Chapter Thirty-One #2
“What’s going on?”
She sighed softly, “I know it was abrupt. I’m sorry. With things… escalating between you and Bec, I needed to act. Fast. Before it was too late.”
“What are you talking about?” I urged.
“You see this place,” she looked around and pushed her glasses up her nose. “It was my family’s business… until it wasn’t. Want to know why?”
“Andi…” I began, but she wasn’t listening to me. Lost in her own world.
“Bly Enterprises. They bought it years ago, and my family thought they were going to help us grow. But no!” Her voice began rising, “They closed it! Turns out, they only bought it for the real estate. But did they do anything with the building?” She motioned around us, “Nope! It has sat here for years… years, Rome!”
“Okay,” I began to placate softly. “I understand that’s hard. But what does that have to do with me? Why am I here?”
She sighed, sitting on a stool I hadn’t noticed before that was just outside my enclosure.
“Well, I thought I had won. William Sr. was out of the business, and Bec was wiping the floor with him. She even sold the building back to me, not that she knew that. Everything was working how I had wanted it to… how I had planned.”
“Planned?” I asked.
She nodded, “I started working for Bec in the hopes of taking down William Sr.—the man who ruined my family’s legacy.
I was patient, and I was careful… I was brilliant.
And it worked. Hell, I made sure his future business would fail too, by feeding him false data.
He thought it was coming from our analysts—but nope—it all came from me.
He lost everything.” She smiled happily, “It was perfect.”
“Where do I come into all of this?” I asked again, even more confused.
“Well, I met you,” she explained as if it was obvious. “I met you and I knew I needed you. I had accomplished taking down William Sr.—you were next.”
“You wanted to take me down?”
She laughed, “No, silly, I wanted you. I had seen the way you flirted with me, opened all my doors like a gentleman, and asked me about my life. I knew you wanted me, too. But you were distracted, so I took care of that.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Andi?”
She sighed in exasperation, “Bec was distracting you. So I worked to take her down. If she crashed and burned, you wouldn’t want her anymore. It’s simple, really.”
“Oh my God…” I mumbled. Andi was actually insane. I thought over the last few months and the challenges Bec had faced. The rumors, the kidnapping attempt, and even the board's disapproval all ramped up after I was hired. “You had her kidnapped?”
Andi nodded, “You’re smart, Rome. So I had to make sure you didn’t suspect me. I used Melissa’s cousin and some goon I hired off of the street… though I wasn’t expecting a car chase.”
“Why did you do that?” I asked, bewildered.
She shrugged her shoulders, “Your fake relationship, of course. It was working too well.”
I scrubbed a hand across my jaw. “The notes? That was you?”
She nodded again.
“What did they mean?”
She waved me off, “Nothing. It’s some random passage I found in a book. I figured it would be enough to keep your focus on the hypothetical threat so that you wouldn’t notice me. I just added her name a few times and called it a day.”
“Goddamn,” I mumbled. “What about the rumors William Sr. was spreading?”
If she had wanted to destroy him, it didn’t make sense that she would work with him.
“It was a simple cost-benefit analysis,” she began.
“I’ve learned a lot working with Bec. William Sr. would make a little headway on his mountains of debt, but not enough to make a real dent.
He also wanted the same thing I did, just for different reasons.
He thought he was manipulating me into working with him.
” She laughed a hard, maniacal laugh, “He’s not very smart. ”
I took a steadying breath, sliding back down the wall, my legs stretching in front of me, “So what now? You did all of this to get to me. What are you going to do with me now?”
She smiled again, “We wait.”
One Month Ago, December 28th
“Rise and shine, my love,” she sing-songed as she wandered into the room.
Andi was fucking crazy. I had always gotten a bad vibe around her, but had assumed it was just a harmless crush. Nope, she was in fact bat-shit insane.
“Let me out,” I demanded, for the forty-eighth time. Yes, I had counted; there was nothing else to do in here.
Andi laughed lightly as if it was all a big joke and not that she had held me in a glass cage for over a month.
With the ample thinking time I had been provided, I had deduced I was in an abandoned vet office or lab—something to that effect.
I had learned that when Andi started working for Bec, she had just dropped out of veterinary school.
With her whole rant when I first woke up in here, it was easy to assume the family business was a veterinary clinic of some kind.
I assumed we were in the very same building she had talked about being bought and later sold.
The room I was in was sterile like a lab, the floors were a cold white tile, and the walls matched.
The enclosure I was in was built for an animal, with spouts for water on the back wall that didn’t work, and anchors for chains were bolted into the floor.
The enclosure was driving me crazy. Since I had awoken that first time, Andi came once a day with food, water, and a change of clothes.
I had readily accepted the food but had refused the clothes.
It was my last stand against her crazy ass.
I was still dressed in my blood-stained black dress pants and shirt. They reeked, but I had stopped caring.
“We have a grilled cheese, some veggies, orange juice, and milk… you need the vitamin D,” she explained as she pointed to the different items on the tray.
“You could let me out and I could see the sun and get the fucking vitamin D that way,” I mumbled as I slumped against the wall, sliding onto the floor, and stretching my legs out in front of me.
She ignored the comment. In fact, she had ignored half of the comments I had made. “I also have a few protein bars here; we don’t want you losing all those muscles,” she emphasized with a wink.
God damn, I was screwed.
She slid the food through the small hole to my side that I was unfortunately too large to fit through. Trust me, I had tried.
“Your funeral was today,” she began.
I pulled at the roots of my hair, “Stop it.”
I couldn’t think about what my family was going through, what Bec was experiencing.
Andi had told them I had died. It was in the hopes of calling off any search for me sooner rather than later.
From the bits and pieces she had dropped into conversation, I knew the search and rescue had turned to a search and recovery mission.
Not that there was anything to recover. Because I was alive and in a fucking cage.
“It was a beautiful service,” she continued, ignoring me as usual. “You were buried next to your father. Oh, your mom was just beside herself.”
“Andi, stop.” I demanded again.
“Bec had Malachi and Alexandra with her the entire time. She’ll move on. I never wanted her to be hurt. She shouldn’t have fallen for you. This is all her fault, really…”
I cut her off as I threw the food tray at her with all the strength I had. It impacted the wall with a force strong enough to shake the glass, but it didn’t break. Clearly, it was built to withstand something stronger than me. “Shut the fuck up!”
Andi stared at me with wide eyes. It seemed I had finally broken through to her. I had tried everything over the months to get her to really listen to me. Half the time, it was like I was talking to a wall. It made me wonder how deep into her delusion she was.
I stood slowly and approached her the way I would a deer. “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t, but I would say anything to get out of here and go home. “I’m not myself, I just want to go home.”
She sighed and rested her palm on the glass enclosure, “I know, but you can’t. You’ll get distracted again, and we can’t have that.”
“Distracted by what?” I needed to keep her talking. If I could find the chink in her armor, maybe I could talk myself out of here.
“Her… Bec.” She spat Bec’s name like it was acid on her tongue. “She can’t have you!”
“She won’t,” I tried to placate. “You’re right, I was distracted… but I’m not anymore. Let me out, and I can show you.”
Andi backed away slowly and shook her head, “Not yet. I need to find a way to get you out of the city. Then we can go together.”
The city? I was still in New York City. Well, that was a start. At least I was close to home. If I could just get out of here, I could get home… to my mom and my sisters… home to Bec.
“Let me help,” I insisted.
Andi softened for a moment but shook her head again, “I can do this. I need to do this.” She turned to leave but glanced over her shoulder, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
The door shut behind her with a hard click.
My head fell against the glass as I sighed in frustration. I would get out of here. I had to.
Nine Hours Ago, January 17th
Another month had passed.
Every day, like clockwork, Andi would arrive with the food and clothes. She’d talk about leaving the city, and I would beg her to let me leave or to let me help. She would insist she had to do it alone, and then she’d leave me… again. Day after every goddamn day.
I was losing my mind in these walls. I had no sense of time or day. Hell, it could have been two months. I was simply guessing based on how often Andi had brought me food. Ninety-one meals… thirteen weeks. Thirteen weeks that I guessed I had been locked in here.
My funeral had come and gone. My family was mourning me. My heart broke thinking of my mom, knowing she had buried my dad… and now me. My sisters would recover someday, but if I didn’t make it back, their lives would be forever changed.
My Bec… I needed to get back to her. I had promised her I would never leave her. That I would be a constant in the chaos. I refused to be another person who let her down. Death wouldn’t keep me from her; nothing would.
I felt some peace knowing that Malachi was there for her, giving her comfort in the moments when it all felt too big. But someday he would have to go home, as would Will. She would be left alone, abandoned by the one person she should have been able to count on. Me.
I needed to get home to her.
I couldn’t imagine how the company was faring after the drama of the last few months.
I sat upright quickly as I remembered the board meeting.
Shit, I needed to get out of here. If Bec was removed as CEO because stupid Andi decided to kidnap me—because she lost her goddamned mind—I was going to be livid.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered as I counted the days on my hand.
If I hadn’t lost any days, the meeting was in a week. If I had lost days, which I must have between being drugged twice, shot, and caged like a dog without sunlight, the meeting could be happening sooner than I thought. Maybe it had already happened. Fuck.
I looked around my cage, looking for anything to help me get out.
All I had were a stack of trays from my meals, the small mattress and blanket in the corner, a hole that had seen unfortunate things, as it was all I had for a bathroom, and the stack of clothes Andi had been giving me to change into.
The door was latched shut, but there was a keyhole on the inside of the door. I had tried to pick it with what little I had, but nothing had proved fruitful. It was some sort of safety lock, meant to unlatch in case of emergency.
I rifled through the clothes that I had abandoned the moment they were given to me. I wanted as little to do with Andi as possible. There were sweatpants, a few hoodies, a couple of band tees, one pair of jeans, and a hoodie with my favorite football team logo printed on the front.
“Did she pick these out for me?” I mumbled to myself. They were all brand new and my exact size. How had I not noticed how attentive she had been before? Sure, I knew about the crush. But the insane level of attention to know things like my underwear size should have been more apparent.
The clothes weren’t overly helpful. I racked my brain, trying to find a use for the clothes, when an idea sparked. Literally.
An idea, if executed wrong, could kill me.
Hell, I was dead anyway. What did I have to lose at this point?