6
“I will bear it in mind, mother, but I doubt that person will be the daughter of a powerful ally, and I can guarantee that I will win this war without her assistance.” I straighten and make for the door. “Goodnight, Papa.”
He doesn’t try to stop me.
Behind me, I hear Tamara saying goodbye. I imagine my mother embracing the younger woman and whispering in her ear to try talking some sense into me, knowing this is one that she will never win.
Gianna
I pace the room wearing the white dress my captor provided for me.
I don’t need to see the price tag to know that it’s expensive.
It feels different against my skin, like the designer wanted the wearer to feel caressed when she wore it.
It’s not quite the vintage clothes I like to root around the thrift shops for.
I’ve always loved the thought of wearing a dress that might once have been worn and discarded by Marilyn Monroe, or Vivienne Westwood, or Judy Garland.
It’s like, wow, they don’t make clothes like this anymore.
But I have to admit that this feels good.
It’s just a shame it’s going to be wasted on an asshole I haven’t met yet because the loser sent a woman to do his dirty work.
I wander back into the bathroom and check out my reflection in the mirror.
The fabric clings to my breasts and hips in a way that jeans and sweaters rarely do.
So, my captor is a perv who wants to undress me with his eyes while he figures out how to dispose of me without spilling too much blood on the fancy carpet.
Well, I’ve got news for him. I bleed plenty when I’m cut.
I go back to the bedroom and pace some more.
I should maybe think about what I’m going to say to the asshole when he finally shows his face, but it’s hard to concentrate when I’m stopping every few steps to listen for sounds of movement outside the door.
Instead, I recite in my head the names of the women I met in the refuge. Maria. Evangeline. Hope.
Hope was one of the worst cases we saw. Her husband broke both her legs when she tried to leave him and then buried her alive on a construction site.
She was filthy when she was discovered by the emergency services and taken to the hospital where she spent months healing her broken bones.
But that’s the thing with hospitals: they can fix broken bones, but they can’t fix broken spirits.
Despite her horrific background, Hope was the woman who embraced every other victim in the refuge. She was the one who encouraged them to never give up hope. To believe that there was always better to come.
I sit down on the bed, tears welling in my eyes at the memories. And immediately jump up again, afraid to crease the dress before the asshole villain of the story decides to show his face.
Where the hell is he?
What’s so important that he can’t even come here and introduce himself?
Or is he hiding because I know who he is?
Fuck! I start pacing again, my thoughts scurrying about inside my head and tossing out random names.
Andy was American, I think. The spiky-haired witch could potentially be Russian or Eastern European, but it doesn’t automatically mean that the boss is Russian too.
Is it someone my father knows? Or my brother Daniel. Or Mel.
Xander?
My breath hitches in my throat, while my heart is trying to run the 400-meter sprint faster than Gabby Thomas. No, Xander won’t be behind this, not if he wants Mel to stay in his life. My sister would skin him alive if anything happened to me.
Seamus then? I’ve deliberately ignored any correspondence regarding my marriage to Seamus which, I’ll hold my hands up now that I’m stuck in a basement without an escape route, was probably a silly move.
But hey, I was just a gal enjoying her final moments of freedom before she walked into the execution chamber.
Okay, I’m being melodramatic, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it.
So, maybe Seamus and this potentially Russian asshole are at war. Maybe he’s holding me captive until Seamus backs down. Or offers him a reward.
Would Seamus pay to get me back though? I stop pacing and replay our nonexistent relationship in my head. Which takes about thirty seconds give or take a second or two either way.
I should’ve told Mel about the arranged marriage.
It hits me like a shopping cart at full speed that my sister would’ve been my only ally in the whole marriage-to-the-Irish-mob thing, and I didn’t tell her because my father made me promise not to. But promises can be broken, right?
Mel would never have let this happen. She’d have fought father all the way to keep me out of the family business like we’d always talked about.
Then, I wouldn’t have been on the plane, and I sure as shit wouldn’t be stuck in someone’s basement wearing a dress that looked like it belonged on a runway.
“What the fuck am I even doing?” I mutter under my breath.
I reach behind me, unzip the dress, and shrug it over my shoulders. “I’m not being dressed up like a doll for some crazy-eyed Russian fucker who can’t even be bothered to come and see me himself.”
I toss the dress onto the floor, pull on my jeans and hoodie, and flop backwards onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. He doesn’t get to tell me what to do. He might control the witch, but he doesn’t control me. No none does.
But the dress is burning a hole in my brain from its crumpled heap on the floor, so I sit forward, pick it up, and smooth out the creases. If he wants me to wear it, he can ask nicely. Still, I fold it neatly and leave it on the end of the bed because it’s what my mom would’ve done.
I lose all track of time. You don’t realize how badly you crave daylight until it is gone, and then it’s like your body is straining to get outside, to soak up the sunshine, and fill your lungs with fresh air.
I lie down and close my eyes. I sit up and stare at the stupid curtains hiding the stupid brick wall.
I walk back and forth, back and forth, counting my steps in Serbian to keep up with learning the language widely used in Montenegro, and getting the numbers muddled inside my head.
Then, on my hands and knees, I crawl around the floor trying to find something that I can use as a weapon against him if I don’t die of boredom before he gets here.
There’s nothing. I don’t know how many people the asshole keeps imprisoned down here, but he seems to have gone to great lengths to make sure they can’t hurt him. “Coward.” My father always said you can’t trust a coward.
On my back on the floor, I slide my head under the bed and try to unscrew the legs, but it’s not that kind of bed.
I feel the underside of the frame, but it’s solid.
In the bathroom, I try to break the pipe leading from the toilet cistern to the ceiling, but without something heavy to use, it’s impossible.
I wash my hands again. Stare at my face in the mirror again. Unfold the white dress, and fold it back up again.
I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to wear me down by keeping me waiting. He thinks that he can come in here and find me a quivering mess who will beg for her life.
“Think again, asshole.”
I eventually fall asleep and dream of smashing the unknown asshole’s face with the pipe from his own toilet cistern while yelling at the top of my lungs, “No one puts baby Gianna in a corner!”
“Wakey, wakey.”