The Billionaire and His PA novel Chapter 103

In the week that Cassie had been gone, Felix had felt as if his heart had been violently ripped out from his chest, severely stomped on and then set aflame. When he had gotten home that dark and gloomy Saturday night, he had called Amanda and Isabel to inform them of what had happened. They had both in their own way panicked, but had still managed to assure him that Cassie was fine and would turn up before the next morning. Amanda had volunteered to keep the twins until the next morning so that they wouldn’t bombard him with questions about the whereabouts of their sister. In the end, Felix had had to find a way to break it to them as Cassie had still been missing by the next morning. There had been a lot of tears and visible confusion and it had taken him ages but he had finally managed to calm them down.

When he had met with police officers later that week to try to figure out what had happened that night, he found that although they managed to garner some information, it was mostly useless. The supermarket, Happy Mart, only had one set of security cameras and they were pointed at the cashiers to ensure that none of them would steal money from the store. Even at that, the video that the police had been able to retrieve from the security cameras had a fuzzy black and white image, no audio, and had only managed to capture Cassie’s arm when Felix had been holding onto her on the line in the footage. As too much time had elapsed between the time that Cassie was thought to have been taken from the store and the time that the police had arrived on the scene, a lot of the shoppers that had been there when she and Felix walked in together were already done with their shopping and had gone home by the time the two police officers had begun interviewing witnesses.

That Saturday night, they had interviewed mostly staff members and then throughout the week, they had started reaching out to the other shoppers that had been there around the time that Cassie was. Most of the people that the police talked to reported seeing Cassie at various stages in the supermarket but none of them had actually seen her leave. They pointed out the fact that most people had been on the line that night or close to the entrance of the supermarket, trying to wait out the rain and that there had been a time in the night where a caution sign for wet floors had come up close to the section of the milk aisle so none of them would have been close to the area by the time Cassie was taken. The police had taken that as a sign that Cassie’s kidnap hadn’t been random but premeditated. The caution sign had been used to ward off any potential witnesses to the kidnap.

Before the end of Sunday, the news outlets had already gotten the news of Cassie’s kidnap. They aired the news on their various crime segments, each of them coming up with various assumptions on what might have happened to Cassie that night. As a result, all of the televisions in Felix’s home and office only went back and forth between the discovery channel and the kids’ channel. He hated seeing

Cassie’s face on the news that way. He wanted to think of her as Cassie, his brilliant girlfriend whom he was completely in love with and not Cassie, his girlfriend who had been kidnapped from right under his nose and whom he might never see again seeing as no one had called him for a ransom yet. Authorities had instructed him not to pay anyone that contacted him claiming to be Cassie’s kidnapper any amount of money, but he had made up his mind to ignore their instructions. He was ready to pay any sum of money that anyone would ask for. No price was too high to pay to ensure Cassie’s safety.

The police had already identified Big Daddy as Cassie’s kidnapper, owing to his previous bad blood with Isabel and Cassie. They provided the news outlets with pictures of both him and Cassie so that anyone that had any news about their whereabouts would contact authorities. It was a good plan but the problem with it was that people started to call the police station with ridiculous claims of spotting Cassie and Big Daddy in improbable places. There were claims of finding them at janitor’s closets of high schools, on the roof of houses and even crossing the border to Canada on horseback.

Ever since Aaron and Lily had gotten back from Amanda’s on the Sunday morning following the kidnap, they had been sleeping in Felix and Cassie’s room, too scared to be left alone by themselves believing that they too, would soon be kidnapped. Felix did his best to comfort them during the nights when their nightmares started, thankful for their company even though they would wake him up in the middle of the night with their screams of terror. At school, their teachers reported that they had started to have problems concentrating and were mostly withdrawn, talking amongst themselves in hushed tones. The teachers were understanding of their situation and did their best to comfort the twins, also encouraging the other kids to be extra nice to them. Felix had already started looking into therapists for them as he knew that even after Cassie was found, they would still need professional help to assist them in working through what it was like to have their sister kidnapped. He had also started to consider therapists for Cassie too as getting kidnapped couldn’t have any form of positive effects on a person’s mental health.

All things being considered, everyone had been quite surprised when Felix decided to go through with his plan to participate in the bake sale at the twins’ new school. In the beginning, they had even been surprised when he had volunteered to be a part of it. The bake sale committee was made up of mostly women. The men who were a part of it were either single dads who were there because there was no other parent to volunteer on behalf of their child or dads who had joined the bake sale after being cajoled, coaxed or blackmailed into it by their spouses, children or teachers. So when Felix had found out about the bake sale and had volunteered to be a part of it, people had been surprised. At the beginning of the month, they had been skeptical about whether Felix would participate in the planning of the event, owing to his busy schedule but even though Felix hadn’t been able to make most of the meetings physically, he had had Annalisa set up virtual meetings with the other members of the bake sale committee, a feature everyone else had come to love seeing as they could continue with their daily lives while still being a part of the planning process.

“Mr. Callahan, we are so glad that you were able to make it.” Gwendolyn Holland, the president of the PTA chirped. She was a petite woman with a daughter who was about to graduate from the school so she was trying to make her last year at the school count. “And I am very sorry about Cassie. What happened was just terrible. I know how you must feel.”

Felix nodded but said nothing. She didn’t know how he felt. Most of the people that claimed to know how he felt actually didn’t as none of them had had their girlfriends kidnapped before. But he didn’t blame them. None of them were entirely sure about how they were supposed to react around him. The same thing had happened when he had lost his dad and Hazel.

“I mean, I feel so sorry for all of you. Cassie didn’t deserve any of this. She was such a sweet person.”

Felix glared down at her. “Is. Cassie is a sweet person. Do not speak about her in the past tense.” He ordered. Then before Gwendolyn could say anything, he turned to the twins who had been talking to their friends. “Let’s go guys. We need to get these things to the sales stand.”

Somewhere at the back of his mind, there had always been this nagging feeling that Cassie was already dead. He always tried not to think about her that way but it was inevitable. To hear it from the mouth of someone else made the situation feel a lot more real and depressing. He always tried not to think of what Cassie could be going through in Big Daddy’s hands, instead focusing on the positives of life, like how much fun he had the twins had had when they had been baking the previous night. They had actually laughed. It was nothing compared to how it would have been had Cassie never gotten kidnapped but still, it was an improvement. Together, the three of them had baked so many things, from cupcakes to cookies that he had bought two red wagons for Aaron and Lily so that they would be able to comfortably move the items to the school.

He helped the other parents set up the for the bake sale, accepting words of condolences from well-wishers. Trying to ignore the pity faces, he decided he was going to focus on the bake sales. He was still worried and heavily alert as he waited for a call from the kidnapper or the police. The reason he was here was mainly because of Aaron and Lily and he wanted them to enjoy it and not worry too much about what they could not exactly change.

The bake sale went on for a long while with a large number of students, staff and parents partaking in both buying and selling. The twins and Felix’s stand was out of goods in no time mainly out of pity than appreciation for the taste. It was almost getting dark when the sales ended . It was generally good as most of the food was sold with whatever was left being distributed amongst the children.

Aaron and Lily helped to pack the now empty containers they brought from home. The activities had made them tired and hyper as they participated as much as they could and ate a lot of the sugary baked goods. They still ate as they entered the car and headed home.

They had a lot to say during the drive back home which helped Felix to not return to his depressing thoughts after the event.

Felix knew the children were going to crash hard when they finally laid down for the night so he let them play a little and get settled for the night. While they were still chatting to themselves and playing with Snowflake, he headed to the study to see if he could get some work done. It was a busy week at the office but he could not get himself to cover much of the work that had been piling up. He had just booted up his laptop when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket.

He fished it out to find that Cassie was the one calling.