List of Darkness

By Kelly Mathewson

"Get ready to dive into the shadowy world of Amuen Baumstark, a man who will stop at nothing to seek revenge for the loss of the only light in his life. With five empty spots on a mysterious list and one name that holds the key to everything, Macht must navigate the dangerous underworld and outsmart those who stand in his way. But as he delves deeper into the darkness, he may find that the cost of revenge is higher than he ever could have imagined. Follow Macht on his thrilling journey of mystery, intrigue, and betrayal in this page-turning novel."

• Language: English
• Publisher: CDH Publishing House
• Release date: Jan 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215772539

Kelly Mathewson

A hard-nosed Sagittarius, Kelly Mathewson experiences our vast universe as a being with many lives. A successful Attorney, Mediator, and Podcast producer, she writes books, novels and short stories based somewhat on her many experiences. Jack of all Trades… Master of Nothing Deal Maker, Deal Breaker, Negotiator and always a citizen of the Imagination.

Book preview

Chapter 1

He glanced around his office calmly. To most people, it would look like he was disinterested in his surroundings, but those that knew him would know that every bit of his calculating mind was on the person in front of him. He wasn't trying to charm the woman who sat nervously in front of him. He was a professional after all. Just because he could charm the woman into forgetting about her husband, didn't mean that he wanted to.

Speaking of her husband, he wondered where to start. Thirty- three year old Matthew Phelps was a bad, bad husband. He worked for a small insurance company and left most weeks for a few days to work. Or, at least, that was what he had told his wife. A month or so ago, Phelps wife of five years, Fay, had stumbled into Macht's office, looking like Macht was going to eat her. While, at first, it had been amusing, it had gotten annoying within minutes.

Honestly, he wasn't even sure why Mrs. Phelps had bothered coming to his office in the first place. She clearly knew about her husband's double life. Or, well, triple life, as the case may be. After a bit of digging, he had found out that Matthew Phelps, also known as Eric Phelps, and Philip Matthews in a fit of stupidity he was sure, was not only married as one of his aliases, but two of them, and engaged in the third. The idiot was, apparently the father of not only Mrs. Phelps unfortunate four children, but two more by his second wife, while his fWaltercé was pregnant with his 'first' child.

How the fool had managed to get away with this for so long, he had no idea. It wasn't even that the man was particularly smart either. Two of the three women lived within five miles of each other, while his second wife lived about fifteen miles away from the first one.

What really annoyed him was that wife two, Rhonda Phelps, said that her husband was not only an excellent father, but a great man and provider, before asking him if his wife was stupid enough to support him. Clearly, she didn't notice the fact that he, the sex god, Amuen Baumstark, was a bachelor for life. He didn't wear a ring, nor did he have that stupid tan line like most men who tried to pretend that they were single.

He understood how the man had pulled one over on wife two, but his fWaltercé, Terry Grey, was working for a lawyer's office and seemed like a smart girl. She, out of all three, was probably the most intelligent and calculating twenty- six year old that he had met.

She was only two years older than him, but it seemed like that stupid saying was true. Love was blind, or just stupid. Macht wasn't sure which.

Nevertheless, she fell for the same trap as the other two, which made her an idiot in his book, no matter how attractive he thought she was. It just went to show that not all attractive people were as intelligent as he was. Narcissistic or not, he had gotten lucky enough to have both brains and beauty. Terry Grey clearly didn't.

Macht mentally shook off the thought and made sure his posture was both straight and self assured. Mrs. Phelps was someone that he needed to handle carefully unless he wanted her crying all over him. He really, really didn't want to have to deal with that, so he made himself slightly more unapproachable as he went through his findings. He presented wife one with not only pictures of her husband with the other two women, but a slew of strippers that the man seemed to have a thing for.

Finally, his hour was up, and he calmly thanked her for coming, and received the final payment for the case. What happened from now on wasn't his business. If she divorced her husband, confronted the other women, or shot the man, he didn't care. If she took his findings to the police, as long as they left him alone, he didn't care. As soon as she walked out his door, she was no longer his problem.

He could say one thing though, he was glad as hell that this case was over. All four of the adults involved, if anyone could actually call them that, had acted ridiculously. He felt a brief pang in thought of the children that would have to deal with the fallout, but easily reminded himself that it wasn't his business.

Glancing around the room again, Macht felt a small amount of satisfaction. He was only twenty- four, and he had graduated from a respectable college where he had majored in criminal justice, started up his own little private investigative service, and had actually started living a life that was his.

A few years ago, he had been nothing more than the orphan no one wanted, but he had managed to graduate early from high school, unlike what most people thought he could do, and now, he was, well, maybe not a reputable private investigator, but a damn good one.

He didn't run from his past, he acknowledged it, and used it to become better at what he had chosen. Sure, he would never be a cop. He was too twisted to be an honest cop, but he had delved into the world's grey side. Macht loved what he did, even if most of what he got paid for were stupid cases. He had mastered being where and what no one had expected. He had pride in not only his appearance, but his skills.

Standing calmly, Macht walked over to his coat rack, grabbing his black jacket, and buttoned it. His dark green button up shirt peeked through at the top as he fixed his collar, and unbuttoned the first one button that felt suffocating. His black slacks were carefully pressed and as perfect as he could make them. He grabbed a black cane with a fox on the top in his thin, almost feminine hand.

He wasn't what most people would call traditionally masculine, but he was attractive in an androgynous kind of way. He had dark brown hair that just passed his shoulders in a slightly curly mess that he usually tied back with a black ribbon. His eyes were slightly wider than normal, and dark blue with a hazel ring around his pupils. His nose was perfectly straight, but not big, accenting his high cheek bones.

Yes, he wasn't masculine, but he had learned how to use his looks to manipulate his chosen victims into doing whatever he wanted, or telling him whatever he needed to hear. He had just as easy of a time manipulating men as women, but that was probably due to his slightly taller than average frame with thin, but powerful muscles covering every inch of his body.

He mentally snorted, never allowing himself to make such a noise out loud. He wasn't narcissistic, despite popular opinion. He knew who he was, and easy acknowledged his flaws as easily as his strengths. He was careful not to get too full of himself, as that would only become another flaw that he didn't want to deal with. He had enough of those, and he knew how to hide them behind his carefully crafted façade. He wasn't sure how he would be able to hide his narcissism if that ever became a problem.

Then again, he had no problem going from his usual respectable persona to whatever the situation called for. He had lived on the streets, after all. No matter how he dressed or acted, he was still the orphan who was never adopted and kicked out on his eighteenth birthday. He was still the kid who did whatever he needed to do in order to go to, pay for, and graduate from college. He knew who he was, and unlike a lot of people, he actually liked himself. He was self assured, calculating, and charming to those that he needed to be.

His fingers tightened around his cane, the only sign of discomfort he allowed himself to show, and locked up his office. He forced himself to smirk in the mirror that rested in the hallway. He needed to find another job soon if he wanted to be able to pay rent for the next month. He had only worked three cases this month, and the most difficult of them had been Mrs. Phelps, which was just sad. He hadn't even been shot at this month!

To most people, that would be a good thing, but to him, it meant that he was bored. Bored beyond belief. He had been aware when he had started his little business that most cases would be easy, and there was very little danger involved in the typical type of cases that he took.

In all fairness, he usually only took cases of cheating husbands who seemed to believe that marriage was simply a new word for creating one's own harem. Illegal? Yes. Challenging? No.

One day, he was going to be the one to confront those idiots and ask, finally, if they knew it was illegal, or if they simply thought that they were the exception to the rules. Until then, he would just be mentally smacking himself over the head at the idiotic nature of some people.

He hid a chuckle behind his hand, and made sure that everything was where it was supposed to be, before leaving his little office. As of right now, he didn't have a car, and thus, made use of all things either walking or public transportation. He enjoyed the looks he got whenever he got on the bus looking like this. It made people both curious, and wanting to back away as far as they could.

After all, there had to be a reason that he was so confident that he would go onto a bus dressed this way. Well, dressed nice casual in his mind, but he supposed that it didn't matter much. To be fair, he did actually have a very good reason that he was comfortable walking around like this. He knew that most people wouldn't dare try to rob him. He could spot pick-pocketers faster than most people, and simply stared down those who tried to rob him until they backed away.

It was one of his few pleasures watching them get intimidated without actually having to do much. He supposed his casual approach had something to do with the fact that a few years ago, it had been him on the streets having to steal to survive. He understood the mental strain that they were under, and thus, used intimidation rather than actually having to hurt anyone.

As it was, he preferred to walk. It may not have been faster, but it kept him in shape. He needed to run a lot more than most people did, and the day he was slower than his prey was the day he could wind up dead. Well, that, and as long as the weather was nice, it was relaxing to walk instead of being in a stuffy bus with a bunch of screaming children, drunkards, and abusers. Not to mention, the smells lingering in the air of the buses and subway cars are just as unpleasant as the people that frequent them.

It was a lovely spring day. The weather was nice for this time of year, in the high fifties if he wasn't mistaken. It was chilly, but not freezing thanks to the warm sun. The cars rushing past him were loud enough to block out all of the nature sounds, and the traffic around him made the air slightly smoggy, but he didn't mind. He loved it here. No one here knew who he had been.

No, that wasn't right. No one here knew what he had been. He wasn't ashamed, per say, of what he had to do in order to survive, but it wasn't something that he enjoyed a lot of people knowing either. Those who did would usually sneer should he be around. Here though, he was simply a no one. He could do whatever he wanted and would be nothing more than a statistic rather than having a reputation for certain things that most people would have considered shady.

He had only been here for three months, and had spent years trying to decide where he would move to one he was done with school. He couldn't afford to go far, but he had managed to get away.

Unlike most of the others, he was one of the lucky ones. No, he hadn't been adopted, had been orphaned early, and wasn't really social unless he was trying to get something, but he had been able to escape the town that he had been born in.

He couldn't ever forget where he came from, or what he had done, but that didn't mean he was going to tell anyone about it. No, he was more content here, only speaking to his clients or on cases, than he had ever been in the orphanage or in college.

Of course, at the end of the day, being content meant nothing as long as one had nothing, he couldn't help but think.

For most of his life, he had exactly that: nothing. Every single thing he had in his life, from his shoes to his office, he had fought for.

To most people, it would look like he was a bit prissy about what he wore and things like that. But, he knew that until a person had not owned anything for their entire life, they wouldn't understand his obsession with keeping everything as perfect as the day he bought it.

Speaking of perfect, he fought back rage that welled up inside of him. His apartment was the only place that he could be any or none of his outside personas. Because of that, he was very picky with how it looked. He dusted his home biweekly, swept daily, and generally had an obsession with making it look as perfect as he felt it should be.

That said, he knew that he would never break down the door to his own apartment. So, the question became: who did?

He glanced around, careful not to step past his door, and heard himself sigh. He mentally went through the typical list of people that would want to harm him.

Ex? No, he didn't really date. Which ruled out sibling of an ex as well as jealous current boyfriends of an ex. He only had one friend, and even if they were fighting, which they weren't, the worst she would do is drug him and paint his nails a crazy color. He didn't know how many times she had done that to him, he stopped counting after twenty, but she wouldn't do this.

Clients were similarly ruled out, as were the people he spied on for them. No one from work knew where he lived, for his own safety of course.

He also didn't have any parents, cousins, or siblings that he might have upset, seeing as they didn't exist in the first place, so that was out too. Too much was gone for it to be a simple warning, though. His home phone, his television, his kitchen table, and his couch were gone, though how they got the couch out, or why they left him the chairs that matched his table, he had no idea. On the other hand, they didn't take enough for it to be a robbery.

Information gathering then? He stroked his fingers over the cool metal fox head on his cane and mentally shrugged. It was the most probable cause for someone to take his stuff. He knew that a lot of people kept things hidden in plain sight, and he was guilty of doing the same, except he was a bit smarter, it seemed.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, and dialed 911, before pausing. Something wasn't right. His sharp blue - hazel eyes scanned the room in the same way that he had been taught to by his instructors back in college. On the first glance, he didn't see anything that would have made him react in the way he had.

The second look, though, he understood that it wasn't one thing, or else he might have dismissed it, but several things. From here, he could make out the well worn spine of his favorite book, not on the second of three rows towards the middle of the case, but on the bottom shelf on the right. His coffee table had been left in the room, but it had been moved, probably only a foot or so in order to move the couch, but it had been moved. His slippers were also not on his shoe rack, but gone all together. Considering that he never wore anything except for the slippers inside of his apartment, he knew that he wouldn't have left them somewhere else. A newspaper was neatly folded up on one of his kitchen chairs, the one he usually sat on, while a thin manila folder rested calmly on the mantle where his television had once been.

While these things may have been small, to him, they added up to only one thing.

A taunt.

His fingers tightened around his cane, and he forced himself to take a deep breath. Whoever had done this was not only leaving a message, I know you, and asking a favor, Come on, look at the folder, but taunting him. I see you, the person's actions taunted, I know what makes you tick.

That, if nothing else, pissed him off. The newspaper in the chair would not only tell him when the crime had occurred, but it also was placed in his chair, the one he used. That meant the person knew not only where he sat, but didn't mind showing off his or her so called knowledge.

The missing couch said that the person knew where he worked at home, while the missing table told him that they knew about his love of cooking. The file resting where his television had been told him that not only did they know what he watched most often, crime and mystery shows, but that he would find the file so much more interesting.

His home phone and slippers being gone, on the other hand, were simply mocking. That told Macht that not only did they seem to know so much about his work life, they also knew about the small comforts he indulged in. His slippers, while old, were both expensive as well as the most comfortable things he owned. His phone spoke of the fact that somehow, some way, they knew he preferred speaking on his home phone versus his cell.

Somehow, knowing about his slippers and his phone were more annoying to him than anything else. They weren't just missing to prove that the person knew him. Oh no, they were gone to make him unsettled. Because Macht knew that if someone knew him well enough to know about his slippers, then that only meant one thing.

A shudder of revulsion ran through him. It meant that, whoever they were, they were watching him.

After growing up the way he did, rather you wanted to call it a children's home, or an orphanage, and finally leaving the hell hole, he had been very strange about his privacy. No one, not even the one person he called a friend, was allowed to come over without first calling, or scheduling a meeting with him.

The fact that someone would invade his privacy like that was enough to make the bile rise in his throat. He swallowed hard, trying to shove down the feeling of violation, but it didn't work.

His first steps in his apartment were taken at a run, straight to his bathroom where he fell to his knees and felt both his eyes and throat burning.

He threw up once, twice, a third time before he managed to get a grip on himself. He was shaking more than a bit, and his face burned with both embarrassment as well as rage. This was one of the few times he was able to admit that no one made it out of the orphanage without being scarred. Most of the kids he had grown up with had a hatred for authority figures, trust issues the size of Jupiter, and an obsession with their property.

He mentally snorted when he remembered that it wasn't called an orphanage anymore, but a children's home. As if anyone could ever think of that place as a home.

He, as well as a few others that he had once known had refused to call them group homes, or children's homes, because they weren't. Just because society thought that the term should change didn't mean that he agreed.

A rose by any other name, and all of that, he thought with a silent sigh as he forced himself up off the floor and staggered over to the sink.

He had survived, though, he reminded himself as he rinsed his mouth. He had not only survived, but he had gotten away. Which was more than most of those he had known could say.

He was a respected private investor, even if he wasn't well