Emily woke up, head swimming, eyes bleary and unfocused. She attempted to move, intending to touch a hand to the swelling bruise on her cheek, but found herself restrained.
Ian approached behind her almost silently and, but for the unmistakable scent of his cologne, she wouldn't have known he was there. Wordlessly, he moved as if to brush her hair away from her face, but instead wrapped a hand around her throat: a threat clear as day, even if he didn't tighten his grip.
"Where's my ring?" he asked at length, tone level, but a demand nonetheless.
"I flushed it," she answered, swallowing thickly as he removed his hand.
He laughed to himself as if there were anything amusing at all in her response.
She couldn't help the faint nervous laughter that fought its way past her own lips.
"I spent seven years in hell because of that ring..."
She shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about..." she insisted.
"Don't play dumb with me," he snapped. "I know you've started to remember..."
Ever since Derek had given her that rose, her world had been turned on its head, memories of another lifetime flitting about her mind, not quite fitting into any sort of linear timeline, but distinctive enough that she knew something wasn't right about her life.
"Is that why you've done all this?" she asked. "Why you locked me up, why you're trying to frame Derek? It's not going to work, you know... You're not going to get away with this."
Ian backhanded Emily across the face, making her eyes water with pain. "You may have bested me once before, but this is a very different world and there are no fairy godmothers to protect you now..."
From behind her, there came the distinctive metallic click of a switchblade escaping its sheath. She held her breath as the cold metal of the blade slid along her neck.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked, almost pleasantly. "Pure iron... Back home, I couldn't have even smelled the thing without immense pain but..." He chuckled to himself. "Do you know what they did to me in that prison? They branded me with hot iron pokers – not even magic can heal those wounds, those scars will never go away."
Without further fanfare, he began carving her chest with the tip of the blade with almost surgical precision.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked wearily, struggling to keep the threat of tears out of her voice. "Why are you keeping me alive?"
"I want you to watch as I take away everything you love."
An errant sob escaped in spite of her best efforts to keep it at bay. "I know what you want..."
"Do you really?" he asked, brow raised skeptically.
"You want things to go back to the way they were, back when we first came here... I can do that."
"You think that'll save your skin?"
"I have no illusions. But I'm tired of this – of being afraid." She shook her head slowly, sadly. "If you let Derek go free, I can be the wife I was before. I'll tell him that we can never be together, that I don't love him."
"Here's your slice of red velvet cake," JJ announced, setting the plate on the table, her sweetest smile firmly in place.
David Rossi stared at the plate for a moment, then glanced up at her, brow raised. "I didn't order that," he informed her plainly.
"I know," she agreed, "It's on the house."
"Why might that be?" he asked, looking rather like he already had an idea of what she was fishing for.
She shrugged. "Because you're my best customer."
"I'm sure you say that to anyone who tips more than five percent," he said, glancing back to his files, scrawling something on a legal pad.
JJ rolled her eyes – she had to admit that most people in town were rather shitty tippers. "While I do appreciate the tips," she admitted, "This has nothing to do with that. Besides, you come in here almost everyday and I happen to know you're an excellent cook, so it can't be for greasy spoon grub..."
He laughed a little at that, unable to argue with that logic. He gestured to the seat across from him, indicating she should join him. "The reason I'm always here is because it's close to my office and if I didn't eat here, I'd be eating a sad sandwich at my desk alone. In spite of the fact that I am, indeed, an excellent cook, when you work eighty plus hours a week, you tend to eat microwave dinners most nights. For a small town, there's a lot of unhappy people, you know?"
For a few moments, she just blinked in surprise at his confession, unsure how to respond.
"That being said," he continued when she failed to respond, "What do you need, bella?"
"Just a little tiny favour..."
He seemed dubious at that. "Would this cake – which you know is my weakness – happen to have anything to do with this 'little tiny' favour?" he asked.
"Of course not," she insisted with a high-pitched nervous laugh. "The cake is a peace offering. The bribe is a free lunch..."
He chuckled again. "Ah, I see you know how to bargain. Alright, tell me about this favour..."
"I have this friend," she started, "Derek Morgan..."
He stroked his beard in thought. "The recluse?"
"Yes, well, he's been falsely arrested and you're the only one who can get the charges dropped," she explained in one breath before he could shoot her down.
"You know I'm a divorce lawyer, don't you?" he pointed out.
"You weren't always," she corrected.
"You've done your homework," he admitted. "Tell me about the case, then."
She shook her head, nodded to the other patrons of the diner who might be listening in. "Too many ears," she said. "After the lunch rush, I'll fill you in. But until then, please feel free to stay as long as you like; WIFI is free and coffee is on the house."
"How about another slice of cake?"