Power: Power Series #1

by Victoria Woods

  I dropped my phone into my clutch and hurried to the elevators.

  “Hey.” It was Blake. “Leaving so soon?” I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him after my birthday party, so things had been left unresolved.

  “Hey,” I said. “How have you been?” I was nervous to speak to him.

  “Good.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. He seemed just as nervous as I was. “Busy with the holidays. I’m going back home this weekend for three weeks.”

  “Oh…nice.” We stood in silence for some time, unsure of what to say to each other next.

  God, this is so awkward. “Blake,” I said, having decided to address the tension first. “I’m really sorry about the other night.”

  His shoulders relaxed with relief that I had addressed the awkwardness. “Don’t apologize. I just didn’t know you were seeing Mr. Sethi.”

  I didn’t reply. What could I say? Yes, I’m fucking your boss. Sorry to keep it from you.

  “You seem really into each other,” he continued. “I wouldn’t have come on so strong if I knew.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, but to be honest, I didn’t know what to say since it’s such a recent thing.”

  “Well, whatever it is seems serious, judging from the way he looks at you. If you’re happy, then I’m happy for you. No hard feelings.” The softness in his eyes and smile on his lips let me know his feelings were genuine.

  I returned the smile. I was glad we had cleared the air to maintain a friendship. He was a sweet person and would no doubt find a great girl one day.

  “Were you going somewhere just now?” he asked.

  Our conversation had distracted me from my mission. “Oh, yeah, I just wanted to check on something in my office.”

  “Forever the hardest worker at the company. They should pay you overtime.”

  “If only!” I laughed. “Hey, let’s get together after you come back from California?”

  “That sounds great. Happy holidays, Amelia.”

  “Happy holidays!” I said, before rushing off to the elevators.

  I rode the elevator alone. No one at the party cared about work tonight. They were all too many glasses of champagne in to care about anything work related, so there was no one on the higher floors.

  I ran into my office, keeping the door open and the lights off since it would only take me a couple of minutes to check the report and the light from the hallway was enough for me to see. I logged into my computer and loaded the software.

  “Come on,” I whispered impatiently as the results loaded.

  When they finally appeared on the monitor, they showed coordinates of 26.9124° N, 75.7873° E. I entered them into Google. Jaipur, India. I looked at the map and saw that it was southwest of the capital of New Delhi. And close to Shyam’s base in Punjab. Salena had been there. But had Tarun been there too? He must have been, right? He would be with his fiancée, even if he were forcing her to marry him.

  Another notification popped up on my screen. It was from the facial-recognition software. A match had been found to one of the pictures stored on the cloud. I clicked the alert and the program opened. The photo of Salena in her engagement outfit loaded from our shared cloud. I had seen the picture before, but it was still difficult to see a woman with eyes so dead. Her outfit was beautiful, and her jewelry was impeccable, but she looked like a ghost. It was so eerie that it gave me chills. My heart broke for her, even though she was my Shyam’s ex-girlfriend. No woman deserved to be treated the way she had.

  Bright blue arrows outlined a spot on the glass window behind her. What? Why would the glass trigger a match? The software was usually accurate if it found a match. I was confused.

  I zoomed in on the area that was highlighted. It looked like a smear on the glass. I zoomed in even further.

  “Fuck!” I gasped. A face. It was a man. I pulled up the photo that it was being compared to by the software. It was one of the ones I had altered of Tarun’s brother, stripped of his prosthetics. The reflection in the window had a face like Vik’s, but it was thinner and had hollow cheeks. Was this Tarun? It had to be either Vik himself or a relative for it to be a match. A large dark spot was visible on the neck of the person. A birthmark. I pulled up the old photo of Tarun, where he was chubbier. His neck had a large brown birthmark. It’s him!

  I had to tell Shyam. I grabbed my phone to send him a text.

  Just then, large hands grabbed my waist from behind and covered my mouth. I thrashed my body around to free myself, but I couldn’t break loose. I tried to scream, but no sound came out.

  “Boss didn’t tell me you’d have such a tight little body,” a raspy voice hissed into my ear. Its owner had a thick Indian accent. Hot breath blew on my neck. “Maybe he wouldn’t mind if I tried out this cunt before I deliver you.”

  The monster used the hand that was on my waist to grope my vagina through my dress. Tears poured from my eyes. I tried to push away from him, but he was too strong for me.

  “Stay still, sweetheart. You’re going to like this.” I could feel his hard-on press into my back. I wanted to vomit and pass out all at the same time. This couldn’t be happening to me again. I remembered from the time I had been mauled at Nirvana that the element of surprise was how Shyam had defended me. I bit down hard on my attacker’s hand until I was rewarded with the metallic taste of his blood. He cursed and let go of me in surprise.

  “Fucking bitch!”

  I screamed and ran around the desk, and the bottom of my dress caught on its metal leg. I stumbled toward the door and ran into a hard chest that felt like a wall. I fell backward onto the floor.

  Another man hovered over me, holding a gun pointed at my chest. His smile was gnarly, and his neck and arms were covered in tattoos. He looked familiar. At the bar. He was one of the men who’d been sitting at the bar that night I was with Nat, before I had gone home with Shyam for the first time.

  I inched back further into the room, away from him.

  “You’re going to be a challenging one, huh?” He laughed like a maniac. He had an accent too. He grabbed my ankle and yanked hard, pulling me closer to him. I screamed again, hoping someone would be able to hear me. He flipped me over onto my stomach and held my back down with his knee. Terror spread through my body.

  I felt a quick pinch in my neck. Confusion made me turn my head back to see what had caused it. The last image I saw was of the giant beast pinning me down, before everything went black.

  XXX. Shyam

  I couldn’t find Amelia. I had left her for a few minutes to wish some of my employees well before they left for the holidays. I usually hated these formalities, but it was important to maintain a good relationship with my board members to ensure they continued to do a good job. If I wanted Sethi Tech to remain the top tech company in the world, then I needed to make sure my employees felt appreciated.

  She had been waiting by the Christmas tree for me. I tried texting and calling her phone multiple times, but no answer. I was worried. She knew how important it was to me that she answered my calls.

  I found Jai surrounded by a group of female new hires. The women hung on his every word, laughing every so often at jokes he told—likely stupid jokes. I tore him away from his harem and asked him if he had seen her.

  “I haven’t seen her since I danced with her,” he said.

  “Shit.” I grabbed my hair in frustration. Where could she be?

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, growing more concerned.

  “She’s not answering her phone.” I checked my phone again to make sure I hadn’t missed her calls or texts in the meantime.

  “Well, maybe she just stepped out to get some air?” he suggested.

  “It’s freezing outside.” It was too cold for her to have been waiting outside.

  “Good point. Let’s get security to see if they can find her. And we’ll get Saran to help if she really is missing.” Jai took out his phone and called Saran to fill him in on the situation and tell him to stan
d by.

  I was on my way to talk to the security guard monitoring the party when I bumped into that dipshit who had been trying to hit on Amelia at her birthday. I hadn’t even seen him.

  I wasn’t planning on apologizing because I had a bigger problem on my hands, but he stopped me to talk. Fucking hell.

  “Oh, hey, Mr. Sethi. Sorry about bumping into you.”

  I kept walking, ignoring him.

  He was really shitty at taking a hint, so he kept talking. “Are you okay? You seem to be in a rush like Amelia was. Is something happening?”

  I turned back around and approached him, hovering over him. “You saw her?” I demanded.

  He backed up, scared by my tone. “Yeah, she was on her way up to her office. Something about checking on work stuff.”

  “How long ago was this?” I lowered my face in front of his and studied his eyes. It was a habit I had attained from interrogating traitors.

  Blake drew his eyes to the ground to avoid my stare. “About thirty minutes ago,” he answered quickly to get me to leave him alone.

  I ran to the elevator and took it all the way up to our floor. I ran to her office. The lights were off, and it looked empty. I hit the light switch, illuminating the room. I saw her phone on the floor behind her desk. I picked it up and found all my messages and calls on her lock screen. She had never received them. Her computer was locked. Why had she been up here?

  I noticed something else by my foot. I bent down to the floor by the leg of her desk. Just then, Jai showed up in the doorway. “What is it?”

  My heart pounded so hard in my chest that I couldn’t hear anything. Time slowed as I held up the red scrap of fabric. Her dress.

  “Tarun has her.” My voice was broken with panic.

  XXXI. Amelia

  Everything was blurry. I blinked quickly to clear my vision. I was lying on something that felt like it was moving. I tried to sit up, but my hands were bound together under my stomach. I used my hands to press into the cushion I was lying on. My head pounded.

  I looked around to get my bearings. I was in the back seat of a car. My memory came rushing back to me when I saw the man sitting across from me. He was the one who had flipped me over in my office. He stared me in my eye, warning me to sit still, with his gun fixed in my direction.

  “Where are you taking me?” My voice was hoarse. I was afraid of saying something that might cause him to pull the trigger.

  “You’ll see,” he said gruffly. I was betting I wasn’t going to get anything more out of him without pissing him off.

  I looked out the window to see if I could figure it out myself. The sky seemed hazy like there was tons of smog in the air. The street was filled with people walking or riding on bikes with carriages. I saw cows with horns walking down the street too. The buildings seemed old and ornate. Women in colorful outfits and bracelets shopped at vendors outside and men in shirts and cotton skirts prepared food in street carts. I was in India. Holy shit.

  After some time, the car stopped abruptly. I was grateful because the bumpy roads had been making me want to throw up and I was sure my captor wouldn’t have appreciated that.

  The car door opened, and the man pulled me out of the car by the chains on my hands. The metal cut into my flesh, causing me to cry out.

  “Chup. Shut up, you stupid bitch. Get up.” I stood as best I could. He pressed the end of the barrel into my back. “Walk.”

  The air was so heavy and thick that it suffocated me. My body broke out into a sweat immediately under the fabric of my evening gown, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the humidity or the adrenaline.

  We walked up a pathway to a big pink building. It looked almost like a castle. Men with rifles lined the stairs to the front door. I hesitated before taking the first step. My captor didn’t like that much and hit me with the butt of his gun on the back of my head. My eyes teared up in reflex.

  “That’s no way to treat our guest, Motu.” A short man with sunken eyes and hollow cheekbones stood in the doorway at the top of the steps. His neck was covered by that familiar misshapen brown mark. Tarun.

  “Come inside. You must be tired from your travels.” He motioned me inside, as if I had a choice to enter. I followed his order and walked into the colorfully tiled foyer. A fountain stood in the middle to show off the grandness of the room.

  “Welcome to my home, Amelia.” He stood in front of me, dressed in an Indian jacket made of colorful patches covered in embroidery, which made him look like that maniac from the Batman comics. He was just missing the clown makeup and green hair.

  “How do you know my name?” My voice came out shaky, revealing my fear.

  “I know everything about you and what you do. We have a—friend in common,” he said, as if we were at a dinner party making small talk.

  “I don’t know why you would need me. I’m no one of interest.” Tears threatened to fall from the corners of my eyes.

  He stepped closer to me, leaning his face closer to mine to look into my eyes. I could smell his rank breath. “Quite the contrary. You are valuable to my friend; therefore, you are unbelievably valuable to me.”

  “Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone where you are or what happened to me.” I just wanted to go home and end this nightmare.

  “Lying to your host is not the best way to start off your vacation, Amelia,” he said, raising his hands in a flourish. I noticed a ring similar to the one Shyam wore, but with a tiger on it.

  He studied my face. “I can see why he has kept you a secret. You really are a rare gem with such beautiful red hair. Like a ruby,” he said as he pulled a lock of my hair between his fingers and rubbed it. His lizard-like eyes raked down my body, taking in my revealing outfit. When he raised his eyes again, they settled on my neck.

  “That’s a beautiful necklace you have. It looks like something I’ve seen before.” He lifted the pendant with his fingers to examine it.

  Oh no.

  He yanked the chain off my neck, causing me to yelp. “And you say you’re no one of interest. You’re perhaps the most interesting person I’ve met so far.” Holding out the necklace, he turned to Motu and said, “Send this to our friend, Shyam. I trust you remember where he works. He’ll know what it means.”

  Motu took it from his hands and scurried away.

  Tarun turned away from me and issued one last command to his men before walking away. “Show our guest to her cell.”

  Suddenly, I was yanked away from the foyer by two armed guards.

  XXXII. Shyam

  I sat in my suite at Nirvana, a broken man. I had closed the club since Amelia went missing so I could use it for privacy. I hadn’t gone home or even slept in four days. I still wore my suit from the holiday party. My stomach was empty except for copious amounts of scotch.

  How had this happened? Security had been so tight. Not even our cameras had caught footage of Amelia being taken.

  I kept playing all the terrible things that they could have done to her in my mind and it made me sick.

  This couldn’t be happening again. First my mother, then Salena, and now Amelia.

  Jai had searched her computer and found that she had found a hit with the decryption algorithm she was running, and a reflection we suspected to be Tarun’s. I had had my men in India scour the city of Jaipur, but Tarun had given us general coordinates for the city, so we didn’t have a specific location of where Amelia might be. It was possible that she wasn’t in Jaipur at all. She could be anywhere.

  My brilliant Amelia. Why did I get her involved? I regretted ever hiring her and forcing her to take on such a dangerous mission because of my need for revenge.

  Jai entered my office. I didn’t even bother looking up to acknowledge him.

  “We’ll find her.” He tried to sound reassuring, but I heard the doubt in his voice. “She’s tough and smart. She’ll survive this.”

  I hoped to God he was right.

  “The guys have the city covered. Zayn says that all men inv
olved in surveillance have been shown photos of what she looks like. She’ll stand out easily in India. Someone will find her,” he continued to console me.

  A million thoughts raced through my head. I’d have given anything just to have her with me—safe. It was my job to protect her and I had failed.

  Javed stalked into my office. “This just arrived. We suspect it’s from Tarun.” He held a small box in his hand.

  I stood up and approached him slowly. I didn’t want to open the box because I knew nothing good could come of it. But I had to know what was inside.