Lagunov found Renard standing outside under Belle's window, overseeing the construction of her prison bars.
"Sir," he said, standing at attention.
"Yes?"
"You need to come see this."
Above all men, Renard trusted Lagunov, so even if the urgency in his voice hadn't gotten to him, that fact alone would have convinced him to follow. They jogged into the building and up three flights of stairs, into a room with several TVs set to different news stations. He turned up the BBC on the largest.
"—tripled the security on the Midas estate now that a threat for kidnapping has been found—"
"Threat?" He looked at Lagunov, feeling just the tiniest bit panicked. "We never sent a threat. Who sent a threat?"
"Wait." He pointed at the TV.
"—confirmed that Kathryn Midas is still in her father's home, and has not been abducted, despite the family receiving a ransom notice. Security in her room—"
Renard roared, considering never watching the BBC again because it only brought bad news, and slammed his fist into the wall. Lagunov said nothing when his arm sunk into the hole it made.
"Who was in charge? Who sent the notice without checking with me?"
"Polzin, sir."
"He will be punished."
"Yes, sir. I will get him now, sir."
"No." He shook his head. "It will wait."
"Yes, sir."
His phone rang while he paced, debating the merits of going and yelling at the prisoner versus going to his gym. This couldn't be good.
"Speak."
"You did not get Kathryn Midas?"
He recoiled from Elektra's voice, ashamed to have let her down. "We had no chance. She was not where she was supposed to be."
"You did not have a backup plan?"
"She made a surprise trip and none of my men were with her."
"And yet, you sent a ransom?"
Polzin could not be dead fast enough. "It was a mistake. Do not worry, I will be punishing the culprits."
"Who did you take, if not Kathryn Midas?"
"No one. We came back empty-handed." Kidnapping no one was less embarrassing than kidnapping the wrong woman, especially when it was so obvious now that Belle was not a Midas. He had even known that all of the Midases were blonde.
"Renard, we need that money!"
"Yes, I know." He pinched the bridge of his nose, but it provided no relief. "Do not worry. I will figure something out."
"Renard," Elektra purred, and he paused in his useless massage.
"Yes?"
"Do not disappoint me, my love."
"Never."
"Good." She hung up, and Renard heaved a sigh. Without another word, he strode from the room, leaving Lagunov behind. It would do him good to find out about his prisoner, maybe see if there was some way he could spin this into a good thing.
When he arrived at her door, he could hear the muffled sobbing that had his men looking antsy. He waved them aside, then rapped thrice on the metal before throwing the door open.
Belle lay on her bed, barefoot, curled up with a pillow between her arms. Her pretty makeup was running down her face, leaving mascara stains on the pillowcase. With her legs curled the way they were, her dress had ridden up to her thigh, giving him an eyeful of pale skin.
"Do you need something?" she asked, sniffling.
"It is dinner time."
"I'm not hungry," she said.
It was hard to tell by her congested, tearful voice whether she was being defiant or truthful, but Renard bared his teeth anyway. He was not in the mood for weeping women, and if she was going to fight him on something like food, then he was going to leave.
"Fine, then starve." He pivoted around.
"I am so sorry that I'm too sad to be hungry."
He didn't know if she meant for him to hear this or not, but he knew that he had heard it, and that this wasn't sincere, and he whirled back around, teeth bared.
"Watch yourself, girl, or you will find yourself less one bed, and a few fingers."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"You should be."
"Maybe." She lifted her puffy face from the pillow. "But you can't do anything worse to me than you did to my father."
He paused with his mouth open to retort. He didn't remember what she'd said her last name was, but he was sure he'd never done anything to her father. "What are you talking about?"
"You took a man's only daughter—the only family he has left—right from under his nose, and you don't even have the decency to allow her a phone call to tell him that she's not lying dead somewhere, or being sold into the sex trade."
It wasn't the way her reddened lip trembled or the way her blue eyes sparkled like prisms when they filled with tears that gave him pause—though those were lovely to look at. It was the fact that she spoke of her father, and no one had ever done that before, and no one had reminded him of fatherhood in a long time.
"I will call him."
He felt a surge of triumph at the way her eyes widened—finally, after all of her surprising him, he got to surprise her.
"What?"
"I will call him and tell him that you are alive."
She lowered her head back to the pillow, and more tears streamed down her face. "Will you tell him that I love him?"
"Yes."
"Thank you."
It took an hour of crying for Belle to venture off the bed and into the bathroom to wash her face. It was streaked with mascara and eyeliner, and a bubble of hollow laughter rose up in her throat at the sight. After her impromptu flight and long crying jag, she looked scary enough to frighten children, and a shower was just the thing she needed to make herself feel better.
She splashed some water onto her face and did her best to get the black lines off with toilet paper before going to inform her guards of her intentions, but she stopped halfway across the room. What if, instead of insuring her privacy, letting them know only egged them on to interrupt her? She knew that it was rude of her to assume that all of the soldiers were pigs, but she couldn't help the assumption.
Still, she didn't want them to barge in because they thought something was wrong. She had always lived by believing the best of people, and she wasn't going to stop now.
They both jumped when she opened the door.
"Excuse me," she said, wishing her voice sounded prettier and more polite, instead of stuffy and childlike. "I'm going to take a shower. I'll leave this door open for you?"
"Yes. That is good." The left guard nodded, and the right followed.
"Thank you." She ducked into a half curtsy of thanks that left the quieter of the two men with flushing cheeks, and then went in search of something to wear that wasn't her dress.
She found nothing, and it was too cold to just wear a towel, so she hung her dress in the bathroom to steam it while she showered. When she left the bathroom, however, there was a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt folded on the corner of her bed.
They weren't that big, which was surprising, and she wondered if the clothes were Renard's, since all of the men she'd seen were huge. Once dressed, with the sweatpants rolled to her ankles, she slipped her heels back on and clicked her way to the door.
"Excuse me." Both men turned to look at her. "Who do I thank for the clothes?"
They looked like she'd just asked them if they could fly. For long seconds, they were silent, having a conversation with each other through eye contact alone.
"Lagunov brought them. He had to find small clothes from—" They looked at each other again. "—someone."
Belle took this to mean that they were, in fact, Renard's clothes. They smelled like soap, and she found herself imagining if it would still smell the same on him, material stretching taut to accommodate his bulk. Did he always smell like soap, or was it just his laundry?
"Well, thank you. It was very nice of you to think of me."
"It was Lagunov. We did nothing."
"You had to say something, didn't you?" She lifted an eyebrow. "How else would he have known?"
They conferred in Russian for a few seconds, then the smaller one turned to her and said, "You are welcome."
She smiled, and ducked into a half-curtsy. If her guards were this polite, things shouldn't be too bad. It was a terrible situation, but if her father knew she was safe, then she would try her hardest to see it as an adventure.
"So, what are your names?" she asked once they had turned around.
They looked at each other, like they were trying to decide if they were allowed to continue talking to her.
"I'm Belle," she prompted.
"Petrov."
"Beitel."
"But we are not here to talk," Petrov said, furrowing his thick brow. "We are here to guard you."
"Well, you're here to keep me from leaving, right?" She fluttered her eyelashes—not as pretty with her chloroform burn, but it would have to do.
"Yes."
"So how can I leave if we're talking?"
They looked at each other again, and began conversing in low Russian. Belle waited, almost patient, until they both turned.
"Something could happen. We don't want to be distracted. It is for your safety."
Belle pursed her lips. She didn't like being told what to do, especially when it involved being locked in a room with no human interaction.
"Well—could I have a book, then?" She interrupted them before they could look at each other, stepping forward to say, "I could even read to you."
She bit her lip, fluttering her lashes until they were forced to look at each other again.
Renard appeared in front of the room to find his guards leaning against the door frame, Belle's clear voice drifting down the hallway. She was reading the Iliad, one of four books that he kept in his private office, and he was going to find whoever took it and throw them out a window.
"Sorry to break up this little party."
His men snapped to attention, but his prisoner had the nerve to look up from her seat on the floor like he'd done something wrong—like she planned to scold him.
"Hello, Renard. We were reading. Would you like to join us?"
He gritted his teeth. "Take a fifteen minute break," he said to his men, in Russian. They saluted and marched off. Belle closed her book—his book—and uncrossed her legs to stand up, taking her time like she didn't have a dangerous killer glaring at her from the doorway. Maybe he should rough her up a bit to wipe the ease from her movements.
"Thank you for calling my father. You did, right?"
"No."
She had the nerve to look angry, like he owed her something, so he started talking again before he could get mad about it. "I decided that it would make things worse. We will bring you a phone tomorrow and you will call him."
The look she gave him now was far worse than anger, and Renard had to force himself to hold his ground.
"Really?"
He thought he heard tears in her voice, so he averted his eyes from her face when he nodded. Before he could stagger away, her arms were around him. He had the sneaking suspicion that she was pressing her wet eyes into his neck, and he determined to be glad that he couldn't feel that as he patted her on the back with stiff hands.
"Thank you, Renard."
"Whatever." He tried to disentangle her, and when she stepped back, he took his first real look at her torso in an attempt to ensure that she was no longer touching him. "Are you wearing my clothes?"
She looked down at herself. "I don't know. Someone brought them to me."
Most of him was angry, and he clenched his jaw to keep his snarl at him, but a tiny part of him approved of his pretty prisoner having his things all over her. The rest of him was still a little unsettled from her hug. He wasn't sure that Elektra had ever hugged him without it turning into sex on a wall.
"Are you still reading?" he asked instead of answering.
"Yes, I think so. Unless you scared off Mr. Petrov and Mr. Beitel."
"They'll be back." He pushed his way into her room, gesturing for her to sit. "Start from the beginning."
He expected her to protest, because she'd protested everything else, but all she did was perch on the edge of the bed, patting the other side in invitation to sit, and turn back to the beginning of the book. He'd have joined her, but she had already hugged him and that was enough of not being touched for one evening, so he—Renard, the international criminal wanted by several countries, capable of killing anyone, anywhere with no more than a phone call—sat down on the floor against the wall to listen.