More time passes, my stomach grumbles, I fall asleep and wake up a few times, try to talk to more guards and I am met with silence.
Then suddenly, the cell doors open and I hear a switch flip. The sudden rush of light is painful.
The man from the interview steps into another three-piece suit. He looks like he has come from a board meeting, or perhaps is on his way to one and has stopped here as a minor errand. Those green eyes move over me with an expression I remember from the suite.
I notice, despite everything, that he is extraordinarily good-looking in a dignified way and I hate that I notice it.
He crosses the cell in unhurried steps and lowers himself to my level.
His hand finds my face, fingers closing around my chin with a pressure that is not gentle and not quite painful either, and I make a sound despite myself.
"Who are you?" I gasp.
He releases me and straightens up.
"A businessman," he says. "An honest one. And your daddy dearest owes me, princess. I don't enjoy being owed."
"How much?" I ask immediately. "Whatever it is, I can get it for you. Just tell me the number and give me access to a phone and I'll have it moved within twenty-four hours and none of this needs to go any further."
I don't actually know the state of things at home. I don't know if Alana has said anything, if Gerald has noticed, or if my father is, at this moment, looking for me. I want him to be. I want him to be furious and frightened and tearing the city apart trying to find me, and I am ashamed of how much I want it.
But I know he isn't.
He is in a meeting or at a dinner or reviewing polling data and it has not occurred to him to check whether his daughter is alive because it rarely occurs to him to check whether his daughter exists. At least he won't be angry with me.
"Princess," he says, "I genuinely doubt you can give me what I want. You see, I didn't ask your father for money." A pause. "I asked him for a favor. A small, simple, reasonable favor. And your father," another pause, "ghosted. That's the word the kids use, isn't it?"
He says it without humor.
I stare at him.
Why does he feel familiar? It sits at the back of my mind like something I have misplaced, the specific texture of a memory I can't locate. His eyes, the particular stillness of him, the way he occupies space. I know this man from somewhere. I am almost certain of it. But from where, in what context, and when, I cannot reach.
And what favor does my father owe a man like this? What kind of arrangement does a mayoral candidate make with someone who keeps guards in corridors and locks women in cells without windows?
What exactly has my father been doing?
"How long?" I ask. "How long are you planning to keep me here?"
"Until your father comes to this meeting himself," he replies.
I close my eyes briefly. "He isn't coming. He doesn't know about it." I open them again and look at him directly because there is nothing left to lose by honesty. "The email, the interview, the Purple correspondence — he never saw any of it. It went to the secretary's queue and Gerald flagged it for deletion and it would have been deleted but I?—"
"Discarded." The word comes out so suddenly that I stop.
For the first time since I woke up in this cell, I understand clearly that I am not dealing with a fraudulent production company or a petty extortionist or anyone operating at any level I have previously had to think about. The fury behind that single word is enough for me to know that he is not a con man, he is something considerably worse.
I swallow.
My hand finds the hem of his trousers before I have decided to move. I look up at him from the floor.
"Sir." My voice is quiet and I do not attempt to dress it up. "Please. I don't know what's happening here or what my father has done and I understand you have no reason to believe that but I am telling you the truth. Please let me go. I promise you will hear nothing about this from me. Nothing. Not a word to anyone."
He looks down at me.
Those pale green eyes hold mine for a moment and something passes through them that I can't read.
"Oh," he says softly, "I'm quite sure I won't hear of this anywhere else."
