CHAPTER EIGHT
AVERY
Slowly, as if emerging from a deep, thick bank of fog, I started coming back to myself. I opened my eyes and found myself in darkness. My head was fuzzy, feeling it had been stuffed with cotton. I almost didn't feel in control of my body. I tried to move my hands and couldn't. I tried to move my legs with the same result.
What in the hell was going on?
I shook my head and tried to clear the cobwebs from it, straining my mind as I tried to figure out where I was and how I'd gotten there. I could tell I wasn't at home in my own bed. The room I was in just smelled different. Felt different. As did the bed beneath me.
“Hello?” I called out, grimacing at the thick, sleepy sound of my voice.
I tried to move my hands again and when I didn't get them to cooperate a second time, the realization of why hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. I couldn't move my hands because they were tied up. They'd been bound together, and tied to the headboard of the bed I was laying on. A white-hot current of panic started to flow through me, searing my veins with fear. Why was I tied up? Who's house was I in? Where was I? What in the hell was going on?
I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. Then, letting the breath out slowly, I forced myself to think. Where had I been last night? Who had I been with? I needed to answer those two questions and all of the other pieces of the puzzle would fall into place and I could figure out what was going on.
I took another long breath and let it out slowly, feeling the thick, dense cobwebs in my head start to drift away on the breeze. I slowly started to feel more in control of my faculties. Charles.
The name flashed in my head like a bright red, neon light. Son of a bitch. As I came back to myself more and more, the memories, previously fragmented and disjointed, came flooding back to me. All of the pieces of the puzzle started coming together, forming one coherent picture in my mind.
I'd met Charles for a glass of wine last night. I knew he was interested in me, but because I'd slept with Spencer, and because my feelings for him were as strong as they were, I knew I couldn't see Charles. I'd gone to have a drink with him because I'd wanted to tell him in person. I felt bad giving him news like that over the phone.
I remember that everything seemed to be going well enough. He'd been disappointed, but he said that he understood and respected my decision. He said that he respected me for wanting to tell him face-to-face. I remember that he said he wanted to maintain a good relationship with me, since he and Spencer would be continuing to do business together – something I heartily agreed with.
I'd gone to the bathroom feeling pretty good about how things had been going. When I got back, we'd shared an appetizer and a little more wine. He'd told me a bit more about his life and I'd shared some of mine with him as well. I remember the conversation had been light and easy. It had been fun and filled with laughter.
Then I remember that I started to feel – off. I recalled feeling lightheaded, dizzy, sick to my stomach. The last thing I recalled seeing with any sort of clarity was Charles' face. More specifically, what I most clearly remember seeing was a cruel little smile that curled his lips upward as he watched me struggling.
After that, everything went black. The next thing I knew, I was waking up here – where ever here was – lying in darkness, tied to a bed.
I heard footsteps pounding down a hallway outside the room I was in. My pulse raced as they drew nearer, and I thought my heart might actually burst from my chest when I heard a hand on the doorknob. I stifled a cry as the door swung inward and I saw the large, broad shouldered figure silhouetted by the light in the hallway behind him.
It was unmistakably Charles.
He reached over and flipped on the light, the sudden illumination making me wince and squint my eyes until they adjusted. All the while, he stood in the doorway, unmoving, just staring at me. The look on his face was one of fear. It was like seeing me there, tied up on the bed, somehow made the realization of what he'd done real to him for the very first time.
“You're awake,” he finally said, his voice a little shaky.
“Please, Charles” I said. “Let me go. Untie me. Please?”
He looked like he wanted to – at least, part of him did. But, then his face hardened, and he narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaws. It was as if he literally had a little angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both offering their advice to him – and quite clearly, the devil was making the more compelling case.
“I – I'm afraid I can't do that just yet,” he said. “I cannot take the risk of you going to the police.”
“I swear,” I replied, “I won't. If you let me go, I'll never tell anybody. I promise. I'll never tell a soul.”
He looked like he wanted to believe me. But, then, the more pragmatic, realistic side seemed to take control again and his expression was one of pure skepticism and outrage. He knew he couldn't believe me. Couldn't trust me. It was like he'd read my mind and knew the instant I got out of there, that I'd go straight to the cops – because, of course I would have.
“I cannot take that chance,” he said.
I struggled against my bonds, my fear and anger welling up within me like a dark tide.
“Why are you doing this?” I shout. “Why won't you let go of me?”
“Is it not obvious, Avery?” he asked, cocking his head like the answer was readily apparent.
It wasn't.
“No,” I snapped. “It's pretty damn far from obvious.”
“It's because I've come to care for you, Avery,” he said, his voice calm and patient. “I've come to care for you quite a lot and want you to be with me. Not Spencer.”
I thrashed against the ropes holding me, crying out in frustration when I couldn't break free. All the while, Charles stood in the doorway, an inscrutable expression on his face.
“You hardly know me, Charles,” I said, my voice cold. “I don't want to be with you. I want to be with Spencer.”
“That's perhaps how you feel now,” he said. “But, I hope to change your mind.”
“Yeah, because drugging and kidnapping me is a fantastic way of winning me over,” I said.
“You left me no choice –”
“Oh, so this is all my fault,” I practically screamed. “I forced you to drug and kidnap me.”
He shrugged. “In a sense, I suppose that's true.”
I felt my eyes widen and my mouth fall open. “You can't be serious,” I said. “In what sort of fucked up, twisted world is any of this my fault?”
“You never gave me a chance, Avery,” he said. “Perhaps, if you'd given me a chance to win you over, this – unpleasantness – could have been avoided.”
The depth of the man's delusion and depravity was truly frightening to me. He actually believed what he was saying. He thought I owed him a chance to be with me. The tide of anger within me surged and seemed to swallow the fear. My body vibrated with my rage and I glared at him.
“That's not how this works, Charles,” I snapped. “That's not how any of this works.”
He shrugged again. “No, this is not how it should work,” he says. “I don't disagree with you. Unfortunately, I acted rashly. I admit that. Now, we're left with the fallout of that rash decision.”
“It doesn't have to be this way,” I said. “You can still make this right though. Let me go and we'll call it even. I swear it. Untie me and let me out of here and –”
He shook his head again. “We both know that's not true, so let's not waste time insulting each other's intelligence. For better or for worse, we're going to have to let this situation play out.”
The blood in my veins turned to icy slush as I looked at him. What in the hell could he have meant by, “for better or for worse?” I was growing more nervous by the second, the righteous anger that had been lighting me up from the inside slowly started to fade, giving way to fear once more. Tears welled in my eyes and slipped down my cheeks. I tried to blink them away, but it only seemed to make more of them fall.
“Please, Charles,” I said. “Please don't hurt me. Just let me go. I won't tell anybody. I swear it.”
He nodded, and his lips compressed into a tight line. The cold certainty in his face made me nervous and I thrashed again at my bonds, hoping to break free. But, they held me fast.
“Charles, you don't have to do this,” I said. “You don't have to do anything else that's rash or crazy. You can make this all right again by just letting me go.”
“The die has been cast, Avery,” he said. “I still want to woo you. I think in time, you'll come to appreciate me and all I have to offer you. If only you'll open your mind and your heart to me.”
“I'm not opening anything to you if you don't untie me, Charles,” I growled.
He sighed, and a look of sadness crossed his features. “I can't do that, Avery,” he said. “You know I can't, so please, stop asking.”
“Charles.”
A voice, speaking French, sounded in the hallway. Lucky for me I could understand every word the newcomer was saying. It was a voice I didn't recognize though, but one that made Charles' eyes widen and a look of dread cross his face. Something I found interesting.
“Charles, come,” the voice, deep and rumbling, came again.
Charles turned without another word to me and walked out into the hallway. I heard two pairs of footsteps walking away, but then they stopped abruptly. Then I heard the whispered conversation between the two. Their voices – Charles and apparently his father's as he’d called him Papa – echoed off the walls of the corridor and drifted down to me.
Though they'd walked away from the room a bit, believing they were keeping me from overhearing them, I could hear them every bit as clearly as if they'd been standing next to the bed I was tied to.
What I heard them discussing though, made the already cold blood in my veins grow even colder. An icy fist of fear reached into my chest, grabbed hold of my heart, and squeezed it tight. As I listened to them speaking, the fear in me rose up, overcoming the anger that had been fueling me before.
They were talking about getting rid of me. Disposing of me. Permanently.
His father argued that I couldn't be allowed to leave the house. He argued that I would go to the cops – he was right about that – and if I did, they would bring down the entire family. Their entire operation. If I got the cops involved with their lives, they would be left in ruins. Utterly destroyed.
Their voices were growing a little more heated – Charles wanted to keep me as his plaything, but, his father was overruling him, imposing his will upon his son. Neither scenario was good for me. I was either going to end up a sex slave or dead.
I struggled hard against my bonds, trying to break free. But, it felt like the harder I struggled, the tighter the ropes that were holding me got. I was trapped with nowhere to go.
The conversation in the hall stopped and I heard Charles' footsteps coming toward the bedroom again. He leaned against the jam as he looked at me. It wasn't the vacant expression, or the dead look in his eyes that bothered me the most, though. It was the fact that he was holding a syringe filled with an amber colored fluid in his hands.
“I am sorry Avery,” he said. “I truly wish it didn't have to be this way.”
“It doesn't, Charles. Please –”
He stepped forward, slipping the cap off the syringe. I felt a slight pinch as he slipped the needle softly into my skin. I then watched as he pressed the plunger all the way down. He looked at me with an expression of complete sorrow and loss.
“Stop fighting,” Charles said. “This will all be over soon enough, and you'll have nothing more to worry about.”
His tone was ominous, leaving me overcome with outright terror and doubts about my safety. Nobody knew where I was. Nobody had a way to contact me. To any of my friends, it would probably look like I'd just dropped off the grid. But, I feared that they'd never find me once Charles and his father had made up their minds about what to do with me.
The tears came harder and faster, rolling down my face. I couldn't have stopped them if I'd wanted to. I had no idea what was going on or what came next. The only thought that reverberated through my mind was that nobody was going to be able to find me.
I was beyond terrified.