3
The villa was fabulous.
Dutch white walls, shiny brown wood floors, wide arched doorways and two-story windows, and huge floor spaces.
I scoped out "my room" the second I closed the door. Tasteful oak furniture, a massive bed, and more windows were the fruits of my search. Everything was big and available to the eye. Unless I were to acquire a chainsaw and dismember the posts of the bed frame I had nothing to protect myself with. Not against a gun.
I had also tried the two glass-paned doors in the hallway that led to my room. Not only did they not budge but the doorknobs had some sort of warm vibrations in the handles. Objectively, it was possible but much too obvious to break the windows out and run. Where would I go? The only way I got here was through two days on a dank boat with the smell of salt and rust.
And what would happen if he caught me? If someone else beside him found me?
I was a smart girl, and infinitely patient. I learned to be a long time ago.
For now, there was no need to panic or act drastically—that was a fool's game. When you have no plan and nowhere to go, the best thing to do was wait. I couldn't verify that what lay out there was any better than what I had at my disposal in here. There was apparently food here, water, a bed, and I hadn't tested the limits of the Mr. Edward Cullen that kept me captive; and so I would play on my best behavior and wait. I started with bathing.
Standing in the decadent shower of porcelain and black stainless steel, I closed my eyes and scrubbed. Mr. Cullen was, so far, amiable enough. And dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
Anyone who could shoot a man point-blank and not blink twice at it was someone to be cautious around, as that obviously wasn't the first time he'd had to do so. All I wanted to know, really, was why me. I wasn't rich. I had no connections to anyone. I didn't know too many people, and whoever I did know didn't seem like bad people.
But my mother….
I shut the water off and stood in the steam and heat for a moment, just staring into the drain.
If this was about my mother, then all bets were off. She was a woman of little to no debts, but pretty powerful as well, and one doesn't claim power without stepping on a few toes.
I made it my business to stay out of her business. Any dealings she was in I was ultimately oblivious to since the day I was born, by choice. But television and the media loved to paint pictures of corrupt businessmen who dealt in the shadows. What if this wasn't unalloyed gossip? I speculated on this as I looked through the hangars of clothes in the closet of the bedroom.
As the woman in charge, she could have pissed off any number of people. Fired someone, hired someone, docked their pay, insulted their sister—an infinite amount of things, really, and none that I would put past her. She liked to make the tough decisions, and she handled them so ice-cool-y you'd think she made a hobby to crush people's spirits. Maybe one of those, or even a couple of those people wanted to get back at her.
Or, she started a business monopoly that hindered the wrong people. That man in charge wanted her to knock it off, she refused, and I'm meant to be some big piece in changing her mind.
She could, although hard to believe, owe someone a lot of money, and I was the leverage for it. She pays, or I do.
As promised, I heard a soft buzzing go off outside the bathroom door. That would be dinner.
Okay.
I'd chosen the more casual pieces provided for me. A pair of deep blue jeans and a white long sleeve. Tasteful, sociable, unassuming. I put my hair up in a rubber band, found one pair of flats out of twenty on the shoe rack.
This was clearly something premeditated, my being here. Clothing my size, shoes that fit, toiletries I've purchased in the past. I was more impressed at the research done than disturbed. It would be bad taste and too predictable to bring me here with scraps to wear, smelling of my own filth in some underground hostel or something.
That was how one would think a kidnapping would go, and so far, my past two days have gone nothing as I could have foreseen.
I would be grateful for it all. I would take advantage of everything and look closely at nothing but my captor, because there was every chance in the world that this could have turned out a lot differently. That they still could.
Patience. Infinite patience.
I opened the door to the hall and looked up into Mr. Cullen's piercing green stare.
A/N: Thank you for the time :).
