Sneak Peek Fairest
I can’t believe he took my phone.
That was the detail Luma White was focused on as she sat in the passenger seat of her Audi, hands bound in front of her and a blindfold slipping down around her nose.
Her phone – how much of an eighteen-year-old girl could she be?
That was what she was most concerned about, but on the other hand, it was easier to fixate on the phone than on everything else.
She’d been in the car for about three hours now.
The blindfold – made of some ridiculously silky fabric, definitely not kidnapping-grade – had begun sliding down her nose about an hour into the trip and she was grateful for that.
Riding in a car with her eyes shut always made her feel sick, and when her captor noticed that she could see again, she convinced him not to cover her eyes again.
“I’m already lost,” she said. “Isn’t that why you blindfolded me? So I wouldn’t know where we’re going? Mission accomplished.”
The man driving Luma’s car was her stepmother’s bodyguard, Antonio. Slave would have been a more appropriate word for how that woman treated him, but he’d always been nice to Luma.
Well, until today.
At least she was going to get through this without being sick. Silver linings and all that.
They were driving on a narrow, somewhat primitive road with tall, evergreen trees on either side.
It was dark thanks to the forest’s dense coverage even though they started driving around noon.
Antonio had appeared in the doorway of Luma’s room and told her he needed help running an errand for her father – that was a little unusual, but nothing to raise her suspicions.
By the time he was opening the passenger door of Luma’s car for her, telling her they were going to pick up some files at her father’s office, Luma started asking questions.
How did you get my car key? was the first one, but she never got an answer to that.
Once she was in the car, Antonio locked the doors and told her to put the blindfold on. Luma objected, and that’s when things got scary. He’d forced the blindfold over her eyes and she’d spent the first whole hour of the trip frantic.
The errand to her father’s office was a lie and Luma should have seen it coming – Antonio worked for her stepmother, and her father was out of the country. Luma hadn’t even questioned it when Antonio said it was for her father.
If Luma was thinking clearly, she should have been memorizing the turns of the car, listening for sounds outside that could help her, and keeping better track of the time.
But she’d known Antonio ever since she was a kid – since her stepmother, Tabitha, did her Vogue modeling spread and picked up a stalker in the process.
She hired Antonio to keep her safe, and Luma always felt safe around him, too.
Now, she was just scrambling to try and figure out what had changed.
Was he kidnapping her?
“Where are you taking me?” she’d asked before she realized the futility of demanding that sort of information from someone who’d blindfolded her.
When she got her wits about her a little more, she asked, “Why do I have to be blindfolded? Did Tabitha ask you to do this? What are you going to do to me?”
Antonio didn’t respond to any of her questions. He was dead silent from the driver’s seat, and when Luma’s blindfold began slipping down her nose, she could see that his eyes never strayed from the road ahead. Please just look at me, she thought. What are you doing?
Her last-ditch attempt to snap him out of whatever had overcome him was a threat that sounded weak even to Luma’s own ears. “Wait until my father hears about this.”
“Shut up,” Antonio said. “Please, just keep your mouth shut. ”
It wasn’t a favorable response, but at least he’d said something. His words sounded almost as pleading as Luma’s own questions, like he was frantically trying to find a way to justify all of this. Tabitha had to be behind it. Of course – Tabitha had always hated her.
So Luma shut up, and she waited.
She tried to be patient and wait for Antonio to come to his senses.
He’d do the right thing – she just had to give him time to come to his senses.
He’d abducted his boss’s stepdaughter while her husband was out of town on business.
Antonio was probably just trying to figure out how to take Luma home without letting her father know what he’d done.
Or rather, what Tabitha had ordered him to do.
It had to be the stupid modeling contract, Luma thought while Antonio drove them deeper and deeper into the woods. Damn it. I don’t even want to be a model.
Tabitha had blown up at her yesterday. She’d gone downtown in the morning to get her lips plumped and the aesthetician had used a new type of filler.
Tabitha’s lips had blown up like balloons and she came home looking like she had a pair of plump red hotdogs beneath her nose.
They looked painful and she was irritable, and then she’d seen the contract that Luma had left on the desk in her father’s study.
Luma wanted him to review it when he came home from his business trip.
She’d never imagined herself as a model, never wanted that kind of attention, but people kept saying she was beautiful and it was a natural fit for her.
She’d gone to the modeling agency mostly to humor the agent who kept trying to recruit her, and because she was eighteen now and she still didn’t know what she wanted to be when she grew up.
Why not a model? she thought when they offered her the contract. So she brought it home and promised the agency an answer just as soon as she had a chance to discuss it with her father.
Then Tabitha saw the contract and lost it. Luma had never seen her so angry, actual spittle flying from her over-puffed lips as she slammed the contract down in front of Luma.
“You don’t even want to be a model,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Luma. “You don’t want your trust fund, either. You don’t appreciate anything you’ve got, and it’s all just been handed to you. Ungrateful girl!”
Tabitha hadn’t spoken to Luma since yesterday, but the longer Antonio drove, the more certain she was that this was all Tabitha’s doing. Am I ungrateful? she was wondering for the hundredth time when the car hit a pothole and she could no longer ignore the fullness of her bladder.
“Antonio?” she asked softly.
“Don’t talk,” he said.
“Antonio,” she insisted, trying not to anger him. “I really have to pee. I can’t hold it much longer.”
She looked at him, and for once, he looked back at her.
She was begging him, wordlessly. Please.
On top of everything else, please don’t put me through the humiliation of wetting myself.
He hadn’t listened to anything else she said so far, but the desperation in her eyes was what finally cracked him.
He sniffed, then looked at the clock on the dashboard – probably trying to figure out how far they’d come from the house.
Far enough – Luma’s father loved to be in the middle of the action and he’d built his mansion in the center of the city.
Luma had never even been this far into the wilderness and it might as well have been a whole other country.
“Fine,” Antonio said. “Hold on a minute.”
“Thank you,” Luma said. “Thank you, Tony.”
He scowled at her. Was that too much, calling him by his nickname?
He never minded it before, but he’d never abducted her before, either.
Antonio found a dirt road that branched off the two-lane highway and turned onto it.
Road was pretty generous, actually – it was barely more than a couple of grooves worn into the dirt.
He drove the car just far enough so that it wouldn’t be seen from the road, then turned off the engine.
The passenger door unlocked automatically and Luma reached for the handle, but Antonio locked it again with the push of a button on the driver’s side door. “I’m coming around to get you.”
“Okay,” Luma squeaked. When he opened the door from the outside, he extended his hand to help Luma out – probably more through instinct than anything else.
She took his hand, shaking her head so the blindfold fell all the way down to her neck, and she said hopefully, “You know, Tabitha gets in her moods all the time. I bet by the time we drive home, she’ll have forgotten what she was mad about. ”
“Do you have to pee or don’t you?” Antonio asked.
“Yeah, I do,” Luma said. “But-”
She wanted to know what he was thinking. There was a wild, cornered look in his eyes that she really didn’t like, and things suddenly felt a whole lot more dire now that the two of them were standing alone in the great silence of the forest.
“Go, then,” he said. “There’s a bush right over there.”
“Okay,” Luma said meekly.
Her bladder really was aching – she’d just finished a pretty big smoothie when Antonio came into her room and she’d been squirming in her seat for quite a while.
Trying not to think about how badly she had to go was the only thing that had been distracting her from the awfulness of the situation, but she couldn’t ignore it anymore.
She went behind the bush, the heels of her shoes sinking into the soft earth and pine needles poking her bare legs as she lifted her skirt. Just as she was beginning to feel a bit better – about one thing, at least – she heard the Audi’s engine roar to life.
Oh, God, he’s leaving me out here!
Luma rushed to rearrange her skirt and darted out from behind the bush just in time to see Antonio floor the gas pedal. The tires spun in place for a moment, kicking up dirt and moss from the forest floor, and then the car gained traction and Antonio drove it straight into a tree.
“What the hell?” Luma shouted as the hood crumpled slightly and the engine died. A small tendril of steam was rising from the car and Luma ran around to the driver’s side. “Antonio, are you okay?”