7. Vicki
Chapter 7
Vicki
T hey acted like me knowing one of them would destroy everything, so I let them sweat it out. It wasn't the worst thing I could do when I smelled his spiced lavender mint. Hell, they had set me up on that date to do a recon mission, so it only felt right to listen to them fret for the last thirty minutes. Humming a tune in my head, I ignored the bickering in the other room. The man in charge reminded them that this needed to stay discreet. They wanted my father to pay some kind of ransom for me and get the cash.
It made sense with the things Leopold told me on our date, and I couldn't blame him. I had heard my stepmother talking about all the changes she had planned to make the factories more eff icient, but I didn't realize that came with laying off eighty people. Of course, they never included me in anything. Ever since my stepmother came into the picture less than two years ago, my father forgot he had a daughter half the time. Well, he forgot me long before that, but my mother was still around to give me a little more attention. In their divorce over twelve years ago, she gained the European developments and moved. She never looked back or asked me to come, so I kissed my father’s ass and kept praying he’d see my work one day and be proud.
The daughter he had with an accounting degree to help his business and did just that every single day. There wasn't much I could do about what had happened for these guys, but I did know they deserved a warning. Whether or not their ethics behind this scheme made them less, they became more the moment they gave me sex.
A kitty kept purring somewhere in the room, being our conversation buffer, but I listened intently as they ignored me in the background.
"We could just send him an email with her picture instead of a video?" Leopold crafted a new idea now that I knew his first name. Which was funny because he tried to tell me it wasn't him when he left the room to go tell the others.
"I have ears!" I shouted back from my place in the kitchen. "And I hate to tell you that you grabbed the wrong thing to get money from my dad!"
They stopped their planning and bickering to take in my words. Slowly, their footfalls came into the kitchen. I could only hear their arrival because they had me facing the opposite way. The man in charge marched to stand in front of me as the other two stayed tucked into the background. "Why did you say we grabbed the wrong thing? You're his only child."
"Not for long," I cooed in annoyance. "My stepmother is pregnant."
"But that still doesn't change you as his oldest child!" Leopold joined his friend.
"Look, I don't know who you got your information from, but I barely exist to my father. The only thing he does for me is sign my checks. And before you try to argue I get paid too good, I got the degree to earn it."
"And the trust fund?" The third voice grumbled behind me.
"I still have," I acknowledged. "I paid for my college with a small part of it and put the rest into my savings."
"I don't believe you." The man in charge didn't like hearing their plan might not give them the payout they'd hoped for.
"Look, I'm great with numbers and probability. The man forgets my birthday and to invite me for holiday dinners. His receptionist does it all, so he doesn't have to. If you want to hit him where it counts, I have three options for you."
They waited for me to tell them, but I wanted to hear them say they wanted the ideas. Leopold was the first. "What options?"
"One, you make my kidnapping more drastic and dramatic. Two, you kidnap his pregnant wife. Or three, do something to his precious Aston Martin. Those would get his attention more than me." Shrugging, I waited for them to take the bait. I didn't care they wanted money from my dad because he shouldn't have laid off eighty workers. He asked for this by listening to his new wife about ‘efficiency is better with machines than people’. Somewhere in the chaos, the rich had to realize they were rich enough to keep the middle class employed.
"And how do we know we can trust you?" The leader leaned forward, gripping the arms of the wooden chair they tied me to. He was lucky my arms were still behind my back.
"You can't, but you know I wouldn't have told you all of that for nothing." I couldn't see him completely through the cloth, but I could tell he was a handsome man. At least his body kept my attention. "All I'm saying is, make me a problem he can't ignore or hide from the public because I promise you his wife is going to tell him to do just that. She probably believes I'll annoy you so much, you'll let me go or kill me faster."
"And that doesn't scare you?" he raised a good question.
"Probably about how scared I was when you kidnapped me," I retorted to remind him of my lack of fear. The arousal end of it probably made me a fool.
He laughed and let his head fall to stop facing the bag over my head. He also had a unique blend of scents that would pinpoint him instantly if I caught a whiff. Honey, lemon and huckleberry. "And you're just okay with us ransoming you for your father's money?"
"I'm okay with you getting retribution for what you were robbed of. Eighty people shouldn't have lost their jobs."
"I told you she wasn't like her dad," Leopold whispered, and it pleased me to hear him say it.
"Okay, Little Diva. Let's say we make this a bigger production. That only puts a bigger target on our backs." The leader stepped back to cross his arms.
"And you're acting like I can't play the part of an abused girl, wishing her daddy would remember she existed."
"Can you?" Leopold sounded hopeful I'd be in on their plan.
I let my head turn from side to side as I mulled it over. "It's not a far reach because I used to beg for his attention until I learned I'd never have it the way I wanted. I'll just call on those old memories." They didn't need to know my daddy issues were my biggest flaw. It probably bled into my sex life just a bit, having a man order me around, telling me what to do, enjoying the discipline... Oy. That was a wake-up call.
"How can we trust you?" the third man spoke from his place. He was more of a silent but scary guy, but it only made me like him m ore. Plus, my pussy hadn't come back online since he ate it, and I wanted him to do it again.
"Well, you could record me on a different phone to keep anything from getting traced back here via I.P. address. I'm sure you already have one for communicating about this. You don't need a live feed. You just need a hook. Then you keep feeding them a few more hooks to keep them on the edge of their seats. But you have to stage the room into something less... homey."
"How in the hell do you know so much about this shit?" The main man asked.
"I'm a dark romance girlie. I know way too much about this shit." I let my covered head turn to meet each of theirs, pausing so they knew I could see them. "But I do have some demands."
"Of course you do," the main guy groaned.
My eyes tracked Leopold pacing the floor, seeing something else that might help them, but I knew he'd hate it. My stepmother moved in a similar way, and her body looked filled out with her pregnancy like his build. Though, his was muscle. Yet, if he wore something loose enough, the average eye wouldn't know. Yeah, he'd hate what I was about to say, but I blamed his pacing for making me think of my evi l stepmother. "Also, I know Leopold is a leaner dude. I'd make him dress as a pregnant woman to help your cause to stay hidden."
"I do not have a womanly figure!"
I snorted and shook my head. "You don't, but if you place a belly under a dress with a loose cardigan, you'll pull off a woman who has gained some weight through her pregnancy. Then they'll be looking for her instead of three dudes. A pregnant woman scorned, whether an employee herself or the spouse of another. It will make them sniff around the wrong tree long enough to pull this off."
"I'm not doing it! Plus, where would we even get one of those belly bump things?"
"I have one," t he third man cleared his throat. We were all silent, waiting to hear how a groan ass man had a fake baby bump. "You remember my client, Ruby? She had her baby before she could get maternity photos, so I ordered her a belly to wear to have that moment of holding her bump."
"You're into some weird shit," I muttered.
They ignored me to huddle. Please, like I couldn't hear them. Did they forget I was a woman of my stature? We always listened for useful information from our enemies. And while I didn't disagree with their reasonings to go after my father, I couldn't trust them. Well, I could trust them to give me an orgasm.
"It's not a terrible idea, Leo," the leader murmured. "You'd only have to walk behind the chair for a moment for them to see it."
"He doesn't have tits for me down in his storage! How are we supposed to pull that off?"
"You stuff a bra like every twelve-year-old who didn't get boobs right away," I chided. "Hell, Laura Ingles used apples. You make it sound so hard to give yourself a fake boob job."
They probably didn't get that reference, but my grandma was an avid Little House on the Prairie fan, and I had many summers with her to be out of my father's hair. She lost her mind a few years back, but I made it a point to visit her every Monday to play Scrabble with her.
"Why are you so eager to help us?" Leopold asked.
"I haven't had an orgasm by someone other than me in almost a year. Maybe the ones you provided put me in a good mood. Maybe you should try to keep me in a good mood while I stay." I didn't want to come out and say that I wanted more of it, but they could take a swing in the dark. No one said a word, so I just kept still in the chair I was ti ed to and tried to make out more details around my environment through the mask.
"Meow!" Ah, that’s right! They had a kitty. I loved kitties. This just kept getting better and better.