?" she murmured, glancing around the alley.

She pushed herself to her feet, intending to search behind the restaurant, when a hand suddenly seized her wrist.

Sienna barely had time to gasp before she was yanked backward.

Her shoulders struck the wall with a dull thud, and the next second, a familiar figure was standing dangerously close, one arm braced beside her head.

Her breath caught, "Callahan?"

The man did not respond as he looked into her eyes.

For a moment, she simply stared at him.

His usually composed features were drawn tight, his dark eyes rimmed red, his breathing uneven as though he had spent the last few minutes running through hell.

Her heart gave an involuntary jolt, "What’s wrong..."

Before she could finish speaking, his hand caught the back of her neck, and his mouth crashed against hers.

The kiss was rough, desperate, almost angry, carrying none of the careful restraint that had been there in the first two times they kissed.

Sienna froze for a heartbeat before finding her senses and pushing hard against his chest.

"Callahan!"

He finally pulled back.

But instead of releasing her, his fingers closed around her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. He drew her closer until there was barely any space left between them.

His voice, when it came, was frighteningly quiet, "Don’t ever disappear again."

Something in those words made the warmth drain from Sienna’s face.

She stared at him for a long second before her expression hardened, "I am not the one who disappears."

The words landed between them like a blade. Under the sleeve of his suit jacket, Callahan’s fingers curled into a tight fist.

Sienna did not spare him another gaze as she walked out of the alley.

Callahan followedl her a moment later, covering the distance between them within a few steps. He opened the car door for her but she wordlessly walked past his car.

Sienna stood at the mouth of the alley and a moment later, a cab stopped in front of her. Wordlessly, she got inside the cab.

"Miss, that car has been following us for a while. Do you know the person?"

Sienna glanced out of the window, only to find a black Maybach trailing behind the cab, "I don’t know him."

Her eyes drifted outside the window as the clear sky turned dark and heavy, and then, almost imperceptibly, the soft flakes of snow began to fall.

For a moment, Sienna fell into a daze as she watched the. The sight pulled her back to another winter, years ago.

Flashback

Sienna had been six.

The schoolyard had been almost empty that afternoon, the older children already gone home. Wrapped in a red cloak, little Sienna sat beneath the covered walkway with her knees drawn to her chest.

"You’re hiding."

Sienna looked up to find a boy standing in front of her, taller, his hair dusted with snow, "I am not," Today was her first day in school and she had seen him when she entered the class earlier.

"You are," he insisted.

He crouched beside her anyway, studying her tear-streaked face, "Why are you crying?"

She had heard the girls saying he was the cutest boy in the class and seeing him up so close, Sienna had the same thought. She sniffed and rubbed her cheeks with her sleeves, "How old are you?"

"Six."

Young Sienna’s face fell, "I am the only person in the class who is a year younger than everyone else. Mommy said she is sending me to school so early because I am smart but I know... it’s because mommy and daddy fight all the time. And mommy doesn’t like to see me crying."

The boy’s smile faded. He probably didn’t know what to say, so he simply sat beside her.

When another flake landed on Sienna’s nose, he reached over and brushed it away.

"Then don’t cry," he said seriously, "You can sit with me instead."

Sienna looked at him.

"Every day?"

"Every day."

She smiled then, small and hesitant, before scooting closer to him beneath the shelter.

Neither of them noticed the snow gathering around their shoes as they sat there, quietly talking about everything two children could possibly think of.

Sienna spotted a car pulling over at the entrance, "Then, we are friends from now on..."

She waved at him and turned to leave whenhe suddenly reached over and yanked her hair.

"Ouch!" Tears sprang in her eyes as she turned, only to see the boy standing there with a fistful of her hair in his hands, "I will never be your friend, you bully!"

She scrambled to her feet and ran, tears spilling down her cheeks.

A year later, Sienna had almost forgotten the friendship that ’almost’ came to be with the ’cutest’ boy of her class.

When their class put on a little fairy-tale play, Sienna was cast as the princess.

Callahan, naturally, was the prince.

She complained about it for three days. But he didn’t seem bothered at all.

On the afternoon of the performance, Sienna stood backstage in her ridiculous little crown while their teacher fussed over everyone’s costumes.