But then I shake it off. That doesn’t seem like the kind of manual labor Adam Archer would be into. No doubt he had some assistant do it. Let’s just hope it was a female assistant.
Quickly I unzip my dress and step out of it, slipping on some yoga pants and a loose t-shirt instead.
Rachel and Adam’s voices immediately quiet as soon as I open the door again and come back out into the living room. Adam’s assembling a cardboard box and Rachel has plucked a couple of paintings off the wall that she knows are mine.
“I won’t be able to get it all tonight, obviously.” I look around. “And what did you do with my couch and my mattress?”
“Storage,” Adam says, looking up.
Son of a—
“Why would you do that without talking to me, Adam?”
He straightens up after taping the box. “I was trying to be romantic.”
I huff out an exasperated breath. Okay, so we’re going to finally have this out. “Romantic would have been talking to me. Planning an engagement party with me. Not going behind my back and doing all this stuff when I didn’t even want it.”
“It wasn’t behind your back. I would have done it with you. If you’d been here.”
“Ever think there was a reason I wasn’t here?” I retort before I can think better of it. But screw it. Why should I have to walk around on eggshells just to protect his fragile ego? This is bullshit.
I run a hand through my hair and sigh. “Look, I’m just saying that if two people aren’t communicating, then that’s a big red flag. You should have tried harder to talk to me before things went as far as they did.”
Adam’s mouth tightens. “I was worried about you.”
I’m about to balk but then he comes close. “What are you doing, Daphne? I was trying to give you a way forward to keep Belladonna. This is what you’ve wanted your whole life.”
I open my mouth, then frown. I mean, yes, Belladonna has been my life. But is it the life I chose?
Wasn’t I just thinking that I’d be willing to sacrifice anything if it meant moving forward in this new freedom?
What if…what if I let Belladonna go?
I freeze at the impossibility of the idea. The thought is like a huge chasm yawning before me. But a few ideas immediately take form. Even without Belladonna, I can still pursue research. I’d be leaving Rachel, but we could still be friends. We could hang out—gasp—outside of work! And I could get more friends. For the first time in my life, I could have a life.
No more board trying to dictate my actions.
No more of Logan’s second-guessing my motives. It hasn’t been about the patents for a long time for me but finally, he wouldn’t have to doubt that. It might remove the last barrier to him trusting me.
I could do what I love, which is being down in the lab doing research, not the grind and glad-handing of being CEO, all of which I hate.
If tonight’s proven anything, it’s that I’m a new Daphne. The old one doesn’t fit the mold anymore. That’s what I’ve been learning in my time with Logan—that there’s more to life, more to me, than just the quiet, obedient daughter who does what she’s supposed to.
It’s all on the tip of my tongue. I’m a new Daphne, I want to say. But I feel myself shrinking under Adam and Rachel’s stares.
Not to mention that the room is strangely blurry. I put a hand to my head. I haven’t taken out my contacts yet, but the shadows on the wall seem to stretch, swallowing everything up.
What was I just thinking about? Right, Belladonna. “I don’t know if I want that anymore.”
“Really? What would your father say?” Adam asks, brow still furrowed in concern. “Battleman’s was his life’s fight. For the sake of the gods’, Daphne, what would your mother say?”
His words hit me with the weight of a freight train and I stumble back a step.
“Adam, that’s not fair,” Rachel starts but he holds up a hand to quiet her.
“I’m serious. Daphne, you’ve fought your whole life to save others like her. Are you going to give up on everyone else who’s sick just because, what?” he scoffs. “You don’t feel like it anymore?”
I shake my head, but everything that was so clear only moment ago has started to become fuzzy. “No, I- That’s, I- I would never give up on Battleman’s—” I put a hand on my hand and blink hard.
And then, as I’m looking at him, suddenly the world swoops sideways as a wave of dizziness hits me out of nowhere.
I grab for the wall, only barely catching myself as Rachel rushes to my side. “Daphne, are you okay?” she cries.
I blink hard but when I look up, there are two of her, then three, all dancing around. The dizziness only gets worse the more I blink and try to get my bearings. “I don’t feel so good,” I mutter as she helps me to the couch.
“How much did she drink at the ball?” Adam asks, sounding appalled.
I open my mouth to say I barely drank two sips of champagne at the ball but no sound comes out. Everything’s gone so blurry and liquid around me.
“Here, help me get her to the guest bedroom,” Adam says. “She can sleep it off there.”
The world goes even crazier, dipping and swooping, as Adam lifts me up in his arms and Rachel hurries near, her voice murmuring low words I can’t quite make out.
* * *
Everything’s moving so slow but when I blink and look around, I think it’s a long while later, maybe even an hour or two.
Loud voices make me blink to alertness. I don’t think I was asleep exactly, more like just really, really out of it. Something’s wrong. Really wrong. When I try to sit up or move my arms, they don’t respond right.
It’s like I’ve…like I’ve been drugged.
Holy shit. Holy shit…
The thought should be scary. It means I could be in danger. But it feels really detached. Far away.
Rachel’s here. She won’t let anything bad happen to me.
The door of the bedroom bursts open and a giggling Rachel comes in, her arms wrapped around Adam’s neck. What?
I blink puffy eyes, sure what I’m seeing can’t be right. The only light is from the window and the hallway, casting long shadows.
“Come on,” Rachel says. “It’s enough that she’s spending the night. We don’t have to do anything more.”
“Don’t be a bitch. Help me get her clothes off.”
That voice doesn’t sound anything like the Adam I know. It was mean. All his careful gentility is gone.
“Fine,” Rachel sighs, “but just her top. That’s all you’ll need for the pictures.”
“Whatever,” Adam says as they both move closer to me.
Run. Run. Escape.
But my arms and legs barely respond and the only thing that comes out of my mouth is a low groan.
“You hear that?” Adam laughs nastily. “She wants it. She’s practically begging for it.”
“Don’t be an ass.” Rachel comes over and shoves Adam out of the way, sitting on the bed beside me. I try desperately to make eye-contact with her but she studiously avoids looking at my face as she lifts me up enough to pull my t-shirt off over my head.
I’m left in the red lingerie I was wearing under my ballgown as she settles me back onto the pillows.
“Fuck, her nipples are pierced,” Adam mutters. “I knew she was hot, didn’t know she had a wild side.”
I can’t move my hands to cover my breasts but my shoulders hunch.
“Let’s just snap some pics and then leave her alone.”
“Don’t be such a buzzkill.”
The bed dips again and thick, cloying cologne wafts over me. Shivers crawl down my spine. It’s him. Adam. The man I completely misjudged. The monster behind the handsome prince’s mask. Gods, how could I have been so stupid as to come here tonight.
And Rachel… I search her out with my heavy eyes. She’s got her back turned as Adam climbs into bed with me.
When she finally turns around, she’s holding her phone.
“Okay, let’s do this.”
My confused brain takes a second to make sense out of the obvious, and it’s not until Adam pulls me against his bare chest, settling my hand against his too-pale skin and a camera flash goes off that it finally clicks.
They’re taking pictures of me. Naked pictures.
I want to scratch Adam’s eyes out and kick him in the balls. And then tear Rachel’s hair out by her pretty blonde roots.
Instead, all I can do is give confused, disagreeing moans as Adam moves me this way and that, moving my hair to get the best shot of my face, sometimes cupping my face, all the time making me want to barf on his overly waxed chest.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Rachel announces. “Let’s go back to your bedroom.”
“I don’t know,” Adam murmurs, running his hand down my chest and squeezing me. “I think we could have a lot of fun right here. You know how much I like them quiet and willing like this.”
“She’s not willing, she’s out of it.” Rachel’s voice is sharp, but then it softens. “But baby, I’ll do anything you want.” She moves behind Adam and starts to massage his shoulders. “I’ll suck you off. And I know you’ve been wanting to stick it up my ass. I’ll let you tonight. Just leave her alone.”
Finally Adam moves and his weight disappears from the mattress beside me. “You’ll let me? You’ll fucking let me?” His angry voice fills the room, echoing around my pounding head. “Have you forgotten how this arrangement works? You do what I fucking ask. And yes, I’ll take your ass. I’ll take it right here where she watches.”
But at that point, finally, blessedly, I pass out.
Twenty-Eight
Present Day
Daphne
Oh fuck, my head. I wake up, grabbing my head in my hands and squinting against the sunlight. What hellacious things did I do to my body last night?
Which is when I look around.
Wait up. Where the hell am I?
I jerk out of bed and get to my feet.
Mistake, mistake!
I grab my head and double over, feeling so nauseous I’m shocked I don’t lose my stomach right there by the side of the bed.
When I finally manage to make it to the attached bathroom, I sit hugging the toilet bowl for another ten minutes, and finally splash my face with cool water when the worst of it has passed.
Bits and pieces of last night come back to me, but most of it is a huge blank.
I remember Rachel and I coming over to Adam’s place. Adam and I were arguing. He said I was letting my Mom and Dad down. I cradle my queasy stomach as I try to remember what happened next.
I started feeling bad and Adam asked how much I’d had to drink at the party. He and Rachel helped me to the bedroom…
Then there’s just…nothing.
Nothing till I woke up a few minutes ago.
I brush my teeth with a spare toothbrush and throw on a t-shirt, then head out to the rest of the apartment to see if I can make more sense of what happened. “Adam? Hello? Rachel?”
But the place is empty. When I wander into the kitchen, there’s a note. Didn’t want to wake you, sleepyhead. There’s coffee in the carafe and some bagels and muffins. Help yourself to anything. I meant what I said last night. I was just trying to make your dreams come true. I hope we can talk more soon, Adam.
I stare at the note for a moment longer. It’s so friendly and fits in with everything I know about Adam…but something feels…off. I can’t explain it.
All I know is I don’t want to be here anymore. I shake my head and slip into my athletic shoes, then pull two heavy suitcases of my clothes behind me as I hit the elevators and head downstairs.
It’s easy to catch a cab since Adam’s place is downtown and soon I’m on my way home. I’ll have to call a moving truck this weekend to get the rest of my stuff from Adam’s and from wherever he put it in storage.
And then what? What comes next?
Logan. Everything got so crazy last night I’ve barely had two minutes to think about him, but he’s got to be hurting right now. But he’s got to understand that I wasn’t rejecting him last night, just his high-handedness. In the bedroom, yes, I love it. He commands and I obey and in a wild way I still don’t fully understand, it’s allowed me to be free. But our relationship only works if we trust each other.
I need him to trust me as absolutely as I trust him.
I take a deep breath as I let my head sink back on the seat cushion.
“Hey, I know you,” the cabbie suddenly says. “You’re famous. You’re all over the papers today.”
“What?” I lift my head up and frown at him.
He’s squinting at the rearview mirror, sizing me up. “Holy shit, it really is you. Wait till I tell my buddies, they won’t believe it.”
We come to stop at a red light and he pulls out his phone. “You mind posing for a pic? Otherwise the guys’ll never believe I drove you around.”
“Wait, what do you mean, I was in the papers—” but he’s already snapping away.
“Stop it,” I hold out my hand as the car behind us honks its horn. The light’s turned green.
The cabbie drops his phone and starts driving again. Seriously, what the hell? Was my broken engagement to Adam in the papers today? Do the gossip rags really not have better to report on?
“So were they your idea or Archer’s?”
“What?”
“The piercings,” he points to my chest. “Wouldn’t have pegged you as that sort of girl.”
Who does this guy think he is? I start to pull out headphones so I can listen to music for the rest of the ride, but not before I hear him add, “The two of you looked cozy in bed.”
My head snaps up. In bed?
“What are you talking about?”
“Pics in The New Olympian Inquirer. You and Archer all hot and heavy. Everyone in the city’s talking about it.”
What. The. Fuck.
I stuff my earbuds in for the last ten minutes and give a minimal tip when he drops me off at my townhouse. What kind of crap have they photoshopped now just to sell that gossip rag? I hurry over to a newsstand close to my building, still dragging my two heavy suitcases behind me as I go.
I don’t have to look hard to find it. The paper is front and center, the headline above the fold reading, “Mogul Adam Archer’s Engagement: The Inside Story” and smaller, Insider snaps of couple canoodling after their big celebration.
I snatch the paper off the stand. It’s me. I don’t know how, but it’s me. In the red bra I’m still wearing now. I’m lying sprawled across Adam’s chest, in my bra, in a bed.
What. The. FUCK?
“Hey lady, you gotta pay for that. You’re mangling it all up!”
I rip the paper down. It is indeed mangled in my clenched hands. Mouth pursed in fury, I fumble in my purse for some cash and slap it down on the counter of the little kiosk, then I spin away and look at the paper. There’s not just one picture, there’s several. It’s clearly me. In only one of the pictures are my eyes open the slightest crack, but I look super out of it.
Which confirms the suspicion that’s been niggling on the edge of my mind all morning. It was just so absurd, I didn’t think there was any way—
But it’s terribly clear now.
I was drugged.
I was fucking drugged last night.
At the engagement party? At Adam’s?
Did Adam Archer drug me?
Even as I think it, it sounds absolutely ludicrous. He’s New Olympus’s golden boy. Heir to a billion dollar empire.
But I’ve been drugged before…and this felt eerily similar. And Adam was at the Autumnal Ball. So was Logan. And a lot of other people were at both events, for that matter.
I rub a hand at my pounding temple. Then another terrifying thought strikes. Did anything else happen to me while I was unconscious? But I squeezed my thighs together and do a quick inventory of my body and nothing feels off or like it was…invaded. At least physi
cally.
But how in the hell did the paper get the pictures? I look back down. Adam looks asleep in the pictures, too. So who took them? What the hell is going on?
All I know is that it’s time to get some answers. I’m tired of being in the dark.
I hold up my hand and call, “Taxi!”
* * *
“She insisted she see you, sir,” Adam’s harried assistant follows after me when I barge into Adam’s office. His corner office is on the top floor of Archer Industries, as spare and masculine as his apartment.
There are several other men in suits opposite Adam’s massive desk but he waves to his assistant. “It’s all right, Gladys. If you’ll excuse me, gentleman, I’ll need to conclude this meeting early. I have a pressing appointment.”
Adam nods my way as the gentleman get up and gather their things, immediately at his beck and call.
Adam walks over towards me, blond hair styled to perfection. “I’ve been trying to call you all day. Are you okay?”
I frown at the concern in his eyes. He seems absolutely genuine but something makes me shiver. I don’t know why goosebumps suddenly run up and down my arms at his proximity.
“You have?” I pull out my phone, only now realizing it’s dead.
“I’ve had my publicist trying to get ahead of it. I can’t believe Rachel would do this to us.”
I blink. “Wait, what? Rachel?”
Adam stares at me a moment, before saying slowly, “What do you think happened last night?”
He urges me to come in and take a seat. I feel a little like I’m being herded, but I do sit down.
He offers me a bottle of water. For a second I stare at it, remembering when he offered me water last night.
“I think I was drugged,” I finally say, carefully watching his reaction.
He wipes a hand down his face and looks towards the window before softly cursing. “I can’t believe she would go that far…but you did seem out of it. When you wandered into my room, it was like you were sleepwalking but I couldn’t wake you up. You just climbed into bed with me and it seemed better to just let you rest there.”
Billionaire’s Captive: A Beauty and the Rose Box Set Page 31