7. Dani #2
Graham looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. “I kidnapped the wrong fucking girl. The wrong fucking girl.” He opens the door. “Here is where you’ll be staying until I figure out what to do with you.”
It’s not a storage closet—it’s a huge bedroom with a seating area and a couch.
My bags are on the coffee table. There’s a breakfast bar with snacks, a little mini-sink, and a fridge.
There’s a big TV across from a fancy king bed with a mound of pillows.
Everything is creamy whites and pale seafoam blues, with millions of dollars’ worth of art on the walls.
“A Central Park view!” I belly flop on the bed. “So soft.”
“Please take a shower before you get on that bed.”
I drag myself off.
“Bathroom is there. Closet is there.” His face goes dark. “I have your phone and your laptop, so don’t think about calling for help.”
He turns abruptly and heads to the door, my traitorous dog following.
“Is the minibar free?”
“Once you sober up,” the deep voice calls, “then we’ll talk.” He slams the bedroom door behind him.
“Yes, I don’t blame you for not wanting to be around her,” I hear him say to the dog. My dog.
The wine has twist-off caps. Um, what the hell? Right—because I’m technically kidnapped and corkscrews could be a weapon.
I pour myself a big glass of pinot grigio and select a bag of gummy bears from the tray on the cabinet.
“Maybe I need to be rationing these,” I muse as I strip off my clothes and head to the bathroom.
It’s all marble-clad with brass accents and deep-green wallpaper with little pink flowers. It is—ugh—my dream bathroom. I stare down at the people milling around in Central Park as the tub fills up. I take a big swallow of the wine.
I’m starting to sober up, and I can’t be panicking right now.
I’ll never be able to run in Central Park again.
“You don’t like running,” I remind myself.
I need to take photos. I need to add this to my Pinterest.
“You’re just going through social media withdrawal.”
But honestly, what was I thinking? He’s right—I am a moron. I should have escaped when I had the chance. When Piper finds out, she’s going to throw things at me.
I’m pathetic. A man shows a crumb of affection, and I just cave for him. I need my phone. I need to disappear into my safe digital world—a book, a little scrolling on real-estate TikTok.
But of course, when I dig in my purse, there’s no phone.
“I’m not going to make it.” I’m hyperventilating. I bang on the windows. “Help! Someone, help me, please! I’m trapped! I don’t have my phone! I need something to write with—lipstick!” I don’t wear lipstick. I have cherry ChapStick and a broken eyebrow pencil.
I slump down on the floor and start crying.
“I want my dad.”
Something beeps from my overflowing tote bag stuffed with papers and binders. Is that—
“Yes! My work phone! We’re saved! We can call for help. We can get out of here. We can go home. Maybe get a therapist. Sure, my mom’s going to be pissed, but isn’t she always disappointed, when you think about it?”
I glug more wine into my glass. It’s slightly sweet on my tongue. The dopamine hit is instant when I scroll through social media on the Svensson Investment phone.
There’s a ton of Slack messages from my various bosses.
Having IT issues, laptop not working, I type back.
VP: Okay, I need them to fix whatever the hell is wrong with it immediately.
Piper: Where are you?
Piper: I hate to put this on work chat but since you are always working…
Piper: Graham. Freaking. Richmond???
Piper: Why didn’t you tell me???
Dani: This is a very recent thing.
Dani: I’m at his house right now.
Dani: Correction—PENTHOUSE.
I pad into the bathroom and shrug off the robe and step into the hot bath, trying not to spill the wine. I don’t have the Kindle app on this phone. Boo.
I mean, I really should probably do a detox. I start to type a help message to Piper.
Dani: I’ve been kidnapped, you need to send—
I backspace on the message and sink into the pool-sized tub.
“What’s the rush, really? What was I even panicking for?” I muse as I scroll social media and laugh at a video of a dog who just ate a bee. “Poor baby!”
Everyone knows where I am. They know I’m with Graham Richmond. I could just chill out here until the cops show up.
Alone. By myself. In my own bathroom with my own bed.
It’s like a staycation in a five-star hotel.
Maybe it’s the mimosas at lunch. Or the fact that I’ve been plugged back into my dissociative digital world. But I’m suddenly not in as much of a rush.
Could also be all the rich food. I’m kidnapped, so I ate as much as I wanted—though that wasn’t a lot. Very small portions at that place. I wish it had been a buffet.
“I’m starving,” I tell the blessedly empty bathroom.
The bedroom door is locked, which means my dad or my granny or whatever man she brought home isn’t about to barge in. I can’t remember the last time I had a proper bath. I kick my feet in the warm water.
“Are you really kidnapped if you have access to a tub like this?” I pour more wine.
If I’m kidnapped, at least I’m not in a cellar. I don’t like the dark. I don’t like to be dirty. I don’t like the creepy-crawlies that live in a cellar. But this? This is nice. My own suite.
Now that I’ve had brunch and a really good coffee and way too many mimosas, I can appreciate the fact that I am finally, blessedly alone.
You don’t understand—I am never alone. Not when I wake up, because I share a dining room with my cousin and sometimes Gran’s boyfriends.
I can’t even use the bathroom in peace, because in the olden times they didn’t build enough bathrooms—they just had random sinks in the hallway or the bedroom—so my parents’ Upper East Side apartment is lacking in that department.
I never eat alone. I have to sneak food on the subway under the watchful eyes of a thousand angry New Yorkers in rush hour. Or stuff my face at my desk or at a company lunch.
Here? I am all by myself. In my own suite, with my own bed and a separate couch that I don’t have to sleep on.
Also… Colette’s mom thinks I am no longer single.
I scroll through my work phone. Now that I have a lifeline, I’m not ready to give this up.
Sure, I could tell Piper to have people come rescue me. Or I could order a pizza and garlic knots—or ooh, ravioli from that fancy place on Fifteenth Street.
If Graham wasn’t threatening Lulu, I might even be able to be his fake girlfriend for all his random family events.
I click through the delivery app, getting all the food that I usually have to sneak past my almond-obsessed mother. I buy extra. There’s a microwave in the breakfast bar. I place my orders and nestle the phone in the mound of towels, then stretch out my arms.
And who really knows how long I’ll be trapped in this opulence, anyway.
Call me crazy. Call me delusional. But a girl might be able to get used to this high-end prisoner life.
An idea starts to form in my drunken brain…
I don’t realize he’s there until he’s clearing his throat in the doorway.
“Are you sober enough to talk?”