Chapter 7 #2
She lets out a long breath. A sigh that says everythin' and nothin' at all.
Then… she gives it a try. "Well, technically speaking, I think there's a statute of limitations on kidnapping—not legally, obviously, because kidnapping is kidnapping in perpetuity from a criminal justice standpoint, but more like...
socially? Like if someone kidnaps you but then you have a really nice conversation about their cassette tape collection and they're driving a vintage Aston Martin that smells like Gen X, which is weirdly comforting, and they haven't tied you up or threatened you in like thirty minutes, at what point does it transition from kidnapping to just...
unexpected carpooling with a hot Irish guy who may or may not have saved your life?
Because I feel like there should be a term for that.
Kidnapping-adjacent? Surprise relocation? Aggressive ride-sharing?"
She pauses for breath.
"Also, you have really nice hands."
I nearly drive off the fuckin' road, that's how fuckin' cute this woman is.
I grip the steering wheel tighter, tryna keep my eyes on the road and not the woman currently deconstructin' the legal and social ramifications of her own abduction.
"Keep goin'," I say, unable to stop the grin spreadin' across my face. "You're on a roll."
She shifts in her seat, warmin' to the topic now that she's got an audience.
"Right, so—I think there's definitely a spectrum here.
Like, hard kidnapping is when someone chloroforms you and throws you in a van, which is objectively terrifying and there's no gray area.
But then there's soft kidnapping, which is more like...
someone carries you out of a mansion while you're having a trauma response and puts you in their trunk, but they also give you their aggressively expensive shirt first, which suggests some level of—I don't know—kidnapping etiquette?
Like they're committing a felony but they're being thoughtful about it? "
"We like soft kidnappings, do we?"
She shrugs up one shoulder. "We could warm to it, doncha think?"
Could we?
Is she askin' me?
I let out a breath that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.
"Right, so here's the thing about kidnapping-adjacent scenarios," I start, matchin' her rambling energy with my own spiral.
"There's a critical difference between stealin' someone because you're a twisted bastard who wants to own them, which is objectively horrific and deserves whatever circle of hell Dante had in mind for that particular brand of evil—probably the seventh, violence against persons, which seems appropriate—and stealin' someone because you walked into a friend's mansion expectin' to find nothin' more incriminatin' than a forged ledger or maybe some compromising photographs, and instead you find a naked woman wearin' a collar emergin' from the shadows like some sort of Gothic nightmare, and your brain just—goes white, completely fuckin' white, no thoughts, just action, and suddenly you've shoved her in your trunk without any coherent plan beyond 'get her the fuck out of there' because somethin' about the whole scene triggered every alarm bell you've spent thirty-one years installin'. "
I pause for breath.
Look at her.
She's lookin' back. "Is that what happened? You saw… white?"
I blow out a breath. "I actually lost time, Emmaleen. That's how fuckin' fucked that whole thing was to my brain. Which, if I'm bein' honest, has spent the last thirteen years tryna forget another… sex-slave-adjacent scenario that… ended badly."
She repeats my words. "Sex-slave-adjacent." It's a whisper. But there's some kind of recognition in it. She looks at me. "Can we… talk about Giovanni now?"
Shit. Did she just put it all together? Is she gonna ask me about our oath? "What did he tell you?"
She blinks at me. "What do you mean?"
"I mean… I can't hear your thoughts, but I'm very good at readin' faces. And I think you just came some kind of conclusion."
She plays along. "In regards to…"
"Giovanni. Sex-slave adjacent."
Her smile is real, her laugh genuine. "Oh God," she says, laughin' properly now.
"I'm always the last person to figure anything out.
Like, genuinely—if there were Olympic medals for being oblivious to critical context, I'd have a gold one and lucrative endorsement deals.
Because apparently BDSM contracts are just...
a thing? A real legal framework people use?
And here I was thinking—if I'd known you could formalize dominance hierarchies with actual clauses and exit strategies, I might've handed Tyler a seventeen-page agreement with subsections about acceptable volume levels for insults and mandatory cooling-off periods before furniture-based violence.
You know, really lawyer my way out of getting shoved down stairs through strategic use of the Oxford comma and force majeure provisions. "
She pauses.
"Would that have worked? Can you actually terms-and-conditions your way out of abuse if the font is small enough?"
It's a brill deflection. An almost fun deflection. If ya don't think too hard about what she just admitted.
But she didn't answer my question. So I ask a different one. "Are you afraid of Giovanni?"
Emmaleen sighs. "No. But like I just said. I'm not the best judge of character. That probably says more about how broken my threat-detection system is than it does about whether Giovanni's actually safe."
I keep my eyes on the road.
Process that.
Christ.
The silence stretches. I don't know what to say, so I let it.
She's the one who breaks it. "Lorcan?"
"Hmm."
"Should I be afraid of Giovanni?"
I look her in the eyes and nod. "Yes, Emmaleen. Ya absolutely should."
She blows out a breath. Turns her back to me. Stares out the window. Rests her head against it. "OK. Well. I'm tired. So…"
"Yeah. Rest. Sleep. You're not gonna miss nothin'."
And that's what she does.
She turns off.