Isabella
When Zane left the room, I threw myself on the bed and cried. I cried for myself, for my situation, for my baby, and for everything. I cried because I felt like my life was really and truly over. In my whole life, I’d never felt so alone. I’d never felt like the mistakes I made were going to have such an effect. Even after Kyle, and finding out about his lies and cheating, I didn’t think things were over.
After all, I was young. I guessed I was still technically young, but I no longer felt that way. All that mattered to me was getting out of this room and fixing my life.
Then I remembered Zane and I were married.
This wasn’t just a guy who was trying to fuck with me. This was my husband. My husband had locked me in his room and was refusing to let me leave. My husband, the man who swore to love and protect me. Or at least to protect me, I thought solemnly. Zane had never said a single word about love. I knew he only married me to protect our child if something happened to him. But he could have at least tried to lie a little, tried to make me feel like I was someone he wanted to be with.
When my tears had finally stopped, I wiped my eyes and lay back on the bed. It seemed ridiculous to think about Zane now in the same light I’d seen him before. Before, it had been easy to think that he was just a lucky guy with a nice car and a nice house. Before, I was able to ignore the more sinister implications of his massive amounts of cash. I shuddered as I remembered the way he’d knocked those guys out in the alley behind Maison Bridges. Zane was a killer, an extremely dangerous one.
“And you’re his wife,” I said aloud. I shuddered. I didn’t want anything to do with Zane. I didn’t want to be his wife. And I didn’t want to raise this baby in a life of crime. Zane had told me his father was the leader of the mob. Did that mean that Zane would take over when he died?
“I’m sorry, baby,” I told the growing infant in my belly. “I didn’t want you to live like this. I wish I could give you a normal life, with a normal set of parents. And a normal grandfather, not some crazy Mafioso.”
Something shifted in my belly, seemingly in response to what I’d said. I jumped a foot into the air: I hadn’t ever felt the baby move before. I hadn’t been pregnant for very long. Naïvely, I didn’t think babies could move for a few months. But sometimes, lying awake at night, I felt something that resembled a heartbeat. Maybe it was true. Maybe the baby had always been a baby, and I just had to realize it was there.
With a sigh, I rolled onto my belly. I’d heard some noises downstairs. Nothing huge, just some voices. But now I was wondering whether or not Zane had left. I knew he wouldn’t have called anyone he didn’t trust, but I hated the idea of being guarded by a stranger. Add that to being locked in my husband’s bedroom and it felt downright medieval.
I got to my feet and walked over to the window. My heart sank; I was on the third floor. Zane’s house was bigger than I’d expected, even from the outside. There was no way I could jump down to safety without breaking a bone or twelve. To make matters worse, Zane’s distinctive Porsche wasn’t in the driveway. I swallowed hard. He’d left me. He’d locked me in this bedroom and left me with a stranger. My husband had left me with a stranger.
“I hate you,” I muttered under my breath. I forgot about all of Zane’s good qualities then: his laugh, his generous nature, the way he picked me up tenderly, like I weighed nothing, the way he’d looked at me ever since he found out I was pregnant, like I was always carrying eggs, or something equally fragile.
I decided to get out of that bedroom if it was the last thing I did. Looking around for a weapon, I spotted two decorative vases on either side of the dresser. They were so big they could have passed as sarcophagi. Narrowing my eyes, I walked over to one and tried to heft it up in my arms. But it was made out of stone, or something equally heavy, and it barely budged. Using all of my strength, I was finally able to push it a couple of inches on the carpet. I frowned. There was no way I could pick something like that up; I’d break my back. I bit my lip. There had to be something.
Dashing over to Zane’s dresser, I pulled open the first couple of drawers. Everything was in neat, ordered, folded rows. I chuckled to myself, despite how unhappy I felt in that moment. I never would have picked Zane as the type of guy who folded his silk boxers. “You silly Italian,” I said, laughing to myself. The thought was a grim one and made me think of my father.
My father. That was a surprise I was still grappling with. My father was still a king in my mind, the kind of king who loved my mother and me with all of his heart. But now, I had a sinking suspicion Zane had been telling me the truth. I didn’t like to dwell on it because the subject was upsetting, but it did seem to make a certain amount of sense. My father had left me a giant fortune, and now people were out to kidnap me and take every penny.
I looked into the mirror. Even though I didn’t resemble my mother at all, sometimes when I looked at myself, I could have sworn she was there. I was every inch my father: tall, blonde, tanned. But somewhere in my heart-shaped face or the depth of my blue eyes, I thought I saw her lurking there.
“Mom, why didn’t you tell me about Dad?” I asked my reflection, feeling a bit silly. “Why didn’t you tell me about the money?”
I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand, for the life of me, why my mother hadn’t told me about the money. It didn’t seem fair. Parents were supposed to look out for their children, protect them. Even though my mother kept me out of trouble, I didn’t feel like she’d set me up very well for the realities of adult life. If finding out my father had been in the mob was such a shock, I couldn’t even imagine some of the things Mom had dealt with in her own lifetime.
“A weapon,” I mumbled aloud. I had to find a weapon. I had to find something to get me out of here, or at least to allow me to fight whoever was “guarding” me. I shivered as I wondered who Zane would have chosen. A giant man with dark skin and no hair? Or someone small, muscular, pale? Someone who didn’t look deadly but who could knock me off my feet at the slightest provocation. Someone who could really handle things.
I shivered again. Handle things, really, Isabella? You’re thinking like you’re a part of the mob yourself. I shook my head. I didn’t like this life. Not at all.
Digging through Zane’s neatly folded underwear, I felt around for a gun or a knife, anything those stereotypical mobsters would have kept in their bureaus. But my hand connected with nothing but silk and the wood interior of the drawer. Frowning, I pulled my arm away. I went through the rest of the dresser but it didn’t yield anything more satisfying than the first drawer had. All of Zane’s clothes were folded meticulously, in very neat order. Even after I’d spent time trying to refold them, it still looked different. I realized with a sinking feeling that he was going to instantly know I’d been digging around.
“Maybe there’s something in the bathroom,” I said as I shut the last of the drawers. I walked in, looking around for a metal plunger or anything I could grab and wield with my two hands.
I heard footsteps in the hall. Zane’s back! I thought triumphantly. But my stomach folded itself into knots when I remembered I hadn’t heard the trademark purr of his Porsche pulling into the driveway. He hadn’t come back. It wasn’t Zane, because Zane hadn’t come home yet.
“Hey, you,” a gruff voice said. I rubbed my eyes and then saw a muscular, squat man with close-cropped hair. He had tattoos all over his bulky neck and arms and I shuddered when I saw his hands were balled into fists at his sides. “Get up.”
“I am up,” I said unsteadily. “I was just…using the bathroom.”
The man gave me a nasty grin and I felt a trickle of ice down my spine. “Have yourself a nice little tinkle?”
I blushed and looked away. “None of your fucking business,” I snapped. “Where’s Zane?”
The man grinned and took a step towards me. “Zane won’t be back for some time,” He said, licking his lips. “We’re all alone here.”
“Don’t hurt me,” I said.
The man shook his head. Before I realized what he was doing, he crossed the gap between us and grabbed both of my hands by the wrist. I cried out, feeling the delicate bones grind painfully together under the skin. The man kept grinning as he reached into his pocket and pulled out two zip ties. While he grabbed my wrists with one hand, he carefully wrapped the plastic cords around them and pulled tight.
Almost instantly, my hands ached. “That hurts,” I whimpered, trying to twist my arms apart and pull my hands out of the wretched plastic ties. “Can you make it looser?”
“Can you make it looser?” he mocked me in a high-pitched voice before sneering at me. “I don’t like your tone of voice, bitch,” he added. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up!” I said hotly. “Do you even know who I am? Do you know who my fa—” I gasped as he quickly slapped me across the face, effectively stunting my speech.
Before I could react, he grabbed a dirty handkerchief from his pocket and shoved it in my mouth. “I told you to shut the fuck up,” he repeated. He reached in his back pocket and came out with a roll of duct tape.
My eyes widened and I could feel tears building as he ripped a silver strip off the roll and pasted it across my mouth. Instantly, I tasted foul adhesive and grease from the handkerchief.
“You’re coming with me,” the man added. He stooped down and grabbed me around the knees before throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me out of the room.
Oh, my God, what happened to Zane? I thought desperately, knowing it must have been something awful. If his friend was abducting me, then he must be in danger. My heart pounded in my chest as the man carried me down the stairs. He was hauling me like a sack of soil, but he was careful not to whack my head on the railing. Zane. Oh, Zane, what’s become of you?