"SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT."
Erik immediately picked up his phone. He needed to tell the others to call their parents and check if they were ok, but he needed help, so he called Amber.
As the phone rang, Erik's hands shook with adrenaline. He couldn't afford to waste any time. He needed to warn the others and come up with a plan to save the hostages in case they got kidnapped.
"Answer! Amber, answer the phone!"
Finally, his girlfriend answered, and Erik wasted no time blurting out the urgent news.
"Amber!" he said, his voice urgent and filled with emotion. "The Mambas have kidnapped the families of our classmates from school, including our friend's parents. They're using them to lure us into a trap. We need to do something now!"
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line, mainly due to Erik's tone, and the young man could sense Amber's concern. He knew she might think he was overreacting or that it was some kind of prank, but he couldn't care less about that. He needed Amber to believe him.
"What?" Amber asked cautiously; her voice tinged with worry.
"I need you to tell the others; call Mikey and Anderson," Erik replied, his voice choked with emotion.
"Erik, you are scaring me; how do you know all of this?!" she asked.
"There is no time to explain! If you trust me, do as I say. Ask your father to prepare a team and to contact the Zamora and the Montgomery clans; they will surely confirm someone is missing!"
Amber remained silent for a moment, but Erik could imagine the look on her face as she processed the information. He knew he was sure she would believe him, just as she had before.
Finally, Amber spoke, her voice filled with determination. "Okay, Erik. I believe you. I will make a phone call and tell the others to spread the word."
Relief, even if momentary, flooded through Erik as he heard Amber's unwavering support. He knew he could count on her. "Thank you, Amber," Erik said. "I'll call Aaron now. Yours, Gwen's, and Floyd's parents should be at home. As much as I understood, they couldn't get to them, but the others weren't so lucky. "
"All right, come to my room once you are done…" Amber said.
"Yes."
With a renewed sense of purpose, Erik hung up the phone and immediately called Aaron. He knew he had to do something to solve this situation; it was clear he likely generated this situation, and the risks were high. His concern for his friends didn't allow him to stand by and let their parents suffer at the hands of the Mambas.
He didn't really care about the others, but by making a plan, maybe they would be able to save even them all.
"Erik?"
"Aaron, there is no time to explain, but the Mambas are probably trying to kidnap your mother. Call and tell her to get out of the house NOW!"
"What?!"
"NOW, AARON!"
Aaron's heart pounded in his chest as he listened to Erik's frantic words through the phone. The urgency in Erik's voice sent shivers down his spine, and the young man's mind raced with fear and apprehension. He clutched the phone tightly, his knuckles turning white, as Erik's warning sank in.
Aaron's mind immediately went to his mother, who currently lived alone in their small apartment in the eastern district since he was now attending the Red Palace. She was his rock, his pillar of strength, and the thought of her being in danger sent a wave of panic coursing through him.
Without wasting a second, Aaron closed the phone and dialed his mother's number, his fingers fumbling with the keypad. In the meantime, Erik went to Amber's room while Aaron made his phone call.
Aaron's heart pounded in his ears as the phone rang, each second feeling like an eternity. Finally, his mother picked up the phone.
"Hello?" Her voice was calm, unaware of the impending danger.
"M-Mom," Aaron stammered, his voice choked with emotion. "It's me, Aaron."
He could hear his mother's concern as she immediately sensed something was wrong. "Honey, what's the matter? Why do you sound so scared?"
Tears welled up in Aaron's eyes as he struggled to find the right words. "Mom, listen to me carefully. Something bad is going to happen. You need to run out of the house now! Please, Mom, you have to be safe!"
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, and Aaron's heart felt like it was about to burst with fear. Then, his mother spoke, her voice quivering with worry. She immediately understood that Aaron wasn't joking.
"Oh my god, Aaron, what's happening? What's going on?"
Her son's voice cracked as he tried to explain the situation to his mother, urging her to leave her home and go somewhere safe. He could hear the fear in his mother's voice, and it mirrored his own. It was at that moment that Aaron's mother saw some guys entering the building from the window.
They were masked and fully armed men, so it was clear that what Aaron had just said to the phone had to be true. She knew time was of the essence, and every passing moment increased the danger.
"I have to close the call, Aaron. Remember that I love you."
"What?! NO, MOM!"
His mother hung up. Aaron paced back and forth in his room, his mind racing with worst-case scenarios. He couldn't lose his mother; he couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to her, especially after what happened to his father. He clenched his fists, feeling powerless and overwhelmed with fear.
"I must go to Erik…" And with that, Aaron left the room.
As the awakener arrived at Amber's room, he saw his girlfriend waiting for him, her expression a mix of worry and determination. Without a word, they locked eyes, and Erik could see the anxiousness in her gaze.
"Anderson and Mikey called their parents. Anderson's mother and Mikey's father are ok, but the other two parents didn't reply. They tried to call on their home phone number, but even there, they didn't reply."
"Fuck… Did you call your father?" Erik asked his girlfriend.
"Yes, he said he would immediately contact the Zamora and the Montgomery clans and told his men to contact the other families. The problem is that assembling a team will take at least one hour."
"Fuck! This messes up everything!" Erik had two options here: one was to let Caiden, the Zamora, the Silverbend, and the Montgomery clan take care of the situation, and the other was for him to take matters into his own hands. The problem was that, depending on the situation, waiting for an hour for them to deploy some people may not be a great idea.
If he was lucky, they had enough time to wait for Caiden and the others to send the teams. Otherwise, he had to go. Moreover, he wondered why the hell a team would take as much as an hour to be deployed inside the city. Didn't Caiden have men to spare?
The truth was that most of the clans and many influential people's men were busy elsewhere. After all, the war against Hin wasn't done yet, and after learning about the recent attack on New Alexandria, the enemy forces were fighting back with great force.
Amber abruptly interrupted Erik's train of thought by asking, "But Erik, how did you know something like this was going to happen?"
The young man knew that by telling this to Amber, he would be forced to tell the others something too.
"After I learned that Natasha and Karl died, I had some suspicions; for this reason, I investigated a little bit and found out that this is all the work of Nathaniel's father…" Erik said.
"How?!" Why?!"
"I spied on him by paying someone with the spare money I saved in the past months."
"I get it…" Amber replied. She didn't ask further questions, as they weren't needed.
At that moment, Aaron, Mikey, Anderson, Floyd, Gwen, Martha, and Benedict arrived at Amber's room. They all got alerted to the situation and came here to find a way to rescue Mikey's, Anderson's, and the other's parents."
Aaron's mind instead was a whirlwind of worry and anxiety as he didn't know what happened to his mother. He tried to distract himself by pacing, taking deep breaths, and reminding himself to stay composed. But the fear was all-consuming, and he couldn't shake off the overwhelming sense of dread.
The air was thick with fear, and the others' faces were etched with worry and anxiety. They couldn't believe that someone kidnapped Anderson's, Mikey's, and probably Aaron's family, and the reality of the situation was sinking in, sending chills down their spines.
Anderson, usually the confident and calm one of the group, looked pale and shaken. His hands trembled as he clasped them tightly together, and his eyes darted around nervously as if expecting danger to burst through the door at any moment. He couldn't comprehend why his parents had been targeted, and the fear of the unknown gripped him tightly. Erik hadn't told him anything yet.
Mikey sat with a solemn expression, his usual smile nowhere to be found. His usually cheerful demeanor was replaced with a deep-seated anxiety that was palpable. He fidgeted nervously, unable to sit still, and kept wringing his hands as if trying to ward off the overwhelming sense of helplessness.
It was at that moment that Floyd spoke up. "I understand that all of this came by Erik. Can you tell me how you found out about this?" he asked.
"As I told Amber, I hired a hacker to connect me to Nathaniel's father's office after investigating a little bit of Natasha's and Karl's deaths. It didn't take much time for him to pierce their security and do his job," Erik replied. Floyd didn't question this either, as he really didn't care what Erik did with his money, and he wasn't so judgmental as to say that doing so was wrong.
"But why Nathaniel's father? What did you find out?"
"It was luck, to be honest. I thought about the rumors surrounding him, found too many coincidences in Natasha's and Karl's deaths, and decided to hire the guy on a whim. I was luckily right; he was really the one behind their deaths. I stumbled upon a conversation in which he got told by someone they were currently kidnapping our and the other top twenty students' parents."
The room seemed to close in on them as they sat in silence, the tension palpable. The fear of the unknown and the uncertainty of their parents' safety loomed over them like a dark cloud. "I called my father," Floyd said. His father was the minister, Luca Valdez, so he always had guards at all times.
"When I did, he told me someone tried to kidnap him. He is a damn minister, and they still had the gall to attempt this shit…"
It was at that moment that a phone call arrived on Anderson's and Mikey's phones but not on Aaron's.
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