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LORENZO
Iswirl my scotch in my glass, listening to the ice clink. My eyes are on the rug in front of my fireplace, but I’m not really seeing it. I’m seeingher, Amelia Norwood, or at least the picture of her I was given yesterday. It’s a still image of surveillance footage of her leading the protests outside my hotel. It’s ingrained into my mind at this point.
The elevator door dings as it opens, and I take a drink of my scotch before standing and setting the glass on the coffee table in front of me. Contempt battles with excitement as I walk to meet Victor and Joe, who are supposed to have brought me the girl.
Sure enough, she’s here, slung over Victor’s shoulder with a bag over her head. Her tense muscles give away that she’s not asleep, but her stillness pulls my lips into a frown. She should be fighting.
“You drugged her?” I ask, my disappointment evident in my tone.
“We didn’t have much of a choice,” Joe says apologetically.
Victor lifts her off his shoulder and stands her up, bracing her so she doesn’t fall. “I didn’t give her much. It should be wearing off soon.” There’s a singsong to his voice that tells me he’s enjoying this. It’s not surprising coming from him. He’s a bit of a sick fuck.
He steadies her, then slowly pulls his hands away. She wobbles but doesn’t fall. He drags the bag off her face next and reveals a pretty girl in her mid-twenties with mascara running down her cheeks and pieces of chestnut hair in her face. She hardly looks like the girl in the image I was shown with all her bravado missing. She’s much more beautiful afraid.
I look her up and down, noticing the way her knees shake, and I decide to test how much the drugs are still affecting her. I take a step toward her and shove a finger into her shoulder. She crumples to the floor in a heap.
I scoff and shake my head before turning my attention to my men. “You both can go now.”
Amelia
I listento the two savages who brought me here leave in the elevator, and then I watch the man’s shoes until he leaves my line of sight. My brain tells me to start taking in my surroundings, but I’m in too much of a panic to think straight.
Whatever they injected me with didn’t put me to sleep. Not my mind at least, only my body. I kept waiting to slip out of consciousness the more I lost control of my movements, but it never happened, and it’s been the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.
I could feel my muscles waking up when they picked me up out of the car and started carrying me here. It was just pin pricks here and there, but now I can move, maybe even speak if I tried.
I drag my arm over the hardwood of the—I sweep my eyes over the room and gauge what I’m looking at—penthouse.
The man’s footsteps sound in the other room, and then he approaches me. I instinctively close my eyes and turn my head to the floorboard. I’m like a small child playing hide and seek. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.
“What are you doing?”
I recoil at the sound of his voice. It’s hard but it doesn’t sound angry. It doesn’t sound like someone about to kick.
“I didn’t—” I clear my throat and test my vocal cords. “I didn’t look at you when they took the bag off. I haven’t seen your face. You can let me go.” My words come out strangled, but they’re much stronger than I could’ve hoped for.
He chuckles, the sound drawing near when he crouches beside me. “Why on earth would I have you brought here just to let you go?”
Breathing into the wood, I ask, “What do you want?”
He pauses for a moment. Silence descends on us. It’s like he has to think through that answer. “I want you to sit up.”
My instincts tell me it’s a horrible idea to look at him. That as soon as I do it’ll be over for me. I won’t be going home.
What if I don’t go home?
A shudder runs through me at that thought and tears leak from my closed eyes.
The man sighs and something thumps on the floor. He shifts and it sounds like he’s sitting down beside me.
“They made it seem like you were some fierce tigress, but that isn’t true, is it? You’re just a scared little kitty cat.”
He says it like he’s mocking me, and the comparison flicks on a lightbulb in my head. I know who this is. Or, I don’t actually, but I know what this is about.
I lift my head and look at the man, my fear no longer crippling me. If this is about the animal shows, maybe I can fix it. Maybe they want to be reimbursed or something. My dad will pay them whatever they demand.
Hope sparks, but it’s replaced with curiosity and terror when my eyes find his face and are drawn by the scar that runs over his left eye. The eye itself isn’t cloudy, so I assume he can still see out of it, but there’s a white strip of old scar tissue that runs from the tip of his brow down to his cheek bone.
