Chapter 157/No escape

Chapter 157: 157/No escape

Chapter 157

**Stephanie’s Point of View**

I extended my hand in a spontaneous, hysterical motion toward my leather bag tossed carelessly beside me. I zipped it open in a rush to quickly pull out my phone. I was in desperate, urgent need to call my friend Kira and complain to her about this sudden hell that had ambushed my life.

Destiny seemed to be cruelly amusing itself by granting me the most wretched and hideous luck a human being on the face of this earth could imagine or endure.

With trembling fingers, I searched through my belongings and personal cosmetics, but in the end, my palm touched nothing but suffocating emptiness. My chest contracted with violent turbulence, and I said in a bewilderment that made my breath catch and my pulse halt for a second: "My God... where did my phone go, for heaven’s sake?! There’s absolutely no trace of it inside!"

I emptied the entire contents of the bag in a temporary, raging madness onto the surface of the velvet couch, trying helplessly to wring my memory and recall where exactly I had placed it. Suddenly, the terrifying image flashed vividly in my mind.

I had pulled it out to check the time while we were sitting at the table in the restaurant, and I had placed it right next to my glass! Damn my stupidity... I had certainly forgotten it there on that ill-fated table!

I grabbed my bag with lightning speed, pulling on a light black coat that I threw carelessly over my dress to stifle the shivers of cold and fear caused by the heavy rain pouring outside. Then, I left the mansion corridors with fleeing strides, sneaking like a thief, and got into my car, speeding off at a frantic, insane pace back toward the restaurant.

All along the dark road, the thought of that wretched Vincente being there made me nauseous and caused my stomach to twist violently and harshly. Yet, there was no turning back or returning at all; all my secrets, my conversations, and my entire life were bound to that small phone. I stepped into the dining hall with ragged breath and pale cheeks, heading recklessly toward our table in a desperate, slim hope, only to find it completely devoid of sitters.

I exhaled sharply, casting away some of the terror in my chest, and thanked God in my heart that the wretched monster had already departed. There was no one around except the waiter quietly clearing the plates and napkins. I approached him, and in a panting voice, I said with suppressed eagerness: "Hello... excuse me, did you find a black phone on this specific table?"

The waiter stopped what he was doing and looked at me with regret and respect: "I’m sorry, miss, I didn’t find any phone here."

I felt a creeping fear tighten around my throat to choke me, and I said with a rigidity that spread to my limbs: "I definitely forgot it here, without a doubt! Where on earth could it have gone?! Search thoroughly!"

He replied with extreme politeness, trying to calm me: "I am truly sorry for this situation... but I can certainly alert the rest of the restaurant staff that there is a missing phone so they can look for it in the storage areas."

I nodded my head helplessly: "Thank you... I highly hope so."

He followed up with a professional inquiry: "If you have a second number or an address, we can contact you through it immediately if we come across it."

I said in a faint voice and a dry tone: "I am... the wife of Mr. Alexander Volkov."

In the blink of an eye, the waiter’s features shifted to terror and profound respect. He bowed quickly and said: "Ah, of course... forgive me, Mrs. Volkov, we know Mr. Volkov very well. If we find the phone, we will contact him immediately without any delay."

I turned around to leave the restaurant with a disappointment that weighed down my feet in a suffocating manner I could no longer bear. I pushed the massive outer glass door and stepped toward my car parked outside, only for the blood to completely freeze in my veins and my breath to halt in a shock that bound my tongue.

He was leaning his back with absolute ease and excessive arrogance right against my car door, with his dominant, harsh features, and a mocking, sinister, and dark smile etching onto his provocative face provocative to the absolute extreme.

I walked toward him with nerves as frayed as burning embers, and said in a sharp, stern voice: "What the hell are you doing here?!"

He pushed his massive, powerful body away from the metal of the car very slowly, enjoying my terror, and looked at me with a meticulous scrutiny that pierced through my dress and coat. He spoke in a masculine tone dripping with slimy manipulation: "Miss Miller... I am actually very surprised by your return alone at this late hour... Oh, my deepest apologies, I am not yet accustomed to calling you Mrs. Volkov."

I turned my face away in utter contempt and spat the words with disgust: "I have no time tonight to waste its precious seconds on this nonsense and absurdity you are speaking. Get out of my way immediately!"

He took a wide step forward, narrowing the tight distance between us, and said with artificial reproach and a sarcastic tone: "It is a very big flaw in the rules of etiquette to speak to your boss at work in this blunt manner."

I laughed with oppression and mockery, stepping forward boldly to confront him with glances ablaze with the anger lurking deep within me: "My boss?! Did you actually remember, and did your sick mind recall that you were my boss when you brutally ambushed me and kissed me in the restroom like the witless and deranged?!"

He tilted his head back slowly, his blue eyes gleaming with a freezing, suffocating coldness as he passed his thumb with a provocative defiance over his lower lip, which was injured by my doing: "That simple movement you call a kiss in your concepts? I truly did not know you were such a romantic and sensitive girl, Miss Miller."