Chapter 11 – Ellie
I paced the length of my room, fuming as his words echoed in the back of my mind. Fear, anger, anxiety, and the desperate need to vanish into thin air hit me all at once.
He said an enemy of his had their eyes on me, and because of that, my life was in danger. My life wouldn’t have been in danger if he’d never kidnapped me in the first place.
This was his fault!
He was the one who took me to that gala; he was the one who put me in harm’s way. Now I had to marry my kidnapper to be safe from his enemies, enemies I had nothing to do with.
How messed up was that!
I sat on the edge of the bed, my face buried in my hands. This wasn’t how I envisioned my life at twenty-one, and this man was hell-bent on ruining everything I had spent years building.
Because of him, my education was at a standstill, my mental state was a complete mess, and my life was being threatened. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had to add marriage to the list.
Marriage!
What the hell was wrong with that man?
“Argh!” I fell back onto the mattress and covered my face with a pillow.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him so much!
Karik was the definition of evil, and I despised him with every fiber of my being.
I tossed the pillow aside and stared at the ceiling, seething in silence. The word marriage kept resurfacing, no matter how hard I tried to push it down. And the worst part was that he left no room for argument.
Basically, I didn’t have a choice in this. My voice didn’t fuckin’ matter. He said this union was going to keep me safe. And maybe there was an iota of truth in that.
But it was also way too generous for a ruthless man like him. There was no way he’d decide to tie himself to a complete stranger forever just because he believed it was the only way to keep her alive.
It didn’t make sense at all.
What’s in it for him?
What did he stand to gain from this marriage?
Those questions and many more lingered on the fringes of my mind.
I spent the whole night thinking about my predicament, how quickly my situation had gone from bad to worse. There was no way out of this. I was trapped, stuck between marrying him and running away, where I would be killed.
How sure was I that his enemies were really watching me? What if it was just a made-up story meant to scare me?
But why would he lie about something like that and still not give me the option to walk away? Nothing was adding up. The more I thought about it, the more confusing it became.
Only two things were certain right now: my inability to escape because he’d tripled the security around the house, and the fact that I was going to be his wife whether I liked it or not.
The idea alone made my blood boil in ways I couldn’t explain. But despite how much I hated him, I wasn’t the least bit irritated by the thought of his touch. And I should be, because I loathed his guts. But I wasn’t.
Weird.
Very weird.
I’d come back to this later. Right now, I needed to build more hatred for the man who was about to steal my future.
The next day, while lost in my own thoughts, the knock on my door snapped me back to the present.
At first, I thought it was him, Karik. But then I remembered the son of a bitch never knocked. He would just walk right in, like he did last night when he caught a glimpse of me naked.
Fuckin’ psycho!
Agata strolled in with two other women I didn’t recognize, both polished and elegantly dressed. One carried a measuring tape and a leather-bound notebook.
You gotta be kidding me.
I knew immediately what they were here for, and it pissed me off.
“Miss Hendy,” Agata called softly. “This is Sarah and Hannah. They’re here to—”
“No,” I cut her off, seated on my bed, unmoving.
The women exchanged glances, and one of them stepped forward.
“Please, Miss Hendy, we just wanna take your measurements,” she said, her accent soft and Eastern European.
“I said no.”
A pause.
“They won’t be long, I promise.”
I cast a stern glare at her. “Agata…I said…no.”
The room fell silent, and after they realized that I wasn’t willing to indulge them, they left.
Later in the day, the dress fittings arrived. A cart of fabric was wheeled into the room by a woman with pins in her collar. She wasn’t alone; Agata was with her.
The woman stepped forward, exuding an air of professional composure while Agata stood behind her.
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to stand up, please,” she said, her voice low and polite.
“Sorry, I do mind,” I replied casually.
She glanced back at Agata, who just shrugged her shoulders and said nothing.
The woman cleared her throat. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but your fiancé gave me a job, and that’s what I’m here to do.”
I snapped my head toward her, my face twisted in a frown. “Well, you can tell my ‘fiancée’ that I’m not cooperating with you. How about that?”
She lowered her head, rubbing her eyes with her fingers as she let out an exhausted sigh.
I picked up the TV remote from the bedside table and tuned in to a random channel.
Seeing that I wasn’t ready to cooperate, she left a few minutes later, accomplishing nothing.
Throughout the rest of the day, I was completely unresponsive, ignoring every staff member sent into my room. I refused to engage with them and declined to answer any questions about the wedding preparations.
My stubbornness on this issue was deliberate and small, consistent, and quiet. It wasn’t loud or dramatic. But it was enough to send the message: I wasn’t about to make this easy for him.
The very next day, he came by himself.
I was sitting on the couch, reading a magazine, when he pushed the door open and walked in.
“Oh, please, come on in,” I said, my voice tinged with sarcasm.
His shoes scuffed softly against the floor as he strolled toward me. He wore a black suit that fit him perfectly, his tie loose around his neck.
“I heard you’re scaring off my staff,” he said, halting in front of me.
“Scaring off?” I scoffed. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Your lack of cooperation is delaying the timeline,” he said flatly.
“Good. Maybe that’s what I want.” I returned to reading the magazine.
He paused, his expression darkening ever so slightly. “Don’t test my patience, Ellie….”
“Ellie?” I lowered the magazine, frowning at him. “No, no, Mister, you don’t get to call me that.” I rose to my feet, closing the distance between us. “We’re not there yet. In fact, we’re never gonna be there. So stick to Miss Hendy.”
Silence.
He wiped his palm across his mouth and stared at me for a second. “You really should be more grateful, you know.”
My brows shot up in disbelief. “You want to legally bind me to you after holding me here against my will, and you’re asking for gratitude?”
“It’s the least you can do for someone who’s trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what? The enemy who’s only interested in me because of you?” I raised my voice a little higher than usual. “I was just a student with a case file before you kidnapped me. Nobody knew me, and nobody was coming for me.”
He didn’t respond.
I went on, venting my frustrations. “That was, of course, until you decided I was a problem, and now suddenly I need your last name to survive.” I let the words sink in for a bit.
“You’re not protecting me. You created this problem, and you’re solving it in the way that benefits you the most. So don’t act like you’re doing me a favor. ”
A pause.
Then he spoke. “It’s easy to put the blame on me, forgetting that you spent ten months pulling threads attached to people who bury problems permanently.” His voice was quiet and precise, and every word landed like a measured thing.
I listened in silence.
He continued, “You’re delusional if you actually believe that I was the only one watching you. I wasn’t. You were already being watched by people who do not have my kind of patience.”
I swallowed hard, my pulse quickening by the second. The air between us thinned, and it felt as if an invisible force were pulling me to him. The scent of his cologne drifted into my nostrils, awakening emotions I wasn’t ready to feel.
My heart slammed against my ribs as I held his gaze at such close range. He looked at me for a long moment, something flickering behind his eyes. I couldn’t name it. I wasn’t even sure what it was, and it vanished as quickly as it appeared.
“The fittings and measurements will be rescheduled for tomorrow,” he said, his voice laced with finality. “I suggest you cooperate.”
Leaving no room for unnecessary banter, he turned toward the door and left. Watching his back as he walked away, I sank into the couch, hopeless and defeated.
I’d tried to fight, tried to delay the ceremony. But his words made it pretty clear that he was done playing games. Maximum cooperation was expected of me. Until now, he hadn’t punished me for my stubbornness or defiance.
I still had no firsthand idea of what he was capable of, and I didn’t want to find out. Maybe I shouldn’t push him to the wall—at least not so soon. I didn’t realize my hands were trembling until I glanced down at them.
My whole body was shaking, and my heart was racing. He might’ve been a douchebag, but he was also right about his patience. And now I couldn’t help wondering what my life would’ve been like if he hadn’t been the one who kidnapped me.
Maybe I would have already been dead, and that begged the question: Did he really deserve my gratitude?
Was he really the cause of my problem, or was it my own quest for justice?