I started trying to chart out my best course of action. Eventually, the car would pull to a stop. Whether it was this driver or someone else, at some point, someone would come to pull me out of the car. If I could just be prepared to strike when the time was right, then there would be a slim but real possibility I could escape. I ran track in high school after all. Once I was on my feet, I could move pretty fast. It was dark out and I was small. If it was for my life, I could stay in the shadows and hopefully get to the gate somehow.
What I’d do when I got there, I wasn’t sure, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
I decided to take a calculated risk that the car would pull into the cul-de-sac type driveway in a counter-clockwise direction, just based on how traffic typically flowed. Pressing my back against the left door, I pulled up my knees to my chest and prepared myself. One hard kick could get me out of this pinch.
Just one hard kick.
The blood in my veins started to pump faster and faster as the car pulled around to the right. I found myself thinking that my plan might just work until a loud clang split the silence of the night sky. I looked all around, wondering what it could be, but the driver didn’t seem worried. He slowed the speed of the car, though he remained driving forward and I watched in defeated shock as the very street in front of us lifted up from the ground like a giant drawbridge. The driver hit the gas and pressed on, driving towards this new opening and down a ramp. I watched in horror as the driveway lowered behind us, officially locking me in.
That was it. I was never getting out of that place.
The ramp brought us down into a parking garage-type place with a dozen or more really nice cars. It made sense that a place like that would have its own parking garage given that it seemed like its own city, but the fact that it was underground was problematic for me. Even if my one-kick planweresuccessful, where would I run? I had no idea how to get back up to the surface or out of this fortress.
We drove through the parking garage, past the really nice cars, and into another area where a collection of less luxurious cars that were still nice in their own right were parked. He pulled into a space and parked the car but didn’t make any attempt to move. He leaned back and took a deep breath as if his job was already done, despite the fact that I was still sitting in the back seat.
I opened my mouth to ask, but the words came out muffled and I was reminded that I was gagged. My hands, though bound, were taped together in front of me, and I started to lift them up to tap the driver on the shoulder, but when I lifted them up, I felt something under my arm that reminded me I needed to keep my arms in place for the time being. It was irritating knowing my movement was totally restricted.
I was stuck.
What felt like an hour was actually only five or ten minutes before someone approached the car. I twisted my head to see who was coming, and my jaw dropped. It was the same man who had approached Gio at the bar back at the party; the one that Gio called his assistant. He opened the back door, but rather than reaching in, he crouched in the frame and looked in at me.
“Hello Miss Narzand,” he greeted. He had a dignified air about him that wouldalmostbe calming if it weren’t for the circumstances. “My name is Zariq, but most people call me Milli.”
He was also incredibly gorgeous. He had a silky smooth, cocoa skin and long, black dreadlocks that were tied behind his head. His eyes were an intoxicating hazel that felt like if I were to look into them for too long, I’d find myself in a different dimension. On top of his good looks, he was giving me a warm smile that felt like it could coax me out of all my valuables. That said, he was looking at me as if I were a child or some other unimportant person.
In short, he wasn’t interested in the slightest.
“You have ended up in some unfortunate circumstances, I’m afraid, but as long as you behave, you won’t die. I don’t like roughing up women, so can I trust you to remain calm once I pull you out?” he asked. I swallowed hard, trying to fight back the tears that were pooling in my eyes due to pure fear. It wasn’t like I could talk, but if there was any truth to what he said, it made more sense to be compliant, so I nodded. His smile grew. “Perfect. Thank you.”
After that, he did reach into the car and grabbed my arm to start to pull me out of the car. In my defeat, I’d left my poised positioning to kick whoever opened the door, so he was able to drag me as I scooted sideways to the doorway and eventually up out of the car. As soon as I was out with my feet on the ground, Milli reached into his pocket and pulled out a box cutter. I yelped, but he held up a hand as if to soothe me and crouched down so he could cut off the binds on my ankles. They screamed with pain from all that time tied up, and I lifted my feet one by one and rotated my ankles to try and ease the soreness.
“Okay, let’s go,” Milli said. “Straight ahead. We’re going for that door.”
He pointed at a silver, metal door about fifty feet away from us and I started to walk towards it, hearing his steps against the concrete behind me. When we got to the door, Milli reached around me and opened it, holding it aside so that I could walk by him into a room that had another set of silvery, metallic doors that were pretty unmistakably an elevator.
Was that how large this place was that it needed an elevator?!
Milli pressed the button to call it, and it came almost immediately, only taking a few seconds to get down to us. It opened and the inside was opulent, with paneled walls and a plush velvet carpet. We stepped in and I looked at the buttons on the wall, my eyes bugging out of my skull when I saw that there were five floors, including the one we were on. I didn’t even know homes could have five floors. Didn’t that violate a code or something?
Milli pressed the button for the fourth floor and the elevator doors closed and the elevator started to lift. Though he wasn’t looking in my direction at all, I drew his attention and lifted my wrists, and gave him a pleading expression. I’d proved I wasn’t going to run. He told me if I behaved, I’d get to live. Did I really still have to be tied up?
But he frowned at me. “I’m sorry, I know you must be terribly uncomfortable, but you’ll be released soon. He’s going to want to see you tied up.”
I had little to no idea what that meant, but I didn’t like the sound of it. I dropped my head and rose the rest of the way up in silence. I looked at my reflection in the elevator doors and grumbled. I was still in my dress from the party, though I was barefoot and looked generally frazzled. No one had confirmed for me that I’d actually been snatched by Gio, but the fact that the man he called his assistant came to fetch me was a pretty good sign that I had. As stupid as it was, I found myself feeling a little discouraged with my appearance if I was going to be in front of him. I shouldn’t even be thinking about it, he was officially my kidnapper, not some charming, bar guy chatting me up, but regardless of the man he was on the inside, on the outside he was beautiful, and I wished I could just run a comb through my hair.
The elevator pinged as it reached the fourth floor and the doors pulled aside. Milli held out his arm, motioning me forward, but rather than giving me directions, he stepped in front of me and started to walk down the hallway. My eyes bugged out of my skull as we started down a confusing twist and turn of corridors that were difficult to track. I tried to memorize the path as we moved. Left, right, left again… no wait. We went right back there. How long had we been going straight?
Shit. I was already lost.
Who wanted to live in a place like that? It was like a maze. It was like it had been intentionally designed for people to get lost inside.
Who knew how long we had been walking when Milli finally brought me to a stop in front of a pair of polished, dark oak wooden doors with golden embossments and doorknobs. It looked like the portal to a different realm compared to the muted, taupe wallpaper in the hallways and plain sconces. Milli lifted his hand and knocked a couple of times but didn’t wait for a response. He opened one of the doors and led me into a huge opulent office. There were couches lining one wall and a bar lining the other, and a huge rug that looked like it cost ten grand and had been imported from some foreign country. In the middle of the room, there was a big desk, with a couple of chairs in front of it, and a throne-sized office chair behind it, and sat in the office chair was none other than Giovanni Raines. He had his fingers knitted together and was watching me with piqued interest as Milli led me in and over to one of the chairs.
There was no doubt that I was afraid. I’d been handled in such a way that everyone from the top dog down to the drivers were trained in acts like these and given that I’d already told my brothers that I’d gotten home safely, it’d be at least 24 hours before they would notice I’d been taken. But even with all that considered, I was looking at Gio and I was hit with a painful truth.
This man really was the most attractive man I’d ever seen in my life.
His hair, which had been slicked back at the party, now had a slightly messy look to it, and his tie was undone and hanging loosely around his neck. His suit jacket was gone and his button-up was slightly undone, giving me a little shot of his pecs. If possible, he looked even sexier than he did all done up. Did my kidnapper have to besorugged and good-looking? What sort of fate was that?
