Charlie #2
“You don’t need to worry about the doctor,” he says, voice warm and low, like he’s telling me a bedtime story instead of discussing a medical examination I did not agree to.
“He’s only there so that Daddy can learn how best to take care of you.
No one is going to hurt you. No one is going to make you do anything frightening. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
That should not help….. and yet….
“I’ll be with you the whole time.”
That is not a promise of freedom. It’s the opposite, actually. A very pretty, very gentle threat wearing a little bow.
But the thought of being alone with another stranger after the guards makes my stomach go cold, and the thought of Nikolaus being there makes that coldness shrink back.
I don’t like that. I don’t like how quickly my brain has started dividing the world into Nikolaus and not Nikolaus, as if those are the only two categories that matter now.
Nikolaus is the reason I need protecting.
Nikolaus is also the only person who seems capable of protecting me.
My head hurts when I try to solve that puzzle.
Constantine is still watching me over his phone. “The other items you requested will also be there upon our arrival.”
“Good. I want everything to be perfect,” Nikolaus says, digging his thumb into the groove at the base of my skull until the tension there starts to release and my eyes flutter shut from the feel-good ache.
Constantine makes a faint sound that might be amusement, then goes quiet for a few seconds.
I hear the small taps of his phone screen, then the soft creak of leather as he shifts.
“Pilot says we’re on schedule. Flight attendant has been briefed to keep interaction minimal.
She’ll stay out of the cabin unless called. ”
Nikolaus’s other hand slides under the back of my hoodie, not under my shirt, just between the layers, palm warm at my upper back. I melt into it before I can stop myself.
“For the amount of money we’re paying her, she’d better.”
Constantine grunts in agreement. “Regardless of money, she’d be a fucking idiot to act up with you as a passenger.”
I listen to them bicker and let the sound blur around me.
It’s easier when they talk like that. When they sound like adults handling adult things.
Not because I trust them. I don’t. I don’t think I do.
But their words make a roof over me, somehow.
Not a safe roof, maybe. Maybe a locked roof. But still something over my head.
The car turns, and my stomach turns with it.
Nikolaus somehow notices this and cups the back of my head. “Motion sick?”
I don’t know.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I shake my head once, then stop because that makes the floaty feeling tilt.
“Too much?” he asks.
That could mean anything. The car. The plane. The doctor. His hands. My whole life being picked up and moved while I sit in his lap, too quiet to stop it.
I nod.
His chest rises under my cheek. “I know, sweetheart.”
I frown because how the hell does he know absolutely everything?!
“You’re doing so well,” he murmurs. “I know it feels like a lot because it is a lot, but you’re doing so well for me.”
The praise slips through me, warm and syrupy. Embarrassing. It spreads from my chest down to my stomach, makes my fingers curl around my blankie and my cheek rub against his broad chest in a small, helpless movement I do not approve of at all.
Nikolaus lets out a pleased hum, its vibration rumbling in his chest.
Constantine sighs from across the car. “He’s going to hate you for this later, whenever he surfaces from this stress-induced littlespace.”
Nikolaus presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Maybe for a little while, but once I prove to him that I’m the Daddy he’s always needed, he’ll be grateful. With how we found him, it’s clear to me that he’s never had anyone to rely on. It wouldn’t surprise me if it takes him a bit to adjust.”
“Yes, I’m sure he’ll be oh so grateful that you kidnapped him,” Constantine muses, a smirk pulling at his lips.
“He’ll understand that this way is better. If I tried to date him like a normal person, it would be forever before he would allow me to step in and help. This way, he has no choice but to accept my care.”
“That’s a nice way to frame it,” Constantine chuckles.
The car keeps moving as the two of them continue discussing me like I’m not literally in one of their laps.
I lose track of time as their conversation ebbs and flows, switching back and forth from me to what I presume are business matters.
I’m still not sure what kind of business they’re in.
The longer I’m with them, though, the more I become convinced that they have to be some sort of gangsters.
I genuinely have no other guesses. Or maybe all rich business people are actually insane, and I just haven’t noticed because I’ve never met one before?
I’m still contemplating this when Constantine looks out the window before slipping his phone into his pocket. “We’re almost there.”
There.
The word drops through me, my breathing instantly speeding up.
This is it. This is the point of no return. And I’ve done nothing but sit quietly in my captor’s lap as I’m driven to my doom.
Nikolaus murmurs to me, “You can hide if you need to.”
And I do. Just as I have been for the past several hours.
I grip his jacket in one hand, still clutching my blankie in the other. I can feel the solid shape of his body against my own—huge and dangerous, and mine to hide in, apparently, because my brain has lost every ounce of dignity it once pretended to have.
“Good boy,” he whispers as the car stops.
I hear a door open. Constantine gets out first, his shoes hitting the pavement. A cool gust of air slips into the car, carrying the smell of fuel, morning, and open space.
I feel like throwing up.
“Easy,” Nikolaus says, sliding his arm under my knees. “I’ve got you.” The car door beside us opens, and then I am being lifted.
I have enough awareness left to know how humiliating this is.
I am twenty-five years old. I can walk. I have legs. They even have shoes on them now, white sneakers that Constantine declared acceptable.
But when Nikolaus carries me out of the car, I’m frozen from fear. Unable to do anything but tense every single muscle in my body. I hate this dumb freeze response. It makes me feel so useless.
The air on the runway is cold enough to make me shiver. Or maybe I’m shaking for other reasons, I’m not sure. Nikolaus wraps his jacket partly around my side, and my face stays buried in the hollow between his shoulder and chest.
I hear the plane before I see it. It isn’t even that loud, really, but it’s a deep humming that is ever-present.
The sound makes me release a sad whimper.
“I know,” Nikolaus says into my hair. “I know, sweetheart. You don’t have to look.”
So I don’t.
I let the world become pieces again.
Nikolaus’s arms.
My blankie against my cheek.
Constantine’s voice ahead of us, calm and businesslike.
Another man’s voice answering.
The faint slap of cool wind against my ears.
The hollow metal sound of Nikolaus’s shoes on the stairs.
Each step takes me farther from the ground.
Farther from the car.
Farther from here.
Closer to New York.
A woman says, “Good morning, Mr. Makris.”
I flinch, knocking my forehead against Nikolaus’s jaw.
His arms tighten around me, but he doesn’t scold me for being jumpy or hitting him, even if the hit probably hurt my forehead more than his jaw.
“Quiet, please,” he says to the woman, voice polite but edged in a way that makes her go silent immediately.
“Yes, sir,” she replies, much softer. “I apologize.”
I hide harder.
I don’t want her to see me. I don’t want the pilot to see me. I don’t want anyone to know that I am being carried onto a plane like this, with my face tucked away and my old blankie in my fist and my whole body refusing to do the basic adult thing of standing upright.
Maybe they think I’m sick.
Maybe they think I’m drunk.
Maybe they know exactly what this is and simply do not care because Nikolaus is the kind of man people do not ask questions about.
I don’t know which possibility is worse.
As we enter the plane, the smell of fuel fades under leather, coffee, and something clean and citrusy. I keep my eyes shut, but light presses through my eyelids, soft and gold. The plane feels too still and too alive at the same time, like a room pretending not to be a machine.
Nikolaus walks a few more steps, then lowers himself into a seat with me still in his arms.
Not a regular seat. I can tell by the way his body settles, by how much space there is, by how the leather creaks under us. He adjusts me sideways across his lap, until I’m curled against him almost exactly the way I was in the car.
“There,” he murmurs. “All done.”
All done.
Like getting me into a private jet is a bath completed, a shoe tied, a pill swallowed.
The plane door closes somewhere behind us.
I open my eyes just enough to see Nikolaus’s shirt and the dark line of his beard. Nothing else. Not the windows. Not the flight attendant. Not the door.
“That was perfect, Charlie,” he says, fingers finding my hair. “You’re such a good boy for me, aren’t you?”
I didn’t do anything. I didn’t walk. I didn’t speak. I didn’t fight. I didn’t save myself. I just let him carry me from one place to another while the last pieces of my old life slid farther away.
But his praise hits the floaty place in me like warm water again, and the part of me that should be ashamed only curls smaller.
Constantine moves somewhere nearby, setting bags down. “We’ll be in the air soon.”
In the air.
In the air means there will be nothing beneath us but clouds and distance, and I will be trapped inside a beautiful little room that flies, with fancy leather seats and polished wood and men who don’t take “no” as an answer.
Nikolaus’s hand slides up my back, pressing me even closer to his chest in a way that should make me feel more trapped, but instead makes the panic hesitate, confused by the warmth of him and the steady, comforting thump of his heart beneath my cheek.