A/N: When asking for prompts I was asked to possibly continue this story. I figured I'd give it a try. I don't believe this one will be super long and I have no idea where it's going to go yet.
Feyre grinned to herself as she stepped off the bus in front of Priestess Publishing. Her morning had gone amazingly. She had woken up, taken her resume and portfolio to Velaris Publishing and had sat in the lobby for all of two minutes before she had been shown back to meet Nuala Wraith, head of the Illustration Department. One look through her portfolio had Nuala discussing contract terms with her. Then they had spent another two hours on hiring paperwork and negotiating when she would be able to start. Provided she passed background checks, she would be able to begin the following day.
She planned to celebrate the new job properly but first she needed to go back to her old office and collect her art supplies that she kept there. She knew Ianthe had gotten her resignation because starting at 8:15 AM when Ianthe would have arrived at work, Feyre had started receiving phone calls and messages almost nonstop.
Right as she stepped off the bus her phone chimed again. She peered down at the screen and smiled. It wasn't Ianthe texting her but Rhys.
I'd ask how it went but I was just called and told to take down the online ads we have asking for illustrators. Congratulations. When are we celebrating?
She smiled at the message and remembered their date. She had gotten there early but Rhys had been there already waiting, a bouquet of red tulips in his hands. They had talked until the restaurant had had to kick them out. There had been promises of a second date and one small kiss on the lips before they had parted ways. Then they had texted all Sunday and she had woken to a text of encouragement before she had gone to Velaris.
Thank you. I just have to pick up my stuff from my old job and then I'm free whenever. It was only noon so she doubted he'd pick sometime soon, but she was certain it would be something that evening.
Dinner. My place, I'm cooking. I'll send you the address in a bit. Heading into a meeting.
She gave her phone one more bright smile before she tucked it away in her purse with her tablet and walked into Priestess Publishing for the last time. She gave a smile to the girl at the front desk and a look of relief passed over the girl's face.
"Ms. Priestess has been looking for you all day. I hope you have a doctor's note or something. She's on the warpath." The girl babbled and Feyre simply rolled her eyes on her way through the secured door back to where her office was. She had resigned and Ianthe knew that.
The path to her office was clear of coworkers and anyone else as she made her way back to her tiny cubicle. She made quick work of emptying the desk of her colored pencils, her pens, paper, and various other supplies she had accumulated because Ianthe provided nothing for her employees other than work space and a computer.
She sat at the computer to clear all of her files from it. She kept no sketches at the office but there were some pieces saved on the computer that were unfinished. And she had read her contract thoroughly enough to know that any unfinished artwork was her intellectual property. Only published artwork belonged to the company. So she happily deleted the file full of Amarantha's illustrations. She was just finishing up when she heard someone behind her.
"Miss Archeron, I see you've come for your things," Ianthe's shrill voice was behind her.
"I was just about to leave my keys and badge at the desk," Feyre told her as she stood to gather her box.
"We need to do some exit paperwork. Would you come with me?" She waved Feyre back towards her office and Feyre simply shrugged and moved to pick up her box. "Oh, no need to lug that around when you have to come back this way anyway. You can come back and grab it when we are done." So Feyre set the box down and followed Ianthe to the back of the building where her office sat.
Despite having worked for Ianthe for six months, she had never had the displeasure of being in Ianthe's office and now she was grateful this was the last time. What had appeared to be mirrored walls along the office were actually giant two-way mirrors that allowed Ianthe to watch her employees. The office itself was decorated in floral prints and vases of pink roses that overpowered the air with their cloying scent.
Ianthe started rattling about an exit interview and droned on about the exit terms of her contract. Feyre listened and nodded along until she felt a familiar prickle of dread move up her spine. Then the door behind her opened and Feyre turned to see the face of a man she wished she had never crossed again. Tamlin Spring was looking her over, his grass green eyes eager.
"Feyre, My Love, I hear you've decided to come home," he stepped towards her and she scrambled out of her chair to move away from him.
"I'll just leave you two to become reacquainted," Ianthe's saccharine voice made Feyre wince as she slithered out the door. This had been orchestrated.
"I'm not going with you," Feyre spoke, sounding more confident than she felt.
"You've quit your job. You need me now," he told her calmly, closing in on her.
"I don't need you at all. I have another job, a better job," she stepped away again. Then he closed in on her in two big strides and seized her forearm in his too tight grip. He shoved her back against the wall hard enough that her head bounced off the glass.
"You're coming home with me," he breathed out the words in a growl and then his mouth was over hers, muffling her screaming. Her knee came up between his legs and Tamlin let go immediately to nurse his injured groin. Feyre made a run for the door and wrenched it open to bolt for her desk to get her things, even just her purse. But Ianthe was there with two men from security.
"Stealing manuscripts from us, Miss Archeron?" Ianthe demanded holding up two manuscripts that had somehow ended up in Feyre's box.
"I don't know how those got in there," Feyre tried to explain to the security guards. Bron and Hart. She knew them both and had been on good terms with them. "Go ahead and go through the rest of my things to make sure nothing else got put in there that shouldn't be. I don't want anything that I didn't bring in."
"Don't bother. This woman is a thief and I'll take care of her until the police arrive," Tamlin's voice was behind her again. She turned and saw he looked furious.
He seized her forearm again, shooting pain down to her fingertips as he squeezed too hard. Then he wrenched her back, dragging her down the suspiciously empty walkway between cubicles and to a fire door against the back wall. He dragged her down a set of cement steps and threw her forward into a storeroom in the basement. She thought that would be the worst of it but he followed her into the storeroom, fire flashing in his eyes that she recognized as his rage as he descended upon her. She didn't know what to expect.
"Tam, I didn't steal those manuscripts," she tried to explain.
"That doesn't matter. Who do you think the police will believe? Tamlin Spring or some lowly whoring slut?" Tamlin growled at her.
Feyre blinked. Tamlin knew she hadn't stolen those manuscripts. They had been planted there and she had walked right into their trap. Anger surged up in her.
"You won't get away with this. I'll get a lawyer. I'll expose this to every—" she stopped talking as the back of his head collided with her cheek hard enough to stun her.
"They won't believe you anyway," he gave a soulless laugh, twisted her forearm in his hand, and tossed her down to the floor hard. Before she could regain her senses and footing, he was gone and the door had slammed behind him.
She ran for the door and tried to open it but it was locked. She banged on it, screaming to be let out, noting the pain in her left wrist where Tamlin had grabbed it. She called for help until her voice was hoarse. She clawed at the door until her nails were broken and her fist was bruised from banging on it. Tears forced their way out of her eyes as she realized how truly trapped she was.
Soon she realized it had been too long. Far too long for the police to have responded to a call for a thief. She doubted they had been called at all. She turned to survey her surroundings and found an analog clock on the back wall that told her it was almost 5. She had been there for nearly five hours and the building would be closing down soon. Still no one came.
By six, she found herself staring at a vent in the ceiling wondering if every action movie she had ever seen had been worth it to show her she could probably crawl out through the duct work. But she would need a way up and this store room only held empty boxes that wouldn't hold her weight if she stood on them.
By eight, she was stacking up the boxes anyway because she was not just going to sit idly by and let them trap her in this storeroom. She made a pyramid hoping it would hold her longer and crawled up slowly until she was directly below the vent. To her dismay the vent cover was screwed on tight and when she tried to pull it off anyway, her pyramid shifted to the side and gave out under her, sending her crashing to the concrete floor hard. Groaning she laid on the floor and started running through her options once more.
Sometime around eleven she heard footsteps on the stairs and believed with all of her heart that Ianthe or Tamlin had come back finally. She groaned and tried to roll herself up. She would not face either of them laying on the floor.
The door opened just as Feyre let out a hiss as her forearm gave under her weight. She tried to stand to face whoever had come and let out a shuddering sigh of relief when she saw who stood in the doorway. Cassian stood there looking livid as he looked her over and then to the wreckage of the room.
"I suppose that grate it screwed on," he muttered. "You probably would have gotten stuck in the vents if you had gotten up there and made my job much harder."
"Why are you here?" Feyre asked, her voice hoarse from screaming.
"Thought you could use a bit of help," he shrugged. "Az is getting your stuff upstairs." He reached out a hand to her and she went towards him, limping with an injury she must have gotten from falling off her cardboard pyramid. Cassian's eyes took that in as well. Then he slung an arm around her waist, somehow taking most of the weight off of her leg as he supported her up the stairs and through the cubicles until they arrived at hers where Azriel was waiting.
"I think it's the emergency room for this one," Cassian told his brother as he steered Feyre towards the front.
"She should get her injuries assessed and catalogued for the police. I have the other evidence needed," Azriel growled and stalked after them.
She recounted the story first to Cassian and Azriel in the car, then again to the nurse in the emergency room, and again to the police after she had gotten her body x-rayed to identify her fractured wrist and confirmed it was only deep bruising on her leg.
She limped out to the waiting room sometime around 2 in the morning with every intention of calling a cab to go home since Azriel and Cassian had left after they had spoken with the police. She took out her phone to start dialing the cab company but a familiar pair of violet eyes locked on hers from where he sat in the waiting room. Just beyond him she caught a flash of red under a hooded sweatshirt and a familiar pair of russet eyes that disappeared into the shadow of the hood when she glanced over Rhys' shoulder. Lucien. He didn't seem ill or injured so the fact he was there meant he had likely been sent to keep tabs on her.
"Darling," Rhys stood and approached her. "I was hoping you'd let me drive you home since we missed our dinner plans."
She felt the restraint he was employing in wanting to touch her. It was his rule he had set into place when she had mentioned the abusive conditions she had left that had kept her from fully wanting to jump into a relationship of any sort. He wouldn't touch her unless he had been given permission. So despite wanting to touch her, likely embrace her by the way his hands twitched towards her and snapped back again, he kept himself a social distance away from her.
"I would really appreciate it," she told him honestly and closed the distance between them to embrace him. Cassian and Azriel had revealed they had only known she was missing because she had failed to respond to Rhys over the course of several hours and then hadn't shown for dinner. They had only known where to look when because she had told Rhys where she had been going before they had stopped texting. And it had been because of Rhys they hadn't waited for police.
Azriel had quietly explained hacking her phone to track where it was using the fact she had had her location turned on to use the map application to find Velaris and hadn't turned it off. Then he had also let her know her computer at work had had a web camera on it that had been recording since she had turned her computer on the gather her files. It had appeared to be rigged to do that every time she sat at her computer. It was clear the feed had been watched meaning it had been intentionally set up. But it also meant he had found the footage of her gathering her things, Ianthe approaching her, and Tamlin slipping those manuscripts into her box before going back to see her. It also had revealed Tamlin and Ianthe plotting in her cubicle after she had been trapped in the storeroom. If Cassian and Azriel hadn't come, she would have been left in there for the rest of the week until she would have been too weak to resist anything Tamlin wanted to do.
So she hugged Rhys and let his arms wrap around her because without him, she likely still would have been trapped.
"Can I kiss you, Darling?" Rhys asked softly when she stayed tucked against him. In response she tipped her head up and let him brush his lips over hers. "I've been worried about you. Not that I doubted you could take care of yourself—"
"I'm glad you were worried enough to look," she cut him off. "Thank you."
"There's nothing to thank me for," Rhys told her. "Let's get you home so you can sleep."
"I don't suppose you know of any place still open that I can stop to pick up a meal. I'm starving," she told him as he slipped an arm around her waist to lead her to the door. He started to rattle off places that would be open so late to see what would catch her interest. She glanced back only once to see Lucien was gone.