CH 62
Calvin
He sat in his home office staring at an email from one of his tech guys, Andrew Who he’d had dig up everything he could on one Marilyn Riddley from the state of Virginia. He’d given Andrew everything that he knew about her to make it easier for the man to hunt her down and track her information.
He’d done this because, after his conversation with Wil in the bar, he’d realised Wil was out there moving around him, where Marilyn Riddley was concerned without telling him, and he’d come to the decision, he didn’t like it. That Wil knew something that he didn’t and wasn’t willing to part with it, and Calvin wanted to know what it was for himself.
The information he’d just received from Andrew showed him that everything about Marilyn Riddley also aligned with her being Marrin, just like he’d suspected. This woman just appeared out of nowhere eight years ago. She’d been an author before that, but Marilyn, In the flesh and blood, just didn’t exist until eight years
ago.
She’d never had a driver’s license until the day after Marrin got on that plane. Never owned anything at all until just a week prior to their divorce being finalised. The first time she’d bought a phone in her name was the day after Marrin was supposed to get on that flight. After everything in Marrin’s world had been shut down that very day as well. Then Marilyn Riddley had just appeared out of thin air.
Andrew was good, and he was glad that he worked for him. Andrew had hacked everything on the woman in the past two days and found out many things about her, including that she lived in a town called Bedford, Virginia. That her two sons. They were twins who were seven years old. He knew what kind of car she drove, or would be once she got the all–clear. A Toyota Rav4 Hybrid 2024 model.
What he was sitting here just staring at now was her twin sons‘ names, Callum and Vincent Riddley, and although there were no pictures of them. Because Marilyn had no social media that wasn’t related to her writing career, and his guy had dug into that and had underlined for Calvin, that even that account wasn’t managed by Marilyn, but by her agent, Lisa Stevens.
Calvin had been on that site many times himself. He recalled that there were no pictures of Marilyn or her children on there, just book covers, blurbs, and release dates, all career–related things, Bar the incident between him and her. Although, as he checked it now, there was a picture of Marilyn up on that sight, one of her which showed her sitting in what was stated to be her writing studio; she was sitting at her writing desk.
It looked neat and tidy, and she had framed prints of her book covers on the wall behind her. Calvin sighed softly to himself. She looked so much like Marrin as she smiled up at the camera, and he was trying to let it
all go, but as his eyes moved from his phone, back to the email and to the children’s names and their age. Callum, Vincent and they were seven. He couldn’t un–see it, Calvin in the first three letters of their names. when they joined together. Was that why she’d never allowed her lawyer to bring them up? Specifically withheld that information, he could recall seeing them in the ICU ward pressed up against the glass door watching their mother, waiting to be allowed in, to see her.
Those two boys both had black hair. He now realised, what if she really was Marrin? And those boys were his and hers? They’d had s*x just once when she was not on birth control, so it was entirely possible she could have gotten pregnant that one time. If Marilyn was Marrin and those boys were their children, then he and
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Marrin had a family. Something he knew she wanted.
Something that he himself had wanted, and he’d ruined everything. If she was Marrin, she’d raised them.
without him, on her own and he’d missed everything. He had to know now, and as much as he’d told Wil he was going to leave it alone, and he had tried to do just that, it had been over a month, and he’d stayed away.
Stayed away and left it alone until Wil himself had pricked his curiosity and now Calvin couldn’t ignore what was before him. A woman who looked exactly like Marrin, not just in appearance, but in her mannerisms and handwriting, the age of the twin sons, and their names as well.
There was one thing that was still bothering him as he sat there thinking about what he was going to do, and It was that Marilyn had been diagnosed years ago with amnesia. Wil had told him that himself. He’d gotten angry at hearing the words and ended the call to him over it. Hadn’t wanted to hear those words at all. Hated
that excuse.
He was sitting tapping his fingers on his desk, and he knew deep down he wasn’t wrong, Marilyn was going to in fact be his Marrin. He chewed on his lower lip as he sat and thought about that very thing. That he’d not been wrong about it at all. He could feel it, the tightening of his chest as he actually came to the realisation of everything he’d done to Marilyn, who was in fact Marrin.
He’d hurt her, stalked her, assaulted her and forcibly made her expose herself to him, and then she’d fallen down those stairs and gotten a head injury as well as broken bones. He’d done all of that to her. He’d harmed her, and not just physically, but he’d scared her that first time they’d been face to face, been menacing towards her on purpose. He had intended to scare her to get her to out herself, thinking she was playing some selfishly cruel game with him. Only she couldn’t give him what he wanted, because she didn’t recall him
at all.
He closed his eyes as he realised just how badly he’d screwed things up. He had no one to blame but himself. Wil had tried to contain him, pulling him into line, but Calvin couldn’t be contained. He’d been in the throes of his obsession and now that was all Marilyn could see where he was concerned. That he was a monster and not the man she’d once loved. He scrubbed a hand over his face and pushed it up through his hair, he didn’t know what to do about that knowledge right his, minute.
But already he could feel the guilt of it all. How was he going to get her to come to him, to even explain his own actions when he couldn’t even understand them himself? There was no way right this very minute that he saw Marilyn even considering wanting to speak with him, let alone allow him to be near her, or their
children.
Everything he’d ever wanted was right there in Bedford, Virginia and he couldn’t even do anything about it, without being arrested. He didn’t even know how he could convince her that she was Marrin after all of this. She was never going to believe him, not after all he’d done, and she certainly wasn’t going to smile at him the way she used to. Or let him be a part of her life. His own actions towards her only brought about fear from
her.
The w
woman he loved was afraid of him, and he’d done that all on his own. That first encounter he’d aimed to put fear into her, and he’d more than succeeded. The question now was how did he go about fixing it? To right the wrongs he’d done to her, and have her see him in a different light.
Calvin sat there and thought about that, how to go about getting what he wanted, and realised that first and foremost he needed to get solid proof that she was Marrin, that the twins were his. Something that he could put in front of Wil to shut him up when he realised Calvin was still stalking the woman from a distance.
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CH 62
He knew Wil was going to be pissed off about it, but solld proof, if he could get that, he could make Wil help him where Marilyn was concerned. He picked up his phone and called his guy, Phillipe. He was a private Investigator that he sometimes used to help him out, when he couldn’t find something suspicious with a company or someone he was dealing with.
He would get him to go and take photos of the twin boys to see just what they actually looked like. He needed to get confirmation of what he now suspected; that they were his and Marrin’s or Marilyn’s. But seeing as he wasn’t allowed anywhere near her, and he didn’t want to upset her or scare her, by just turning up at her door and claiming her or the boys as his, something she was not likely to appreciate at all, he had to use someone else. Someone he could trust to do the job as asked,
He was now fighting a part of his brain that was screaming at him to go to her home in Bedford and not only confront her, but tell her she was Marrin and bring her and the boys here to Cliffside Manor, so they could all be under the one roof. That obsessive side of him was still there, he could feel it, and he was going to have to
fight it off, because he couldn’t do it.
Not only would it just put more fear into her where he was concerned, it would likely see the twins be scared of him as well. Calvin also knew he would be arrested for the k********g of not just her but the twins, and there would be charges laid against him once more, ones that would likely see him go right to jail, regardless
of who he was.
And all because Marilyn had no idea who she actually was; that being Marrin. All Marilyn would see, know and feel was the terror of her stalker having found her and come for her once more. The twins would also only see that as well. If he just went and took them and there was no proof of who he was to them, Marilyn and the boys would likely never understand him, and always hate him, he couldn’t have that, didn’t want that.
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