“Go fuck yourself, fuck-face.” Yep. I’m very mature right now.
He seems to take the fact that I haven’t screamed again as evidence of my cooperation because he goes into the kitchen. I watch as he scrambles four eggs and makes four slices of buttered toast.
“I have a history test today,” I remember. I also had studio time booked to work on my pottery.
“You’re going to miss it.” He piles them all on a plate and returns to the bed, standing over me.
“I will be missed,” I say, even though I’m not positive it’s true. I don’t have any good friends. The ones I had in prep school were circumstantial. They’ve gone off to uni now. No one stayed in Liverpool. There’s no one in my classes who would miss me.
The art teacher won’t think anything of me missing my timeslot on the wheel. I can be flaky.
The food smells good, despite the fact that my stomach is upset.
“I’ll cut your ankles free if you promise to be good.”
“I’ll be good,” I lie.
I probably should’ve tried to scream for help again while he was in the kitchen. I’m not sure what stopped me–whether it was his threat to choke me, or the fact that I don’t quite believe his threat. I mean, I do. He did stop my breath in the bathroom for a few terrifying seconds. My neck still hurts from where he held me. He’s definitely capable of murder.
But his violence seems measured. He didn’t hit me back when I headbutted him. Nor did he retaliate much in the bathroom.
He sets the plate of eggs and toast on the bedside table and cuts one of the zip ties with a pocket knife then picks up my panties. “Kick me, and I’ll take a belt to your ass,” he warns.
It makes me want to kick him. So hard. Especially because it makes me feel squirmy inside. Like, under different circumstances, I might want him to carry through on a threat like that. If it was my choice. Not when I’m tied up against my will.
But the food smells good, and I don’t want him to hurt me, so I lie still and watch as he slips my free foot through the hole of my panties before he cuts the other ankle free and feeds it through.
It’s not sexy. I mean, it shouldn’t be. But I get all fluttery and weird as he drags the panties up my thighs. I want him to be the guy I thought he was last night.
Was I just completely out of my mind on ecstasy? Or was he really amazing? I know at the time I felt like I’d hit the jackpot.
Needing to somehow recapture that dynamic, needing to push this out of the terror realm and into something else, I push through my feet to lift my hips for him to pull my panties over my ass, and when he’s over me, I roll my hips.
It works. He stalls for a brief second, and his brows dip as he yanks my panties the rest of the way up. He pushes my hips down. “You are crazy girl.” His accent is thick this morning.
“That’s funny. I was thinking you were the psychopath here.”
“No. Not psychopath.” He sits beside me on the bed and picks up the plate. He scoops a forkful of eggs, and I open my mouth. “You are not what I expected.”
I close my mouth and turn my head to the side to refuse the food. “Wait…what?”
He eats the bite of eggs himself. “It’s not poisoned. I won’t hurt you if you cooperate.” He catches my eye and holds my gaze like he really wants me to believe him.
“Is this…personal?” I ask, my voice quavering. “Do you know me?”
“I know your father.” He holds another bite out of me. I want the food, but the information is more important. Again, I turn away.
“Hang on. Do you work for my father?”
Now it’s his turn to be flabbergasted. He stares at me with his mouth open. “Work for him? You think one of your father’s men would do this to the boss's daughter–” he breaks off and shakes his head. “Yes, they probably would. They are the worst scum on the Earth.”
My heart pounds with this new knowledge.
“You’re holding me hostage.” I’m catching up.
“Da.”
“He will kill you.” I say it not as a threat but with total sincerity. My father is a ruthless businessman. He thinks I don’t know he’s a crime lord, but I’m not stupid. I know everyone around him lives in fear. I have long believed my mother abandoned me to save her own life. Or maybe that’s just what a girl of six tells herself when her mother disappears one day.
A story that ends in a happy ending at a later date. My mother returning to me when she can. Reclaiming her beloved daughter.