Chapter 4 - Fiona

My new husband—or Olive's new husband, actually—has brought us to the countryside, far outside of the city, and when we crest the hill, I sit forward in my seat, eyes widening at the sight.

A huge house sits at the top of the hill, surrounded by nothing but land and land and more land. This is the kind of house I'd salivated over as a kid, watching them in TV shows and wishing I could grow up somewhere like that instead of the rundown trailer my father and I lived in.

I'd see these English kids on TV go to their summer homes in the country and wonder what it would be like—not only to have a huge, welcoming house with working toilets and flowers outside—but to have more than one of them. A place you could "escape" to during the summer when you wanted more room.

This is that kind of house, I think, as we round the curve and continue climbing up the hill and toward it. It's the kind of house that gets its own name, the kind of house that is passed down through generations of a family, that siblings have fond memories of growing up.

When I glance at him, I think I may not actually be married to this man, but I kind of wish I was.

Everything—going to business school, taking on that stupid internship from Olive's dad—was all with the purpose of getting to a place where I felt secure. Where I had the kind of money that I would never have to steal sauce packets from a cafeteria or mix up a glass of powdered milk ever again. This man—Boris—must have grown up in the kind of environment Olive did. Where everything is handed to you.

I stare at his side profile as we rumble onto the gravel driveway. He is handsome in a kind of brutish way—a little like Jason Statham, but even more rugged. I wiggle my feet on the dash, marveling that he didn't tell me to put them down. He seems like the kind of man who would freak out over the tiny things in his car—like telling you not to eat your food until you get home.

But maybe his failed attempt to kidnap Olive has distracted him enough that he isn't thinking about how my feet might affect the dash of this luxury SUV. He only looked at me once the entire drive, and that was to pull over and put the gag back in my mouth so he wouldn't have to hear my snide remarks. I couldn't help it—I'd laughed the whole time, which only seemed to annoy him more.

It's not my fault that I'm primed to react to something like this differently than most. For one thing, there have been many, many instances in which I could have escaped easily. For another, Boris here doesn't know about the knife I have strapped to my inner thigh or the pink Tasman Salt that's pressed against my breast, hidden by the padding of my bra—a gift from my dad on my sixteenth birthday. I never leave home without it.

I'm also just too primed by action movies. It doesn't escape me that this guy could just shoot me in the head and be done with the whole thing, but this is my chance to be the quippy main character who acts like nothing bothers her, and I'm taking it.

The truth is that, under the sarcastic exterior, there is a vein of fear coursing through my body. I can already tell from this guy—and his brothers—that there's something shady going on here. With a last name like Milov and a luxury car like this, I guess it is something like the Russian mafia or a smaller crime family. How fucked I am probably depends on the exact number of guys this man has behind him and how precarious their situation is. The second they think I have too much information—which I already might—I'm not going to get out of here without a target on my back for the rest of my life.

I think of the box under my bed containing the fake I.D. and other fake documents I'll need to leave the country. I get new ones every five years, a habit I didn't shake after my dad passed away, and I'd always felt silly paying all that money for things I was sure I would never need. Normal people didn't do things like preparing for the worst.

But I'm not normal.

The SUV pulls up outside the house, and Boris gets out, slamming the door and coming around the side to help me. This time, he leaves the gag on, and I can't deny the way it makes me feel when he grabs me roughly—a jolt of desire pushes through my body.

I know it's fucked up, but I follow him inside the house with the hope that something more is going to happen. Something befitting a girl's wedding night. Instead, we stop in the front parlor, and two nondescript men in black suits meet us.

I can't help it—I'm looking around at the lavish interior. The fresh flowers—lilacs, I think—on the mantle, how the floors sparkle and shine, the housekeeper I can see from the corner of my eye. The housekeeper is slight and pretty, wearing scrubs, white sneakers, and a face mask. She almost looks like a nurse, and I assume the face mask is to keep the dust and chemicals from bothering her as she cleans.

The entire house smells like there's not a single speck of dirt inside despite the obvious history here. Looking around, I can almost see all the parties, celebrations, families coming together to shout and play, and kids racing around the stairs and sliding down the banister.

The two men in the suits take me by either arm and start to lead me up the steps.

"Just give me directions," I mutter, but it comes out too garbled to understand through the gag. They lead me up the stairs and down a few long hallways before finally arriving at a room.

It's beautiful, of course, just like the rest of the home, with a four-poster bed and large windows overlooking a flower garden. I'm reminded of the yellow wallpaper story when the guard behind me locks the door.

Slowly, I walk around the room, taking note of the features inside. I check the mirrors—just regular, not two-way. I close all the blinds and drapes, turn off the lights, and stuff a pillow under the door to get complete darkness, in which I see two tiny little pinpricks of light—bugs. One is in the light fixture, and I grab it, pulling it out, tracing the cord all the way back to where it goes into the wall. The other is just above the bed frame, and I do the same to it, tearing the cord out until I can't anymore. Then, I leave both cords tangled on the dresser for whomever to find.

There's another light in the corner of the room—a camera—on the bookshelf. But I can't figure out where it is exactly, so I take a throw blanket from the bed and drape it over the bookshelf, effectively blocking the camera from catching any of my activity.

Once that's finished, I move into the attached bathroom and rummage through the drawers. Another woman must have stayed here recently because there's a can of hairspray and a handheld mirror in the drawer. I take them out, place the hairspray by the front door in case I need it, and put the mirror on the floor. I grab the cap from the toothpaste on the counter and place it on the mirror, then put a pillow on top of the whole thing and use the pressure to crack the mirror into multiple pieces.

Luckily for me, this mirror is made of real glass, not the fake plastic stuff that many mirrors have.

I take several of the shards, using a tissue to hold them and place them throughout the room in places I think I might be able to take them from. Then, I wrap the remains of the mirror in tissues and put it back in the bottom drawer of the vanity in the bathroom.

Once I'm finished, I'm standing in the center of the room, breathing hard. It's hot, and I move to the window, trying to lift it, but it's bolted shut—of course it is.

For ten minutes, I pace the room, trying to figure out what my next move is. I run through everything I know about this Boris man and his family. All of them looked like they had killed before and would easily do so to me if given the chance.

Except perhaps Boris, who kind of looked like he might have a soft spot for me. I laugh to myself at the thought. Any man who's willing to kidnap a woman probably doesn't develop a crush on her. But I can't stop picturing the look on his face when I kissed him at the altar. A man doesn't look like that unless he's interested in you.

I stop pacing when I hear a noise in the hall. Dropping to my stomach on the floor, I see the same white sneakers I noticed the maid wearing earlier, standing toe-to-toe with polished leather shoes. They were not the boots like Boris had on; they were nicer shoes.

Shoes befitting a butler of some sort.

"Excuse me," I say through the crack in the door, watching as the shoes startle apart. It's my guess that these employees are not supposed to be cavorting in the halls, so the voice has startled them. I stand and try to project my voice through the crack in the door. "Hi, please help me. I'm on my period, and there's nothing in here—I'm bleeding through my clothes."

I hear the woman gasp and say something softly, then hurry away. I hear the tapping of the leather shoes coming nearer to the door.

"Don't worry, miss," he says, "she's going to bring you something."

"Oh, that's so embarrassing," I say, "I didn't realize there was a man here."

"My apologies, ma'am," he says, and I can practically imagine the blush across his cheeks. Talking about periods is a surefire way to get a man to leave you alone. A moment later, I hear his footsteps retreat in the opposite direction. I stand by the door, my heart racing when I hear the soft steps of the maid's sneakers approaching again.

The key is in the lock.

The handle turning.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, jutting my hand out and hitting her pressure point just as the door cracks open. She's out immediately, and I put my arms out, catching her and dragging her inside the room quickly.

I have her up onto the bed, quickly patting down her pockets. There's a small set of keys and a key card that must open doors like this one. I take a deep breath, then quickly strip off her maid's uniform, replacing it with my clothes.

Everyone's different when it comes to pressure points and how long a hit knocks you out. My guess is that she'll be down for at least an hour, but she could also wake up any second. Quickly, I use the bindings from my wrists to tie her to the bed, then use a pillowcase as a gag to try and keep her quiet. I don't want anyone to know I'm gone.

Once everything is settled, I place her face mask over my mouth and nose and step out into the hallway. We're pretty close to the same build, but I'm a little taller and meatier than her. Her shoes are too small and squeeze my toes painfully, but I push through, making my way down the hallway.

The house is even bigger than I thought, and it takes me a while to find the stairs I came up initially. I'm scanning the area, looking out for the men who brought me up here in the first place. I'm not sure they'd recognize me in the maid's outfit, but I don't want to take any chances.

I find another set of stairs, going down, and wonder if there might be a basement with a cellar door. If I can get through and out the cellar door, I might not need to bother climbing out a window or trying to find a service entrance.

As I go down the stairs, the air gets thicker and wetter, and I smell the unmistakable scent of blood. Once I'm fully in the basement, my body shudders. There's dripping water. The walls are made of concrete, and the floor is stained in several areas with a deep brown color—what it looks like after a floor has absorbed blood.

This is a far cry from the furnished, finished basement I thought a house like this might have. I'd pictured a game room, maybe a home theater, a pinball machine. Somewhere kids could gather up and have a sleepover.

But this is a far cry from that. Instead, this feels like the basement a heroine walks through in a horror movie, the music increasing in volume until she turns the corner and sees some sort of horrible thing crawling toward her.

"Jesus," I murmur, just as I turn the corner and see a man tied to a chair, his clothes speckled with blood. I suck in a breath and whirl back around the corner, pressing my back to the wall as two men enter the room from the other direction.

I recognize that guy. I've seen him around Mr. Allard's offices before. Is there some sort of war against office workers going on here?

"Has he said anything?" My body jerks when the first man speaks, much closer than I expected. It's Boris, I can tell from the inflection and tone.

"Obviously not, brother," the other man says, and I recognize his voice as that of one of the brothers from the impromptu wedding. Devon? Or Derrick?

"Don't patronize me, Viktor," Boris mutters, that strain of anger from earlier still evident in his voice. The poor guy is frustrated beyond himself. Part of me wants to take him aside and tell him what my father always told me: Emotional intelligence is your number one tool. Being angry only means you'll make mistakes.

But I get the feeling that this guy doesn't want advice from someone like me—a woman .

"It's bad enough that you went against my orders and kidnapped him, but if we don't figure out the details of how they took the guns, it could very well happen again. That entire area was searched. Not a single French motherfucker in sight. And yet, we're still one million dollars in weapons poorer."

"Yes, I'm aware of that," Viktor says, and I hear the sharp slide of something—a knife being unsheathed. Are they going to continue torturing this man while I'm down here? I'm appalled when my pulse quickens, my body excited about the thought.

"Allard is going to pay for this," Boris says, "decades of the French understanding their place and leaving us be, and now, suddenly, they think they can come in and steal our product?"

"Dealing with the Italians is bad enough," Viktor agrees. "But I do enjoy the way these Frenchmen squirm under the knife."

I hear a muffled grunt of pain and realize Viktor has started in on the man in the chair again. They continue interrogating him, asking him about the weapons, asking him about Mr. Allard. A few things are becoming clear.

First, Boris Milov is the leader of some sort of organized crime group, likely the Russian mafia. Second, Mr. Allard isn't a financial risk expert, as I assumed. He's the leader of the French mob here in Vegas.

And I've somehow gotten myself caught up in the middle of this fight that should have nothing to do with me.