“Ew, no. I’m not a bar skank,” I say. “What’s all this about, anyways? I’m already going to have to do damage control at the office if anyone finds out about this, so if we could just keep it quiet, I’d appreciate that, Mikhail.” I give him a smile, my hand pushing out over top of the table, reaching out for his touch.
It’s been a long time since I’ve found myself curious about a guy I just met, but Mikhail… he’s definitely tall, dark, and handsome, and mysterious to boot. I wouldn’t mind getting to know him better, see what makes him tick…
He studies me a while with that penetrating gaze of his, the kind of look that makes me feel naked, and not just because I’m still wearing the slinky dress from last night. No, this is a powerful man who can see right through me, to the depths of my being. All the questions? It’s like he knows the answers to them all but is just confirming them. Sometimes because they’re too ludicrous for him to buy at face value, other times because he just wants to be absolutely certain.
“How many people at the office know you went out with your boss last night?” he asks me, his voice getting even grimmer, more serious.
“A few… We left right from the office, and then he took me to my place to get changed. I mean, it was just whoever was working late on a Friday night. Well, and his secretary, because I’m pretty sure she knows everything.”
The answer doesn’t surprise him, as I knew it wouldn’t, but it troubles him. That much is clear.
He lifts an arm, runs his hand back over his sleek, dark hair and casts his gaze down to my food, still not finished.
“Eat up. You will need all you can get. You were out for a very long time, thanks to what they slipped you. And if you don’t eat, the nausea you feel now will be nothing compared to what’s to come,” he explains casually, standing up from the table again, looming over me.
What have they slipped me?
“Mr. Gallego wouldn’t give me anything like that. He’s a congressman, for Pete’s sake. Could you imagine the scandal if I was drugged while on a business meeting? The press would never let him live that down.”
“Eat,” he orders me sternly. “You are going to need your strength, and there won’t be much else to do around here for the next few days at least,” he instructs as he glares down at me, those large, powerful hands upon his hips.
Next few days?!
Instead of eating, I stand up from my chair, thinking for a brief second that if I stand up I’ll feel more powerful. I apparently forgot that I barely come up to his pecs, am at most half his weight, and my glare is probably not going to cow him the way I hope it will. Not to mention the fact that I’m not too steady on my feet right now.
Still, a girl’s gotta try, right?
“A few days? Listen, I can’t stay here a few days. Firstly, I have a job to get to, and that… that… cot you gave me might work for a drunk tank, but I’m sober now and that’s not going to cut it. And lastly,” I say, having lost count of my points, “I’m supposed to be helping Mr. Gallego on his re-election campaign this weekend. That was why he invited me out, to give me more details on what he needed me to do.”
As expected, my resistance proves absolutely useless upon him. I might as well have just blown sparkles at him for all he seems swayed by my words.
“None of that matters anymore,” he states simply in that harsh accent of his. “You have no job to return to. Gallego will not be running for re-election. And you are going to sit down, eat your food, then get changed, curl up on the couch, and watch some TV,” he instructs me. And a quick glance shows me that the drab couch indeed sits before a rather unimpressive flat screen TV I hadn’t even noticed before now.
“I suggest you get used to your accommodations, Ms. Allie,” he says firmly. “For your own safety, you are staying here for the time being.”
This is when dread really starts creeping in.
“What… what happened last night?” I ask, my hands suddenly turned to ice and beginning to tremble.
“Nothing that should concern you any longer if you care for your life,” he says to me with stern seriousness. “Now eat. Get comfortable. You are here until it becomes safe for you to leave again. For your own benefit I suggest you get used to it,” he explains before strolling past the couch.
There, he leans down and lifts a pile of clothes from the sofa, resting it on the back of the couch and patting it. It’s a pink, girly color.
“Here is a change of clothes for you. There is food in the kitchen, the TV has cable, and the bathroom is right there,” he explains, pointing to a small door off to the side. “I will be back later,” he adds as he heads to the main door.
“Wait!” The fear of being alone and not knowing what happened is apparently way stronger than my fear of what actually happened last night. Who is he?
“Just tell me what happened at the party,” I plead, my head getting woozy and sending me off balance as I careen into the couch.
It’s all hazy, but I think he catches me, sweeping in faster than my eyes can see. But then it’s all darkness.
* * *
I have no idea how long I was out, but as I come to I see the light streaming in through the window, a mesh of protective bars filtering it only a little. I realize I’m on that plain, grey sofa in front of the TV and window, still locked in the drab room.
More urgently, however, I feel something else come over me: imminent nausea.
The dark stranger, Mikhail, had warned me, but when it hits… it hits like a ton of bricks. I’m already on my side, but I lunge for the edge of the sofa to hurl, and thankfully, find there’s already a bucket waiting for me in place.
This isn’t a hangover. This is something more vile and scary, and I’m starting to believe the man when he said I was drugged. It’s almost impossible for me to believe, though. I’m just some aide for the congressman, trying to get some experience and work my way through school. Being drugged is something I’d more easily have accepted if I was out with guys my own age.
A sense of betrayal comes over me, fear over what my employer was intending on doing to me. If Mikhail is to be trusted—and I don’t know if he can—then he saved me from something terrible. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to wonder what a group of men would have done to a drugged and helpless young woman.
The pain that shoots through my stomach sends tears to my eyes, and my entire body feels overheated with anxiety. When finally I’m emptied of every last bit of food, there’s still a lingering agony in my gut, but my nausea subsides.
I’m still in my crumpled dress from the night before… was it last night? I have no idea of the time, I realize, only that it’s sunny outside. The window faces a drab building across the street, completely unremarkable and unmarked, for that matter.
I grab some of the paper towel next to the sofa and wipe off my mouth before I stumble to the bathroom. Or try to, at least. My legs are weaker than I could’ve imagined, and I feel so dizzy. It takes me a while to make my way there. The washroom has the same kind of austere layout as the rest of the ‘safehouse.’ But it’s clean enough to eat off of, and that’s comforting enough.
I vomit again, but it’s really more of a dry heave, since I have no more food to leave me. I notice a toothbrush and paste there, so I clean my mouth out once I’m done, trying to get the sickening tang of my own vomit out of there.
One look in the mirror, and I’m instantly feeling awful again. I’m pale, my makeup is smudged, and I look like hell. No wonder Mikhail didn’t look the least bit interested in me. Well, that and the fact that I’m technically his captive, I suppose.
He said he wants to keep me safe, though. Safe from what?
I wash away the streaked eyeliner and smudged lipstick, and that gets rid of some of my disaster-case appearance.
My hair feels awful, but at least the hairspray kept in my curls. Still, I desperately need a shower.
I shut and lock the door, quickly stripping out of my dress and turning the shower on
hot. Steam fills the small room, and it would be soothing if I didn’t feel so troubled. My stomach churns, and not just because of whatever they slipped me last night.
It’s all just darkness, and when I step into the shower and the hot water hits me, so too does a sob. What happened last night? I want to scream at the fact that I can’t remember, that I don’t know what happened. How does someone just lose hours of their life? I’ve been drunk before, but never forgotten so much like this.
The cascade of water does little to soothe my troubled mind, and tears mingle with the shower. I feel like screaming, like crying, like giving up. I’m terrified, and don’t know what’s happening. It didn’t even occur to me to check my phone. Maybe someone’s messaged me, given me some words of helpful comfort.
I quickly finish the shower, feeling a little more like myself before wrapping myself in the towel and padding out towards the bedroom. I check my shoes and around the cot, but there’s nothing. No phone.
Fuck, that must be how he found out my name! I curse myself for not having figured it out sooner. Of course he stole my phone. Why wouldn’t he, if I was being held captive?
For my own good, he’d said. Well, I should be the one to decide that. He can’t just come into my life, kidnap me, then tell me it’s for my own good.
I grab the clothes he set out for me and quickly pull them on. Shocker, they fit. This guy is even more of a creep than I figured! Anger starts fueling me. I’m not going to sit here like some helpless damsel. I’m going to get out.
I go to the barred window, finding myself several stories up and without a fire escape. That’s gotta be against the law, but so is kidnapping, so whatever. I try to open it, but it seems like it’s sealed shut, and I let out a groan.
A wave of exhaustion hits me, and I have to lean against the wall for support.
What if he’s watching? What if there are cameras? I shake the thought away. It’s not going to do me any good to think like that. I just have to get out and find out what’s going on.
I try the front door, but it’s locked and made of metal. There’s no budging it. Then I go to the kitchen, where I find there are no knives and one locked cupboard, but I do get a thick spoon and take it to the window. I try to push it in, see if maybe I can’t pry the window from its setting, but I’m weak and having little success.
I must be at it for a while, because I eventually get so exhausted I slump to my knees in that pink set of around-the-house wear. What is it he’s gotten me, anyhow? Yoga pants, socks and a shirt. It’s deranged, I feel like a girl in my father’s home again, and the helplessness makes me want to sob.
“The window is sealed shut,” comes his dark voice, standing behind the sofa, and I cry out, startled. I didn’t hear him come in at all! And it’s not like my trying to pry open the window was a noisy affair!
I scramble backwards, away from his towering form. The daze must have parted, though, because earlier I thought he was cute, but now…
I’m being held captive by an Adonis. He’s all muscle and smoldering glare.
Just what I need.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on a girl! What if I’d been changing?”
“You would change in the living room when I gave you a bedroom all your own?” he asks in that thickly accented voice, which I’m starting to realize sounds vaguely eastern European. But he’s got his brow raised to me in challenge as he stands there, looming, larger than life, waiting for my response as he holds a small cloth bag.
“Well, maybe,” I say defiantly, though even I can tell I sound more like a petulant child than a grown woman. I glance down at the bag, my arms folded beneath my chest. “What’s that?”
He gives the bag a toss onto the sofa.
“It’s medicine for nausea. It will help you keep your food down,” he explains to me, the towering brute looking exactly as I’d seen him last, except he must have shaved away the stubble in the interim. But it’s quickly regrowing. “Plus some magazines for entertainment,” he adds, as if this is the 1990s and people still read magazines.
“And my cellphone?”
“I had to destroy it,” he says casually.
“What?” That was pretty much the last thing I expected him to say, and I take a step towards him angrily. “But it has all my contacts!”
“It could also be used to track you down. Is a phone worth your life?” he asks me pointedly, and I’m starting to hate his chiseled face and eerie calm. He radiates confidence and power, like some smug son of a bitch who’s never been knocked down a peg in his life.
I’m aghast. I can’t believe it. My phone. The newest model that I had to shell out a ridiculous sum for after waiting in line…destroyed. By this thug.
“How could you?!” I demand, rising up onto my knees and glaring at him. “Do you have any idea what that thing meant to me?”
He takes his time, undaunted, those dusky eyes looking me over as if I’m a strange, even repulsive creature. “More than your life, it seems,” he says simply before turning to leave.
But I can’t let him leave, and I lunge over the back of the sofa to grab his arm at the wrist.
“No, wait!” I insist, but even I realize that it’s only by choice that he stops. That thick arm beneath my hands is a thickly corded knot of muscle, and he could yank me over the back of that sofa with ease.
“What?” he asks dryly, looking back and down at me. And though he acts so calm, I get the impression I am pushing his patience to the limit.
Even though I’m pissed, I don’t want to be alone again. I’m terrified, and having him near me is safer, somehow, even if he is my captor. I hate the waiting, because when he’s gone, my head goes back to what might have happened last night.
What really happened.
And I know now that he’s definitely got me locked up in here good, and by the looks of things, he’s keeping me a while.
I let go of his thick wrist and take in a deep breath.
“How long are you going to keep me locked up?”
That question seems to take him by surprise, because he doesn’t answer me right away. He takes a moment. And that more than anything else about my capture worries me.
“I don’t know yet,” he says in that gruff voice of his. “I have to see how long the search for you persists. If I let you go too soon, then it’s just as well I didn’t haul you out at all. I should just as well have put a bullet in your head then and there that night.”
His ominous words make me tremble, all the more because I see the handle of his gun sticking out from behind his back as he faces me, side-on.
There’s some part of me, some part I’m not ready to reconcile with, that knows that what happened that night wasn’t just a nightmare. Waking up and wondering if I was dead was natural, because I remember a pistol pointed at my head.
I almost died.
This man almost killed me.
It makes me almost throw up, my stomach churning in disgust and terror, but I swallow it all down. I can’t blow this. I can’t give him a reason to kill me. I ignore the burning behind my eyeballs, the frightened tears that want to spill but I won’t allow.
Swallowing back the bile and the lump in my throat, I return my eyes to his.
“Mikhail,” I say, trying to build a bit of a repertoire with him. That’s what they always say on TV, right? Make your kidnapper get to know you. But he already knows me, at least in part… It’s still worth a shot. “I’m scared.”
His eyes narrow as he stares at me, into me. And he’s studying me. I worry that my attempt to sway him failed, but then it happens: he softens. Those broad shoulders lower a little, his sweater hugging those thick muscles showing the tension melt a little throughout him. He might be a scary boogeyman of death, but he’s still susceptible to a girl’s charms.
“You have no need to be scared while you are here, Allie. It is what’s on the other side of that window,” he says, jabbing a finger at it pointedly, “that you must fear. And if you keep tha
t in mind, you will be fine.”
He says it all so seriously I could almost be convinced, if it weren’t for the fact I am fairly certain this man is a murderer.
But I give him a small nod, like I’m on his side. As if we both want the same thing. And, if he does want me to be safe, then we definitely want the same thing.
“I get that, but Mikhail, people are going to be looking for me. And my mom, she’s… I mean, a few years ago, she had a fall, and it affected her mind. Dad passed years ago, and she really needs me to help take care of her.”
His brow furrows just a bit, and he’s silent again. I know I have him considering my words. He takes his time and wets his lips, and I feel like I have him.
“If you die, your mother would be very put out then, nyet?” he says, that strange words on the end completely foreign to my ears.
“She needs me, so I can’t die,” I say, trying to choose my words carefully, even though I’m panicking that he’s going to leave and I’m going to be stuck. He can’t leave! “But she has pills. Medication she has to take, and I have to make sure she takes it and gets to all of her appointments. I don’t even know what day it is…”
He pauses a moment, but then reaches into his back pocket, pulling out a small pad of paper and a pencil the length of my thumb. He puts it down right in front of me.
“Write out the details of your mother’s care,” he instructs me very pointedly, his gaze narrowing. I feel like I’m under a heat lamp as a detective scrutinizes me.
My shoulders slump, and I sit down on the couch, pencil in hand as I try to remember everything that was in my phone. It’s pretty sad that I can barely remember, considering how routine it is.
I scribble down as I remember.
Every third Tuesday, appointment with Dr. Nevaro.
Twice daily reminders to take her pills. Blue in the morning, yellow and white at night before bed.
Once a month, hospital for treatment for osteoporosis.
I hand it back to him.
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