Chapter 64: Chapter 64

Isabella's pov;

We gathered in Sophia's place which is closer to Mr Martinez's house.

I dropped the bag on the floor while saying, "Why did you ask me to bring these things? Do we really need this?"

Nick said, "If we're going to rescue someone, we have to be equipped when the attackers come for us."

Sophia asked Noah, "Why do you sound like we're in some crime movie?"

I took six walkie talkies and handed over one to each one of us and took one for mine.

Evelyn took handcuffs and asked me, "What are you going to do with this? We're going to rescue Alexander and not fight those guys and hand them over to the police. They handle the bad guys. We take Alexander out. Okay?"

I gave a thumbs up to her.

Liam took the flashlight and said, "Good work bringing the flashlight, the place where Alexander was being held may be dark too."

I asked, "What are you saying? Will it be dark? Mr Martinez is afraid of the darkness. He couldn't be in the dark for more than five minutes. I'm afraid what he will be doing now?"

Carey patted me and said, "Don't worry, he'll be safe and I'm sure we'll get him out of this together."

Sophia said to Carey, "Stop giving her promises. What if we…"

Before she finishes, Carey closed her mouth and said, "Please be positive for her. Look at her, look how worried she is. Are you going to make her worry more with your negativity?"

Sophia said, "Okay. Okay." And turned to me and said, "We're going to bring him back."

I nodded with a smile.

Jenny took the taser and asked, "Who are you going to taser?"

I laughed and said, "I didn't see what I was picking, I just took everything which I could grab with my hand."

Liam said, "Good girl. You bought binoculars, pepper spray and rubber gloves. You're good at picking things. Have you done this before?"

"No, I saw the equipment and brought each one of them." After sometime I shouted, "Guys!"

Sophia, "What happened?"

Evelyn, "What are you shouting for?"

I said, "Since it's dark it couldn't see what I was picking up, so I accidentally picked this too."

Noah asked me, "What did you pick up?"

I said, "I didn't bring it intentionally. It was totally a mistake."

"Why are you stuttering? Show me what you picked up." And gave his hand.

I took it and placed it in his hand.

When Sophia tried to shout out loud, Carey and Noah closed her mouth from screaming.

Liam asked me, "Why did you bring a pistol?"

I said, "That was totally a mistake! It's a mistake. I didn't bring it. It was so dark in the room, I couldn't see anything properly."

Liam said, "It's fine. It's totally fine. Actually, when we're facing bad guys like them, we really need one."

Sophia whined, "Can you explain why everyone is talking like we're going to murder someone?"

Noah asked, "Okay. Guys, what are we going to do?"

Jenny asked me, "Let me ask something first, we have the equipment. Sounds good. But who are we going after?"

Sophia asked me, "Yeah, with all the equipment with us, what are we going to do with this? Does someone have a plan?"

Carey said, "Jenny has a point though. Who are we going after? Who's our bad guy?"

I started, "Guys! Guys! Listen here, I think you only understand when I tell the whole story."

I talked about Mr Martinez's mother's accident and Mr Martinez's father's death.

Noah said, "That makes sense. I'm sure it's all the same person."

I said, "But, Mr Martinez said that was a different person. That's the part I couldn't understand."

Liam said, "Believe me, It's the same person. And, you talk like you already have some doubt in someone. Who's that?"

I nodded and said, "Olivia Rodriguez. Mr Martinez's Stepmom."

Carey asked, "It doesn't mean if she's a stepmother, she has to be evil. Did you just guess it on your own just because she's a stepmother?"

I said, "Actually, there's something I didn't tell you guys."

Noah, "What is it?"

I started, "The reason I left two years ago wasn't because I was embarrassed about the affair between me and Mr Martinez. Olivia Rodriguez, she took my mother."

Sophia, "What!?"

"Yes, I got a call from someone saying that they have my mother so I rushed to the hospital but my mom wasn't there like they said. They asked me to come to a place. I went there. I saw Olivia for the first time. Her guys held my mother hostage and asked me to leave this state with the money she gave. When I refused, they threatened me using my mom. I didn't have any other choice but to leave this place. So I took the money and left with my mom." I let out a chuckle and said, "In the end, I still lost my mom."

Sophia hugged me and said, "I'm sorry, I couldn't be there for you, Bella."

"It's fine. It happened two years ago so I got used to living without my mom. But now, they took Mr Martinez too. There's no reason to lose another person I love. I'm not ready."

Noah said, "You're not going to lose anyone anymore. We're going to bring him back. Trust me." And gave a hug.

Carey said, "I can't believe there are still stepmothers like this. I thought we evolved."

Sophia said to Carey, "The only thing that is evolving is the method of killing."

Noah teased her, "Look who's talking like in a crime movie now."

Sophia said, "Okay. We now know it's Olivia. Then what is our next step?"

Liam said, "We have to know where she kept Alexander."

Carey said, "Since my brother's a cop, can I ask a little help from him?"

I asked her, "Your brother's a cop?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you say it before?"

"Um… why?"

"We would have sent him to work along with others to get information from them?"

"Um… he's on parking duty."

"That's still a cop! Wait, parking duty. Cool! Then we can know where Olivia is. We can follow her easily in this way and no one will know about this. That's great."

I hugged Carey and thanked her.

Sophia seperated us and said, "Enough. Enough, She's my girlfriend."

I laughed and said to Carey, "Can you ask your brother to come here?"

She nodded and left to call her brother.

After a while,

Carey introduced him, "He's Lance, my brother."

Lance took a look at us and looked at us in a weird way.

I shook his hand and said, "Hi Lance. I'm Bella. And this is Noah, Evelyn, Liam, Jenny, Sophia and Carey. Sorry, you already know her since she's your sister."

He turned to Carey and asked, "Carey, Why are we here?"

I asked her, "Didn't you tell him anything?"

She shook her head and said, "I just sent him this address and asked him to come."

While others started to mumble, I stopped and talked to Lance.

I showed Olivia's picture and said, "I'm sure you know this woman in the picture."

He said, "Olivia Rodriguez, president of Rodriguez corporation."

"Correct. Actually, we want her location. We want to know where she goes and how long she takes to be in that place."

"Why do you need that?"

Carey whispered something into his ears and said, "Okay, I'll do it."

After Lance left, Sophia asked Carey what she whispered into his ears to accept quickly.

Carey, "I said you wanted to know more about your mother-in-law to buy her a gift."

We all burst into laughter as soon as she said that.

"That's extreme!"

I said, "I will be listening to Lance so when I hear something strange, I'll give you a signal through the walkie talkie and gather up soon, guys!"

In the middle of the night,

I heard something in the walkie talkie. I woke up and turned it on.

I heard, "HJ building, Xander Avenue."

"Is she still there or left already?"

"She's still here. Can I go? My duty is over."

"Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that."

I turned off the walkie talkie. After hearing so many places through Lance, this place sounds strange and time looks strange too.

On the next day,

"Are you sure about this?" Noah asked me.

I nodded and said, "Yes, I looked about the place on the internet, it is one of the richest hotels in here run by Olivia. There's a chance Mr Martinez will be there."

Sophia said, "But we can't go there just because you think he might be there. What if he wasn't there? What if she went for just an inspection?"

Carey said, "Stop with your negativity." And turned to me and asked, "What do you think, Bella? Do you think Alexander will be there?"

I nodded at her.

Carey to others, "Guys! Let's go to that place tonight and bring him back."

Evelyn asked Carey, "What if he wasn't there like Sophia asked?"

Noah said, "It's not bad to give it a try. If he wasn't there, we could retreat as soon as we knew."

Noah said to me, "If he's there, We're going to bring back for sure." And gave trust to me.

In the HJ building, Xander Avenue.

"Did I make a mistake bringing you all here?"

Sophia asked, "If you asked this when we planned in the first place, I would have stepped down. I wonder why you are asking me now?"

Carey said, "Because you can't leave here alone if you decided to go now." And laughed at her.

Liam said, "No worries. We all came with our own interest even if you didn't ask us in the first place."

Jenny said, "Yeah, we're all in this together."

Evelyn said, "Do I have to say something too? Bella, we're going to rock today." Which made me laugh.

Noah shushed us and said, "Are you serious? We're inside the way to the basement tunnel. What if someone heard us? Be silent and follow one another."

In the basement tunnel, Noah was leading the way by crawling in the tunnel and we're following him behind.

Suddenly, Jenny stopped who was crawling in front of me. I asked her, "Why did you stop?"

While I was asking her, Evelyn, who's behind me, asked me why I stopped. I told her to wait and Jenny said that Noah stopped in front of her.

Suddenly, Noah opened a compartment and jumped outside the tunnel and we all followed him.

When i jumped, the room didn't have much light and was dark and old and had many boxes organised here and there.

Evelyn asked, "Where are we?"

Noah said, "We're in a basement."

Sophia asked, "Why are we in a basement?"

Noah said, "When I looked at the blueprint of the hotel, the basement had another tunnel but it wasn't clear. So look for a tunnel."

Everyone took the boxes and looked at the wall and searched for a way like a tunnel.

Liam, "I found it! It's here!"

Noah and Liam high fived and said, "It's always the boys who work."

Evelyn pinched Noah's ears while Jenny was pinching Liam's ears and asked them, "Can you repeat that again?"

They said together, "We came to say that we do these things for girls to keep them safe from these things."

Carey said, "Guys! Did you finish playing? Can we go now?" And she entered just like that.

Sophia went after her. I followed them behind whereas others followed behind me.

After some time of crawling, Carey said, "Shhhh. Can you hear that?"

Sophia, "What is that?"

I listened and said, "Sound of water dripping."

Carey swears after hearing that sound.

Evelyn asked, "What happened?"

I turned and said to her, "We're inside the water tunnel. If they turned on the water…"

Noah said, "Everyone move forward quickly. We should get out of here quickly. Move!"

We started crawling quickly in the tunnel.

Finally, we came to the end of the tunnel and jumped into the room.

I looked around and asked Noah, "Why does a tunnel end in a room?"

"Wait here, I'll go and have a look first."

Evelyn asked him, "Are you going alone?"

Liam said, "I'll come with you too."

"No, we don't know what's behind this door so let me go and check first."

Carey said, "It's not fair."

Noah said, "Okay. Let's do this. Let's play stone, paper and scissors. The one who wins will go out of this room. Who's coming?"

Evelyn and Noah played and Noah won. After he won the first match, everyone lined up and started playing with him. I thought I came with grown-ups.

I sneaked out while they were playing with each other.

When I came out of the room, I turned off the flashlight attached to my head and walked silently. It leads to another room, which is bigger than the previous one. As soon as I saw some guys, I hid behind the boxes and used the binoculars to see them from here. When I looked through the binoculars, I saw a group of guys being tall and muscular dressed in black outfits gathered in a place and talking to each other. What are they doing here? I looked at the time. This is the time that Lance said when Olivia was in here. I checked Olivia through the binoculars.

Suddenly, I felt someone's hand on my shoulder. Who's that? Did I get caught? My heart began to beat faster than normal. I slowly turned and looked at who it was.

Sophia, "When did you come out?"

And I saw the whole gang standing behind her. I let out a sigh of relief.

"You gave me a heart attack."

Sophia took the binoculars from me and looked through it and asked me, "Who are they?"

"Don't know."

Noah asked me, "Why did you sneak out? Are you trying to be a hero?"

I said, "I'm already feeling bad about bringing you all here, in that case how can I send you guys…"

While I was speaking with Noah, Sophia pulled my shirt and said, "She's here! She's here!"

I took her binoculars and looked through it.

Noah took the binoculars from me and looked through it and said, "It's her! Olivia Rodriguez."

Noah asked me, "She's here but I can't see anyone who's tied up. How are we going to find Alexander now?"

I took the binoculars back from him and looked through it. I saw Olivia talking with those guys. Where is Mr Martinez? Where did they keep him?

A guy dragged someone on the floor who's hands and legs were tied up and dropped him on the floor. The guy who was tied up was covered up with blood all over his body. It shouldn't be Mr Martinez. Please, it shouldn't be Mr Martinez. Suddenly, they shot him. I dropped on the floor and started sobbing.

My friends gathered around me to see when they heard a shot. They asked me, "Who did they shoot?"

"Who got shot?"

"Did you see the person's face?"

I shook my head and continued crying.

Carey said, "Save your tears. Your boyfriend is still alive."

"What?" I rushed to see where she pointed.

I saw Mr Martinez tied up to the chair. It felt like I was alive again. He's alive. He's still alive.

Sophia tapped my shoulder saying, "Are you going to show your crying face to him after we save him?"

I wiped my tears and asked, "What are we going to do now?"

Jenny asked, "Seriously, what is the plan?"

Liam said while looking at them, "Let's wait till Olivia leaves and take out everyone and save Alexander."

Sophia asked, "What do you mean takeout?"

We waited for her to leave but suddenly she pointed a gun at Mr Martinez's head. I squeezed Noah's hand and asked, "What is she doing? Is she going to kill him? Shall we go now?"

After Olivia took her gun away from Mr Martinez, I felt relieved.

Noah said, "My hand."

"Sorry. I couldn't sit here and watch what's going on. I'm worried."

He patted my head and said, "We're never leaving without him…"

We heard a police car's siren sound. I think they surrounded the hotel.

I asked them, "Did they finally find the place?"

Carey, "I think so."

When we looked at those bad guys, they tried to take Mr Martinez away while Olivia was leaving the room.

"They're taking him with them. What should we do now?"

Noah said, "There's no point of waiting here anymore. Guys! Let's go!" And stood from the place.

Suddenly, everyone started running towards Mr Martinez hiding here and there. After seeing us, they started to drag Mr Martinez faster than before. The lights went off, which made it easier for us. I grabbed night vision glasses so we slowly moved to Mr Martinez and dragged him away from those guys. When the lights came, those guys jumped on us and there were fights everywhere.

"Bella?" Mr Martinez called out for me.

I dragged Mr Martinez away while my friends were fighting with them. One of the guys jumped in front of us.

I shouted, "I'm sorry." And shooted the taser at him. He got electrocuted and fell down.

"Wow!" And laughed.

Mr Martinez said, "Where did you get that?"

"It's good, right?"

He moved the taser away from his face and said, "Yeah."

By that time, police came and arrested everyone.

The senior officer looked at me and said to Mr Martinez, "That girl is way too scarier than those guys. But she's good. She found you before me." And gave me a handshake saying, "Good Job. If you didn't inform me, we wouldn't have come at the right time." And left. The police left the place.

My friends saw me with a stunned look.

"I-I can explain. Before I came here, I made a call to the senior officer to inform them of the place. After informing him, I joined you guys."

Carey patted my shoulder and said, "That was a smart move."

Sophia took Carey from her saying, "Enough with complimenting."

I continued, "And, I brought this equipment after asking him."

Sophia screamed, "Finally! We didn't do anything illegal!"

Everyone burst out into laughter.

Jenny, "It's a great night. I feel like we should do this every night."

Liam said, "It's enough excitement for tonight. Let's go home."

Noah said, "Guys! Let's give space for some lovebirds. Let's leave."

Everyone left, leaving me and Mr Martinez in the room.

I walked to him and removed the ropes from his legs. I saw impressions of being tied up around his wrist.

"Did it hurt?"

"You came back."

"I have to because someone has to be saved here."

Before letting his hands go, I stopped and asked him, "If you want your hands to be free, there's a condition."

"Now?"

I gave a nod and said, "I won't give ten million dollars. How about that?"

"Fine. Now, remove it."

"You said it yourself." And made his hands free by cutting the rope.

He moved forward and hugged me which made us fall on the floor.

He whispered into my ears, "Don't run away from me again please."

"I won't." And hugged him back by wrapping my hands around him and holding him tightly.

After some months, one fine evening,

"How was your day today?" Mr Martinez asked me while he was working on his laptop.

I sat beside him and leaned on him saying, "It was great. We had a freshman ceremony today. Everyone showed their talent in front of everyone and danced funnily and we played many games."

"Are you tired?"

"No!"

"Then, why do you sound like you're tired?"

"I haven't seen you since last night so I missed you badly." And touched his hand which was typing something on the laptop.

He let out a chuckle and said, "Did you really miss me? I thought you'll be happy seeing people in the college."

I sat on the couch facing him and said, "Do I have to go to college everyday? Can I study by staying in the house?"

He flicked my forehead and said, "You have to go!"

He took the chain from my neck which had the lucky coin and was looking at it.

"What?"

He shook his head and said, "Nothing. Do you believe in destiny?"

I laughed and said, "I can't believe you're the one who asked it. But to answer, I do a little. Why?"

"Maybe we met because of that."

"Awwww." I softly pinched his cheeks and said, "You're becoming more and more cute everyday, Mr Martinez."

He pinched my ears and asked, "How many times have I told you to call me Alex? Why are you still addressing me like that?"

"I got used to calling you like that. How can I change it suddenly?"

"Fine."

When i tried to leave, he held my hand and said, "Sign this before you go."

I took the paper from him and looked at it.

"Contract? What is this contract for? And, Why are you giving me this? And, why do this contract has my name as Party B. What is this for?"

"It's a five years contract. If you didn't finish your college and open up a restaurant at that specified time. You have to marry me as compensation." And made a mischievous smile.

The end.