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Really fucking hot.
Stockholm Syndrome strikes again.
He opened the door for us and smirked as we walked into the building. He closed it behind himself as we all walked down a long hallway. I vaguely remembered being escorted here by Victor the night before, but it was all a blur.
Teo walked in front of me, Victor behind me, my bag in his hands, and while they gave me space, it was clear that I was trapped. We walked down a long, dark hallway, the sound of our footsteps echoing off the walls. I could hear faint music playing in the distance, the bass thumping against my chest. As we neared the end of the hallway, Teo stopped at a metal door and turned to me.
”This is it,” Teo said. ”Welcome to our headquarters.”
”I’ve been here before.”
”Yeah, but I didn’t give you a tour,” Teo said, turning to me and winking. He was horribly charming, which made this much worse. ”It was rude. I’m not rude.”
”I didn’t understand there were rules of etiquette surrounding kidnappings.”
He shook his head. ”Still,” he said. ”Let me show you around.”
There wasn’t much to show me, though the apartment was surprisingly large. He said I could have full range downstairs for whatever I wanted, where my room and my bathroom were. There was a balcony there and I wondered, for a brief second, if I could jump off it.
When he saw me looking longingly at it, he reached out and tucked a strand of hair softly behind my ear. The touch might have been gentle, but it was too intimate, too weird for someone I’d just met, and it made me snap my head toward him so I could give him my full attention.
”Sofia,” he said, my name sounding like brown sugar on his full lips, his canines showing through. ”If you try to jump, you’ll get hurt. You could die. I won’t help you. No one will help you. If one of my men wants to, they might finish the job. Maybe we’ll make it easier on you, but probably not.”
I swallowed. I could tell he meant every word that he said and it sent a shiver down my spine.
”Do you understand?” he said, his hand cupping my face. His fingers smelled like leather and silver.
”Yes,” I said, frozen in place as I fought the urge to lean into his touch.
”Good,” he said, immediately removing his hand from my face. ”Now you can go upstairs whenever you like for any reason, but there’s nothing for you to see there. We come and go as we see fit. There are two bedrooms there, and we use them as needed. One more thing…”
I waited for him.
”If we’ve brought another person back to HQ, do not go up there. You won’t like what you see. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
”Tell me you understand,” he said, taking a step toward me. He was so close I could see the way his dark eyelashes curled toward his arched brows, the ridges of his full lips, the way his nostrils flared slightly as he looked into my eyes. ”Use your words.”
”I understand,” I said.
”Good,” he said. He looked me up and down, opened his mouth as if he was going to say something else, then dropped his arm by his side.
”Now what?” I asked before he turned away.
”I have to get to work,” he said, then flashed me a cool smile. ”I assume you do too.”
***
I could’ve made myself scarce and stayed in my room, but Teo was right. I wanted to get the work done and he’d given me access to where they worked, though at first glance, I could tell they were an incredibly organized group.
That would make finding crumbs of evidence or anything that might point me to a certain direction difficult. After speaking briefly to Victor, Teo had left, and I was alone with him.
I washed my face, put concealer on the dark bruise that was spreading across my face, and tried to fix my untamable hair. I put on some jeans and a black halter top that showed off my collarbone, which made me feel a bit more human.
When I walked out of my bedroom, Victor was sitting on the sofa, drinking a steaming cup of coffee and looking at something on his tablet. His legs were crossed, his left foot over his right thigh, and he looked incredibly relaxed. He picked his head up to look at me when I approached him, then motioned toward another mug on the circular glass coffee table in front of him.
”What is it?” I asked.
