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I’m left in silence, except for my own terrified breathing.
“Dad?” I call, hoping I’ll hear his hard, unfriendly voice replying. Please, God, let it be Dad who’s had me kidnapped. Dad might still have enough humanity left in his heart not to murder me and his unborn grandchild.
If it’s not Dad, if it’s the Geaks who have taken me, or if it’s the Black Orchid Killer…
Bile rises in my throat as I remember the imaginative ways the murderer tortured and killed the syndicate’s sisters. Horror-movie images of what a sadistic, psychopathic killer might do to me and the baby flicker through my mind.
“Let me go, whoever you are!”
I picture a man in the dark. Watching me. Laughing at me. The hood still covers my head and I can’t see a thing, but I know that I could scream louder than I’ve ever screamed before and no one would hear me. My kidnapper didn’t strip the tape from my mouth so that I could call for help. He took it away so he could hear me scream.
He loves it when they scream.
Purple spots dance before my eyes. I’m breathing too fast. I count slowly as I inhale and exhale, forcing myself not to lose control. It’s all I have as the minutes tick by, counting my breaths and trying not to think. Listening for anything that might tell me where I am and who has taken me.
Cold starts to seep into my hands and feet. My mouth is dry and my muscles ache. I’m wondering whether I’ve been down here for one hour or two when I hear a door clang and the sounds of a scuffle. Someone else is being forced downstairs.
The door into this room is flung open and the scuffling grows louder. Two people seem to be forcing another across the room toward me. A deep, male shout of rage and pain fills the air, followed by harsh breathing. Someone’s standing behind me and suddenly, the hood is ripped from my head. They’re gone before I can see who it is. The only person I can see is tied to a chair beside me.
Oh, shit.
I had three guesses about who’s taken me. I can rule one out. Shaking his dark hair out of his eyes and blinking in the dim overhead light, his suit rumpled and his wrists tied behind his back is—
“Dad?”
He stares back at me. “Chiara? I saw on the news that you were taken. I didn’t believe…” He trails off and closes his mouth. There’s blood dripping down the side of his face from a cut on his eyebrow.
The news. Cassius and the rest of my men must be panicking if they’ve reported my kidnapping. “What’s on the news about me? Who took us? What’s going on?”
But Dad’s too busy shouting and trying to wrestle his way out of his bonds. All he’s doing is exhausting himself, and he finally gives up with a growl of frustration. “Pieces of fucking shit! I’ll have you all arrested. I’ll kill you all with my bare fucking hands! Don’t you know who I am?”
“Dad, I’m pretty sure they know who we are,” I mutter.
He whips around and stares at me. His eyes flicker from side to side as he thinks, and a dreadful realization seems to crash over him.
I sit up. “Wait, do you know who’s taken us? Who is it?”
Dad turns away and stares straight ahead.
“Dad, who is it? It’s not…himis it? The Black Orchid Killer?”
Say no.
Oh, my God. Please say no.
Dad goes on staring straight ahead.
“Dad, what have you done? Why has he grabbed both of us? Did you do something to make him angry, or does he—”
“Shut up,” he says, quietly, his voice as hard as steel.
This murderer killed the syndicate’s sisters in order to punish them. If Dad threatened the killer and told him he wouldn’t keep his secret any longer, what if the killer is going to torture me and make Dad watch?
“He’ll kill you once he’s done with me. You’re not getting out of this alive, either,” I snarl at him. Dad doesn’t reply.
An hour goes by, maybe more. Time seems fluid in this windowless void. I can’t bear the silence and so I sing under my breath, the song Mom used to put on the old record player when we would dance on the carpet. The tune that I danced to with my men as I cried happy tears remembering her.
“Stop that,” Dad says.
