3. A House of Lies
Chapter three
A House of Lies
Ilay collapsed on my side against the damp concrete floor, inches away from a rusted center drain.
The suffocating tightness in my throat reduced my breaths to a pathetic, high-pitched whistle.
Black spots swarmed the edges of my vision, swallowing the harsh yellow glare of the bare overhead bulb.
My hands rested empty against the grit, devoid of the strength to curl into fists.
The coarse stone scraped against my cheek.
The heavy metal door banged open.
“Doc! Over here, hurry!” one of the men yelled.
The frantic movement dissolved into a fading, dizzying blur. An older man in unassuming dress slacks rushed across the room. He carried a black medical bag.
“Move out of my way,” he ordered.
He dropped to his knees right beside my face. He ignored the panicked thugs hovering over us. He reached out and gripped my cashmere overcoat.
With a brutal jerk, he rolled me onto my back.
The movement slammed my bruised right shoulder against the unforgiving concrete. My head bounced once against the hard floor. I tried to gasp, but no air passed my swollen throat.
The older man yanked the zipper of his medical bag open. He pulled out a plastic cylinder. An EpiPen.
He didn’t hesitate. He pulled the cap off with his teeth and spit it onto the floor. He gripped the cylinder, raised his arm, and jammed the needle through the outer thigh of my maternity pants.
The metallic click of the spring echoed off the walls. A sudden, aggressive burn tore through my thigh muscle.
“Hold her shoulders down,” the doctor said, keeping his weight pressed against my leg. “Stop her thrashing. Watch her airway.”
Hands grabbed my coat and pinned me flat against the floor.
“Is she dead, Doc?” the thug asked. “Tell me she isn’t dead.”
The older man kept his hand steady against my thigh, holding the cylinder in place.
“Shut up and hold her down,” the doctor ordered. “The meds need a second to kick in.”
The epinephrine flared through my leg. The chemical heat radiated outward, forcing my locked airway open.
I heaved. A massive gasp of air broke past the barrier.
Oxygen scraped down my raw windpipe. A bitter, metallic taste coated my tongue.
I coughed, the spasm driving my shoulders into the concrete.
My fingers twitched, scratching at the damp grit.
I am alive. My baby is alive.
The impulse to open my eyes overwhelmed me. I wanted to see the men standing over me. But I knew better. If I looked at the kidnappers, I would become a witness. I would give them a reason to finish the job.
Every instinct screamed at me to pull my knees to my chest and curl into a protective ball around my stomach. Instead, I let my arms fall slack against the freezing concrete. I pressed my cheek flush to the abrasive stone and held my body still.
“Is she breathing?” the second thug asked.
His boots shuffled on the floor near my feet.
“Look at her chest.”
The older man shifted beside me. Clinical fingers pressed against the inside of my wrist, searching for a pulse against the bone. I held my hand limp under his touch. I focused on the scrape of his trousers over the grit.
“Her pulse is stabilizing,” the doctor said. “She’s unconscious from the shock, but she’s breathing.”
He released my arm, shifting his weight back onto his heels. I clamped my eyes shut. Two distinct sets of boots paced the perimeter of the room. The men muttered under their breath, their voices bouncing off the bare walls.
A shrill, electronic ring pierced the quiet.
The harsh noise resonated over the concrete. One set of boots stopped pacing right near my head. Fabric rustled as the man dug his phone out of his pocket. A harsh curse hissed through his teeth.
“Oh, great,” the thug said. “It’s Stanton. He’s calling for an update.”
Tobias.
The sound of my husband’s name felt like a lifeline in the damp room. He was negotiating, tracking me down.
“Answer it,” the doctor said. “And tell him exactly how close he just came to losing his asset.”
The rubber soles of the thug’s boots squeaked against the concrete. He paced in a tight, erratic circle mere inches from my ear, stopping and starting in his agitation. The cheap plastic of the phone casing creaked in his grip. His voice rang through the stark space.
“Are you out of your mind?!” he yelled. “You didn’t tell us she had a severe nut allergy! She almost suffocated, we had to drag our own doctor in here!”
I held my limbs motionless against the concrete. The freezing dampness of the stone seeped through my cashmere coat straight to my skin, triggering a fresh wave of shivers I had to suppress. I kept my eyes shut. Stanton, the man had said. Tobias. My husband was on the other end of the line.
A voice crackled through the phone’s speaker. The empty safe house carried the tinny audio directly to where I lay in the grit.
“Calm down.”
The cadence was unmistakable. It was the exact, polished drawl Tobias used when reprimanding junior analysts at his firm.
“Is she alive? That’s all that matters.”
The words made no sense. He sounded bored. Detached. Rather than begging for my safety or demanding proof of life, Tobias was managing a transaction. The sheer indifference of his voice filled the stark space. It’s a mistake, I told myself. He’s just playing along to keep them calm.
A hand shot out above me as the doctor stepped forward, snatching the device from the thug’s grip. The sharp rustle of his slacks broke the sudden quiet in the room. He held the phone close to his mouth.
“She’s alive now,” the doctor said, his tone detached and flat. “But that may not be the case soon if you keep operating in the dark.”
Static hissed across the open line. A second voice bled through the speaker, crisp and patrician.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
My mother’s voice carried through the phone. I lay paralyzed against the concrete.
“Tobias, let me handle this,” Lavinia continued, her tone thick with exasperation.
My mother. The woman who had fought the kidnappers on the sidewalk. The woman who had wept over my baby registry just hours ago. She wasn’t weeping now. She sounded annoyed by the inconvenience.
I drove my cheek harder into the abrasive grit of the floor. I focused on the sharp scrape of the stone against my skin to keep myself from screaming. Hearing them casually negotiate my life dissolved any lingering hope of a mistake.
“Listen, you arrogant twit,” Lavinia snapped through the speaker. “I see where this is going. You want more money. You won’t get it.”
The thug shifted his weight. His boots scuffed the floor, but he did not interrupt her.
“Just do your job and keep her locked up,” my mother instructed. “Rough her up if you have to. Make sure she stays alive. It’s hardly complicated.”
The casual cruelty of her tone hung in the cold air. They had not snatched me for a random payout. My own family had priced my terror and arranged the sale. I lay motionless against the damp stone, listening to my own mother authorize my abuse.
I pressed my eyelids tighter against the harsh yellow glare filtering through them. I did not move, but a single tear slipped past my lashes. It stung my skin, tracking through the dust on my cheek before soaking into the damp concrete.
Nearby, the doctor crouched back down.
“Pack the rest of that trash up,” the older man ordered. “I need to leave before your boss gets here.”
Metal instruments clinked together. The heavy zipper of the medical bag zipped shut with a harsh rasp. The two thugs resumed their restless circling, their low murmurs bleeding into the background.
I ignored them. I let my empty hands slide down the front of my maternity pants until my fingers brushed the edge of my cashmere coat. I gripped the wool hem.
The heavy weave of the fabric steadied me. My life—the curated marriage, the doting mother, the luxury baby registry—was a grotesque, manufactured lie. They had arranged a kidnapping to exploit a legal loophole. There was only one reason to bypass the trust fund guardrails. The Vandeveer fortune.
My father’s money.
Pieter Vandeveer had been a rigid, unyielding man. His imposing figure loomed in my mind, standing behind the mahogany desk in his private study. He had been a cold, suspicious man, but he had known exactly what Lavinia was.
“Tears are a useless currency in this world. When someone shows you they are a predator, you do not cry. You break their teeth,” my father had told me.
I had been young. I had thought he was a monster.
“Break their teeth? Is that what you want to do to Mom?” I had asked.
He hadn’t flinched at my accusation. He had stared down at me from across the desk.
“You blame me for turning away from your mother, but I’m not the one who struck the first blow,” Pieter had replied. “Listen here, Cecilia. Never bleed for someone who holds the knife. If you remember nothing else about me, remember this.”
He was right. He had been right about her all along. I held onto his words in the damp room, enduring the wave of grief as I twisted the wool tighter in my fingers.
I forced my fingers to unclench. The hem of my wool coat slipped from my grip, falling back against my thighs.
I could not afford to lie here and bleed for the people who had put me in this warehouse.
I dragged the heavy cuff of my sleeve across my cheek, wiping away the tear that had mingled with the grit.
I took a slow, deliberate breath, testing the painful swelling in my throat. It burned, but the oxygen reached my lungs.
“Doc, nothing happened,” the first thug argued.
His boots scuffed against the concrete as he paced near my feet.
“She’s fine now,” the man insisted. “We don’t have to tell the boss—”
“Are you insane?” the doctor snapped.
The brass hardware of the medical bag rattled as the older man hoisted it.
“I can’t keep this from him,” the doctor continued. “Just because she survived doesn’t mean we aren’t liable. What are we supposed to do now? She’s unconscious, but she—”
I planted my palms flat against the dirty concrete. The abrasive grit bit into my bare skin. Bracing against the chill, I pushed myself up to sit.
The three men froze.
The thug scrambled backward, his rubber soles squeaking against the stone. The doctor lowered his medical bag to the ground. The cavernous room plunged into a suffocating, ringing quiet as they stared down at me.
I squinted against the harsh yellow glare of the overhead bulb and locked my eyes on the men. They thought they were dealing with a docile, manageable asset. They were wrong.
“I am awake,” I rasped. “And I want to speak to your boss.”