45. Dani
DANI
Graham’s family stands there in shock after he leaves. His mom is still quietly sobbing. Lulu whines at my feet, looking between me and the door where Graham just left.
“Look, just… It wasn’t like that,” I offer lamely.
“So Graham didn’t kidnap you?” Frank’s voice is steely.
“No, I mean, he did sort of, but it wasn’t like a kidnapping kidnapping, you know?”
They don’t.
My eye throbs from where I got knocked in the face with a dildo. I’m jet-lagged and hungover, and I’m behind on work stuff. The unspoken rule—well, spoken in the case of the VP I work with—is that you need to reply to an email within five minutes. I’m like two days behind on some of my emails.
I’m not sure how to explain without making myself look like a total nutcase.
Aurora wipes at her eyes. Ryan’s hugging her.
“I am so sorry,” his mom says. I can tell from the way her mouth turns down at the corners that she is truly sorry. That makes me feel even worse.
“Graham didn’t do this.” I point to my eye.
“You don’t have to lie to protect him.” Aurora takes a shaky breath. “I guess we have to go give this video to the police.” She looks both incredibly old and incredibly young.
“Whoa, the police?” I wave my hands.
“No, you’re right. The FBI,” she says faintly.
“The FBI?”
I’m getting visions of my mother finding out and freaking out. Of everyone laughing about how I made the whole thing up. I’ll have to admit that I blackmailed Graham. That everyone was right and I am ugly and gross and a loser and no man would ever actually want me.
I will be the laughingstock of the Upper East Side. My parents will disown me. Well, Dad won’t, and honestly Mom won’t either, but she’ll be so guilt-trippy that I’ll wish she had.
I’ll have to move. Probably somewhere like small-town Ohio, because it’s not like I can afford to move back to St. Moritz.
“Why don’t we… uh…” I say.
Frank has his phone in hand. He pauses.
“Let’s just give Graham a minute to… It’s just… It sounds like he’s sorry. Maybe he’ll turn himself in?” I offer.
Unless I catch him first. There has to be some way of making this story go away.
Or maybe he’d actually rather be in prison than be with me. Maybe he realized he was caught in some sort of delusion, then woke up, and was like, Why do I have this pasta addict in my apartment?
“We need to go to the authorities. Graham is on the run. He’s dangerous,” Frank says firmly.
“Yeah, but let’s not turn it into a circus. No one wants a manhunt in the streets of Manhattan, right? I’ll text him that he has until tomorrow morning to turn himself in—”
“Tomorrow morning?” Frank’s mad.
“Dad…” Ryan’s eyes are watering. “He’s my brother, Dad. I can’t…” Ryan makes a helpless gesture.
“If anyone finds out we sat on this information…” Frank pinches the bridge of his nose.
“You’re not worried about all of us. You’re not worried about Dani, or Mom. You’re worried about you.” Ryan sounds tired. “You’re worried about how this will make you look, aren’t you?”
“Graham needs to hang, Ryan,” Frank snaps.
“I think that’s a little hasty.” I grimace.
And if Graham hangs, then I truly will always be alone.
“Stop it, Dad. Stop it!” Ryan yells.
Both my phones are going off in my bag.
“Sorry, one sec.” I grab my personal phone, and my stomach drops.
Colette: I know what you did.
Colette: I’m going to let everyone know.
Colette: I have video proof.
The video. The video. Oh my God—Colette is on the StreetAI account.
Oh shit. Fuck. All the curse words.
Colette: Answer me. Now, Dani!
Dani: Please just don’t do anything with the video.
Dani: Okay, I’m heading to the office.
I hoist my purse strap. “I have to go. I’m sorry. Please don’t contact the police,” I call behind me.
“Dani, you can’t go near Graham. He’s dangerous!” Aurora gasps.
“Oh, I’m not, I’m going to the office. Work emergency. Investment banking. The world could be ending, and I’d still be expected to be making trades to profit off the dinosaur-killing meteor. You know how it is!”
The door slams behind me.
“Frickety frickety fuck,” I mutter as I bounce my leg, waiting for the subway to whisk me downtown.
Colette has the video of Graham kidnapping me. What’s she going to do with it? What does she want?
I start to text Graham then stop. Lulu sits in my lap on the train as I worry.
Would this set him off? He’s clearly not been himself. Or maybe that is his true self. Should I just let the FBI take him? Maybe that is for the best.
I think about how unhinged he’s been the last week and a half. The reality is, I don’t actually know him. His mom and his family certainly think he’s this horrible person.
Maybe I’m the delusional, crazy one, and I just ignored all the red flags because all I wanted in life was to be the popular girl who all the boys wanted.
The office is mostly empty when Lulu and I arrive, walking through the empty lobby. Colette and the Girl Squad are waiting for me in one of the soundproofed conference rooms that they use for clients who need extra privacy.
My mouth is dry. Lulu growls softly when I set her on a leather swivel chair.
“Listen, Colette,” I say in a rush. “I know what it looks like, but that video is misrepresentative of Graham’s and my relationship. It was just a joke…” I’m desperate. “He wasn’t actually kidnapping me. It was just a weird”—I swallow—“sex thing. So could you please just keep it under wraps?”
“Ummm…” The Girl Squad gasps in shocked laughs.
“What?” I’m confused.
“I’m sorry, you think I have a video of Graham kidnapping you?” Colette says slowly.
“No!” It feels like we’re back in middle school and they’re all triangulating me and gaslighting me to act like I’m the bully, when they’re the ones who took pictures of me in the locker room and posted them on MySpace.
“Oh. My. God,” Colette says slowly as it dawns on her. “That video of the girl from the cat cam was you!”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Pull it up, Greta,” Colette orders her.
There’s the grainy video on the screen.
“That is so your jacket!” Colette grabs my coat.
Damn it, Costco.
“Look at it.” Colette points to the screen.
The Girl Squad gasps.
“I didn’t get kidnapped. That wasn’t me,” I beg them. “What video do you have? Why did you call me here?”
“Um, the video of you cheating on Graham.” Greta tosses her hair.
“After he spent all that money on your bachelorette party.” Maya shakes her head.
“You’d think that she’d be grateful that Graham even talked to her, let alone let her be his girlfriend,” Nora says, disgusted.
“I wasn’t cheating on him,” I protest.
“I have a video of you.” Colette smirks.
Greta rolls the video on the screen. “I can’t believe you have a weird sound when you have sex.” Colette snickers.
There’s me with a shadowy figure. I’m on the carpet, getting railed.
“That is Graham!” I scream at them.
“Liar. You’re having sex with a ski bum,” Colette accuses me. “Nora saw you sneaking out of that party.”
“Graham flew in to see me. Because he loves me. He cares about me.” Angry tears prick my eyes, and I clench my fists.
Lunatic or not, I am not ready to give up on Graham Richmond. Especially not in front of my frenemy and her flying monkeys.
I never should have told him he was a kidnapper. What was I thinking! What if he actually dumps me for real?
“He flew to Switzerland just to see me because he missed me and he loves me and he couldn’t stand to be away from me,” I tell them. “Pause the video. See? Zoom in on his face.”
“Oh wow. That really… Wow.” Greta sounds shocked.
“It is him.” Nora’s eyes are wide.
“I don’t believe it.” Colette crosses her arms.
“I mean, now that she says it, it does sort of look like him,” Maya says uncertainly.
“We can’t just blast the video if it is him,” Nora whispers. “My dad does business with his company. My name cannot be attached to whatever little vendetta you have going on, Colette.”
“It’s not a vendetta,” Colette snaps. “So what if that’s him in this video? That’s definitely Dani in that kidnapping video.”
“I bet she wasn’t even kidnapped,” Greta says, nodding sagely.
“Of course she wasn’t really kidnapped,” Colette snaps at her. “She’s out here walking around, isn’t she? She obviously staged it.”
“I… What?”
“Oh, this is rich.” The corner of Colette’s mouth curls up. “You did some unhinged shit when we were in high school, Dani, but this is a new level of desperation.”
She turns to the Girl Squad and announces triumphantly, “Dani tried to fake a kidnapping to get Graham to like her.”
“Deranged.”
“Lunacy.”
“It’s jealousy, probably.”
I clamp my mouth shut. It would make this worse if I told them that actually Graham was the kidnapper.
“I wonder if that’s how they met.” Colette continues, “Dani tried to pretend to be a kidnapping victim since he has that human-trafficking charity.”
“She just wanted sympathy from him,” Greta says in disgust.
“What a desperate weirdo.” Maya nods.
“I’m going to Vanity Rag with this.” Colette grabs her jacket. “You’re trying to scam Graham, obviously.”
“And culturally appropriating kidnapping victims,” Nora adds. “The Svensons aren’t going to like that.”
“Guess you’ll lose your job too. Oh well!” Colette blows me a kiss, and Greta unhooks her laptop.
“Wait, you can’t!”
Lulu is loose, and I can’t catch her, and my stupid purse is caught on the armrest.
I’m going to lose everything.
By the time I huff down the hallway to the elevator lobby, it’s too late. The Girl Squad cackles as the doors close.
I pace back and forth as I wait for the next elevator. And wait. And wait. Ugh—they must have done something. Probably what we did when we were kids in the building and smashed all the elevator buttons.
There is the freight elevator.
I scoop up Lulu and trek to it, heart pounding, hands shaking. I need to stop Colette. I have to. I can’t have her plastering that video all over the news. My life will be over—like, completely over.
The freight elevator is dingy and jostles as it slowly takes me down to the loading dock. I try to strategize about how I’m going to stop Colette. It’s hopeless, because—let’s be honest—once that video comes out from the delivery robot, I’m toast, no matter if I stop Colette or not.
God, I never should have tried to blackmail Graham.
I never should have tried to get him to be my boyfriend.
I should have just taken the money. They’re right—I’m not the type of girl who men fall in love with, certainly not men like Graham.
I should have just been happy with my life, because now it’s basically over.
Tears blur my eyes as I walk across the loading dock to the door out to the alley. It’s freezing rain, and I’m fishing for my umbrella under the yellow security light over the stair landing, sniffling as my nose runs.
I don’t see the masked man until Lulu barks.
“What are you—”
Huge, gloved hands grab my waist. I kick at the man as he picks me up.
“Help! Help!” I scream. But there’s no one in the alley to hear me. No one to help me.
Lulu’s dragged along with me, barking at my kidnapper.
Because that’s what’s happening.
I’m being kidnapped.
There’s a big black luxury sedan idling in the alley, with the trunk open.
The kidnapper shoves me in then slaps me hard in the face when I kick him in the stomach. Dazed, I clock that he’s duct-taping my wrists.
Lulu whines as she’s thrown in next to me.
Then the trunk slams.
And I’m trapped.
In the darkness.
Alone.