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Ben arranged his face so that it approximated sympathy. “Broke up with him already? I had heard you go through them fast. That actually works even better for me, though.”
She gritted her teeth, forcing herself not to take the bait. “This plan of yours is ridiculous.”
“But it’s really not. An FBI agent was in an inappropriate relationship with you, and he’s obviously investigating your friends to get back at you for breaking up with him. If your brothers and your uncle make a formal complaint to people high up enough, which they have the power to do, Copeland’s investigation goes away. It was tainted as soon as he fucked you, anyway.”
She pushed down the angry, frustrated tears she could feel building up in the back of her throat. “That’s not what happened.”
“But that’s how it will look as soon as your brothers make a few phone calls,” he said.
She gestured to the library around them, stuffed with books no one read and with a couch in it that was impossible to sit on. “And that’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? How do things look?” she asked bitterly.
“That’s all that matters to anyone,” he replied, and for the first time, Bianca got the sense that she was talking to the real him, and not some part that he was playing. “Most of the rich assholes who buy Hennessy Venoms or Lykan Hyper Sports aren’t actually going to drive them at 200 miles per hour. They don’t really care what’s under the hood, just what’s on it. Cars, sunglasses, handbags, FBI investigations—the only thing that matters to anyone is how it looks to everyone else.”
He went to the large double doorway and motioned for the two men who had driven her there to come in. He said something to them in Mandarin and then turned back to Bianca.
“These two are going to show you to where you’ll be staying with me for however long this takes, while I call your brothers. Smile!” He took a picture of her on his phone and started tapping the face of it. “You can go now,” he said, not looking up at her.
“You never went to school with my brother Cassiel, did you?” she asked.
Ben continued typing, not looking up from his phone. “Isn’t he, like, seven years older than us?”
“If you did, you’d know how truly screwed you are if you send that message,” she said, breezing past him and walking straight toward the two thugs who were going to lock her in some room somewhere.
“Hey Bianca,” Ben said. She turned around and looked at him and he tapped the screen, sending the message with a whooshing sound.
She smiled at him. “Truly screwed.”
She saw a hint of doubt creep into his eyes before she turned and walked out.
Twelve
Bianca went to her room and waited for night to fall.
They’d brought her dinner, which she forced herself to eat. She knew she was going to need energy for what she had planned for later. Then they’d taken her coat and shoes.
One of them had pushed her down into a chair and sat on her lap. She couldn’t kick, which would have been her first instinct, and by the time she’d figured out what she should have done to counteract the guy sitting on her, the other one had already pulled her shoes off. They grabbed her coat on their way out and locked her bedroom door behind them.
It galled Bianca to realize how easily she’d been subdued. And if on the off chance, the police were involved, which no one—not her family or Elias—would want, it’s not like she could say they’d held her at gunpoint. She hadn’t seen even one weapon. Nor could she say that they’d abused her or threatened her in any demonstrable way. The most physical thing anyone had done to her was sit on her lap for about five seconds.
Ben could make the argument that she’d simply gotten in the car he’d sent her, and that she’d come out to the Berkshires to hang out with him, accidentally dropping her phone out the window on the way. Bianca would have no proof she’d been held against her will, and the only thing that bringing this to the police would do would be to drag the Loring family into the papers.
Bianca could already see the lurid headlines:Heiress kidnapped, orWASshe? Is this a cry for help from the troubled beauty? Or is she just desperate for attention?The press always found a way to make it the woman’s fault.
The only way to get out of this was to get herself out of this. She knew Ben thought so little of her that he believed she’d passively sit there and wait for her brothers to strike a deal. He didn’t think she’d make herself uncomfortable in any way. That alone was all the motivation she needed to climb out the window.
There were other houses nearby. True, the estates out here were very spread out, but it’s not like she’d have to go twenty miles to make it back to civilization. All she needed was to get to the next house, say she had gotten lost, and ask to borrow someone’s phone. If she got really lucky, it might even be someone she knew. The area was heavily wooded, and the hills were steep, but she wasn’t in the middle of the Amazon jungle or anything. She could accomplish this little jailbreak before her brothers did anything that Ben Goh asked them to do.
There were no handy trees that stretched into a Juliet balcony outside her room, facilitating her descent, but she found enough of a handhold on the eaves above her to plot a way across the rooftop and down to the ground.
Her heart in her throat, she swung herself out of the window, hung onto the gutters, and inched her hands over until she was dangling above a steeply sloped first-story roof. She let herself drop onto it, making the roof shake, and nearly went plummeting off.
She managed to put her butt down on the rough-textured shingles before she went over, and skidded the rest of the way in a controlled fall. Swinging herself over the edge, she hung precariously from the gutter, her fingers going numb in the freezing cold leaves and icy water that had collected there. She dangled about five feet above the ground, wondering if she could drop down without twisting an ankle. The gutter was not secure enough to hold her weight and as she deliberated it started to break away from the roof.
She hit the ground with a thump, but the slow bending of the gutter had halted her descent enough that she made it to the ground uninjured, though she’d made a lot of noise in the process. Already hearing shouts inside the house, she ran into the woods as fast as she could.
She was not prepared for how dark it was under the trees, even though they had already shed their leaves. There was no moonlight, no stars, and she had to stumble forward with her arms held out in front of her or she could smack into something. Her socks were no match for the twigs and rocks in the woods, and her feet were already going numb in the cold. She jammed her toes painfully into things she couldn’t see, and the bottoms of her feet were getting jabbed. The cold seemed to heighten her fear. Suddenly, half a mile to another house was seeming like twenty.
She heard voices shouting in another language, and saw the jiggling, zig-zigging beams from flashlights that were held by running figures piercing the darkness. She slowed down, attempting to be quiet. She couldn’t outrun them if she couldn’t see where she was going, and moving around was making too much noise. She decided to hide until they went past.
