A/n: I'm not even near the end of this story, mwahaha. Thank you for the reviews, keep em' coming!
Ch 10 - A Plan Revealed
The light hurt my eyes as I struggled to open them.
Even though an immense feeling of grogginess was rapidly growing within, it took me naught a second to realize I had no use of my arms...or my legs. Finally coming to, I realized I was sitting up against a large pole. My hands were tied behind my back, my legs tied in front of me. A piece of cloth had been tied around my mouth as a gag. The ache in my arms was almost unbearable, I wanted nothing more than to get up and stretch. The entire thought process was even painful - my head was throbbing so bad, it brought tears to my eyes. Shaking off nausea, I forced myself to take in my surroundings.
I appeared to be in a warehouse of some type. The ceilings rose high up into the air, and each wall was composed of dirty (some broken) glass panels. Water was everywhere, dripping from rusty pipes that ran along the ceiling rafters. I'd never seen anything like this warehouse in our general area, so I assumed we must have been driving for some time.
My stomach churned once again as I thought back to the events of this afternoon.
Why did I go with him? This man, whoever he was (who didn't seem to be present at the moment), had seemed real enough. He was wearing a Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital identification...it had to be real, right? The school was suppose to verify everybody that came through their office, which is why I didn't even bother to question it. They said something was wrong with my father, so worry might have been a factor too. I remembered the way he touched my cheek and the look of pure hatred in his eyes, before he knocked me unconscious.
What the hell were the odds that I'd be kidnapped once again? This was absurd, the entire thing. I was going to get out of this, kick this guy's ass and go home...where I belonged. I'd survived this one time before, I wasn't going to let anything defeat me ever again.
I quickly took back every thought, as the door to the warehouse opened and this man entered.
One sight of the black handgun, now enclosed in his hand, was all it took to dash my hopes of getting out of here.
I struggled fiercely against my bonds, hoping that they'd magically untie themselves. No such luck - I was only rewarded with immense pain, as the wire dug into the skin covering my wrists. I tried to yell against the gag in my mouth - the man just laughed maniacally as he watched me struggle.
I closed my eyes as he approached. Surprisingly, he reached around with a pair of wire cutters, and snapped the wire that bound my wrists together. I immediately sprung into action and flung a fist right at his face. He caught my oncoming punch in his hand and twisted my arm back, pulling me off my feet and pressing the barrel of the gun to my forehead. I stopped struggling almost immediately.
"Try that one more time, and mark my words Alexandra House, I will shoot you directly in the head," he said.
He forcefully pulled me over to another pipe that stood closer to the windows lining the warehouse walls. He frequently glanced outside, and shoved me down on the ground, back against the pipe. He pulled a length of wire out of his suit pocket and put the gun into the band of his pants. I waited until he glanced out the window once more and kicked him with my bound legs, hard, in the shins. Swearing, he took a foot and swung it backwards - I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming. He kicked me directly in the ribcage, the pain so blinding that I immediately went to crumple over. Before I could do so, he pulled me up and yanked my arms around the back of the pipe - binding them with heavy wire.
The pain was so tremendous, I found myself praying to a God I'd never known, to just end my life right here and now. Hyperventilating, I tried to overcome the pain and concentrate.
I flinched as the man walked towards me, yanked the gag from my mouth, and slapped me across the face. "I told you not to try anything else you little bitch," he said.
"Who the fuck are you, and why are you doing this to me?" I managed to croak out.
The man stared at me for several seconds before speaking.
"You're telling me you have no idea who I am?" he said as I shook my head, "I am Edward Vogler...I would have thought you'd hear that name quite a few times over the years, even if you were not born till after I left the hospital."
I tried to ignore the pain for a few minutes and found myself laughing hysterically, even though the pain. As a young child - I mustn't of been more than four of five at the time - my father used to come and tell me bedtime stories. He would shove aside the storybooks my mom liked to read to me and come up with stories of his own.
For a good three months, I remember him telling me the tale of Ivy, the beautiful, talented immunologist - who's mission in the world was to do good to every patient that passed through the hospital doors. She lived in a beautiful down in New England and was hated by no one. Even the village idiot, "Chase", was loved in her eyes. Everything seemed to be going fine in her world, plenty of people to "fix" - when everything changed. Her friend, a neurologist named "pimp daddy", introduced her to the most brilliant, talented diagnostician to ever grace the New England coast. This diagnostician, who everyone called "Dr. Sexy", fell madly in love with the beautiful immunologist. Dr. Funbags who ran the hospital, had agreed to give them both time off in the event they were to be married. The beautiful immunologist and the super cool diagnostician took time off to be married, when the evil village ogre - Vogler - crashed the wedding, jealous that the beautiful Ivy would be marrying and it wouldn't be to him. He tried to wreck everything, but the brilliant diagnostician saved the day. He stuck his trusty cane so far up Vogler's ass that it came out his mouth, and killed him instantly. The beautiful immunologist and the brilliant diagnostician lived happily ever after - in a spacious mansion with their trusty butler Wilson.
Vogler - THAT'S where I'd heard that name before...I'm almost positive that my dad's stories were not just coincidence. This must be the man my Uncle Jimmy told me about - the man my dad hated more than any other - the one who'd tried to fire my dad and take over the hospital. But wait a minute...why was he kidnapping me, I'd never even met the man. It dawned on me, suddenly, and I looked up at him.
"Oh yes, I think you know very well who I am," Vogler said, listening to me laugh.
I just stared at him, not daring to even ask for details. It turns out I didn't even need to ask.
"I hated your father from the moment I laid eyes on him," he began, "the entire time I was head of that hospital, he did everything in his power to disobey my orders. I tried to get rid of him, and was overthrown. Myself and my money were thrown, useless, aside. I left that hospital, intending to go on and find another empire to rule over. I wasn't so lucky - the fact that I'd been dismissed from your father's hospital became known to every company I planned to rule over. People began to question where I'd gotten so much money - how I owned so many companies. A police investigation was opened up on a tip provided by your father, of all people. Suddenly, all the faults I've made in my career were exposed. I was completely ruined - I took what money I had left and moved away. It was your father that ruined me, and I was going to have his head for this...though I didn't know how at the time."
"Sounds like you had it coming, you big lying son of a bitch," I said, feeling a bit empowered.
He ignored me and went on.
"I kept watch over your father in the years following my ruin. I devised a plan to have your father taken out - but then I got word that Dr. Cameron had given birth to his first child. I read a newspaper article, announcing the birth of you, showing you and your parents, smiling so happily - not knowing they'd ruined my life. I realized, that I wanted to destroy every bit of happiness that they had in their lives...like they had done to me. It took me years to plan it all out, but I did it. A former colleague of mine agreed to help me with my plan. I paid David Williams $50 million dollars, out of my personal savings account, to abduct you Alexandra. What he did with you after that point was his choice...as long as you never returned to your parents ever again. He walked into the clinic that morning, suffering a bout of made up symptoms, symptoms so fully researched - I knew they would admit him. I paid off a nurse, Nurse Brenda, who had enough of your father's abuse over the years. She helped David Williams escape from the clinic before his transfer upstairs, and pointed him to your whereabouts. You were not in day care that morning...it was fate. He snatched you from your father's office and took you back to his home."
I couldn't believe it - this entire thing was planned. David didn't bring me home to replace Marie's lost child - she was in on this entire thing...she KNEW. All those times she'd muttered sad words about her lost baby, she'd been acting. All the hurt and guilt I'd felt over her death…was for absolutely nothing. She KNEW…she was just as evil as David! Oh my God...and Brenda! She'd acted like my parents friends, all these years, and went and stabbed them right in the back. This was some messed up shit, it really was.
"Why they didn't kill you, andsend the bones to your parentslike I'd suggested, is beyond me. I came by to visit them once, and realized they'd decided to keep you as their own child...keep you alive, yet secluded from the world. It was against my better judgment not to just kill you myself, but the deal was done. I gained pleasure just watching your family on the television, frantically searching for their beloved girl...taken by a madman. I watched as the years passed and the search died down - I couldn't have been happier. I watched as news of your mother's suicide attempt aired...and laughed, watching your father tried to hold your mother up in front of the television cameras. I even came to visit David and Marie one year, when you were much older...and took pleasure in knowing you were locked upstairs...away from all." he finished.
That was him, I thought to myself. The one time the doorbell had rung, it had been him. David had pushed me upstairs so hard, I'd fallen and broken my arm.
"Of course, things totally went wrong the year you turned fourteen. You managed to escape due to their own lack of security. I watched as the news revealed you'd survived David's attempts at killing you with his car. I learned that David and Marie were dead, and you were back with your family...a survivor. I knew I couldn't let this happen, let all my efforts go to waste. Watching your smiling parents as you went off to your first day of school in eight years was the final straw."
"What are you going to do with me?" I found myself asking, rather timidly, still trying to take in everything that he'd just told me.
A grin, one so wide it resembled the Cheshire cat, grew on Vogler's face. The look in his eyes was pure evil. He bent down so we were face to face, and whispered:
"We're going to wait for your father to show up," he said, "and when he does - I'm going to kill him."