Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (7 page)

S
omething smells like death
.

I struggle to open first one eye, then the other, feeling like my eyelids weigh a thousand pounds apiece. My body is numb and heavy, and I can’t seem to orient myself. I have no idea where I am, only that I feel a damp, dank coldness sinking into my clammy skin. Even opening my eyes doesn’t help very much, as it’s almost pitch-black wherever I am right now. I might as well be blindfolded, for all the good my eyesight does me here. I blink impotently in the darkness, willing my arms to move, to feel, to do anything at all. But everything is so stiff and immobile, like I’ve been paralyzed. My muscles simply won’t answer to my brain’s instructions.

Am I dying? Am I dead?

My throat feels coarse and thick but I need to make some kind of sound. What if I’m not alone in here? Where are my parents? Am I in the hospital?

Then it dawns on me that I’m not in North Carolina anymore; I’m in France. My sluggish brain trudges through the train of memories. I came to Paris to study and train under world-renowned gymnastics coaches. I came here alone. This is my first night in Paris, and…

Maggie!
Where is she?

I was with her earlier tonight — I know that much, even though the rest of the night is still so foggy. I try to open my mouth to speak, but it appears that some kind of restraint is wrapped around my head, cloth fabric pressing in on my lips to keep me from forming words. Summoning all my strength and focusing every sleepy nerve of consciousness, I manage to push a moaning sound out of my vocal chords. Somewhere to my right I can hear a similar groan, more akin to a whimper, high-pitched and fearful. Maggie.

My heart starts to race as the full gravity of our predicament settles in around me. We’re being held somewhere dark and dank, we cannot move or speak, and we have no idea where we are. At least, I have no idea. I wonder if maybe Maggie knows something — not that I can ask her, since neither of us can talk at the moment. I decide that’s got to be the most important thing, the first order of business. I’ve got to get this thing off of my mouth.

But how can I do that when my arms don’t work?

I grunt and strain, willing my arm muscles to respond to me, all in vain. I feel so detached from my own limbs, like they don’t belong to me. I can’t even figure out if they’re restrained or if I’m simply paralyzed. Closing my eyes, I decide to start small, with just my fingers. I try to recall the sensation of wiggling my fingers, and slowly but surely my fingers start to twitch. I let out a gasp of relief, realizing that I must not be totally paralyzed. I wonder if I may have been drugged, and now the effects are beginning to wear off. That must be it.

Who would have drugged me, though? Where did this happen? How did we get here?

A handsome, smirking face framed with sunshiny golden hair swims lazily to the forefront of my mind and I remember with a jolt: Will met us at a pub. He bought us drinks. We danced and I felt him rubbing up against me from behind, his hands grabbing at my hips as I feebly resisted. I remember being led into the backseat of a big, black car…

And from there, the sensation of something sickeningly sweet and icy cold being pressed into my face, that frigid sweetness swarming into my nose and making me feel weak. I suddenly recall watching some crime drama on television years ago in which a girl was knocked out with a rag to her face — chloroform, it was called? Did that really happen to me? How could this be happening? I have training in the morning. I haven’t spoken to my parents in hours and hours. Surely somebody will notice that I’m missing, that something is terribly wrong.

I work on bending my wrists next, and from there the rest of my arms. To my shallow elation, I find that my arms are not bound with anything, only my face. So as soon as I manage to regain control of my arms I reach up, fumbling blindly in the dark to find the binding around my head and tear it off. It’s only a piece of ripped fabric knotted at the back of my head. It’s secured too tightly to pull away without severely hurting my face, so I have to figure out how to untie it. My fingers are still clumsy, and it takes me a long time to undo the knot. Finally it comes loose and I throw it aside, opening and closing my jaw to try and work it back into normal condition.

“Agghhhh,” I groan, my lips struggling to form coherent words. There’s another moan of response from the area to my right, which I can tell now for certain is Maggie.

I feel around beneath me. I’m lying down on my back, with a hard, freezing cold concrete floor under my spine. I brace my hands on either side of me to push myself up into a sitting position, every nerve in my body protesting the effort. It feels like trying to walk on a leg that’s fallen asleep — everything is tingling with pinpricks of pain, urging me to be still and compliant, not to try and save myself. Every part of my frame longs to just lie back down and wait for whatever grim fate is coming for me. But I can’t give in so easily. I’m an athlete; I’m used to pushing myself through obstacles and disregarding the pain and discomfort warnings my body gives me.

“M-Maggie?” I manage to croak, my throat still scratchy and my vocal chords weak.

“Mmm!” she whimpers, and I can hear the rustling sounds of her own body trying desperately to move. She must have been dosed with the same stuff they gave me. I have to figure out how to reach her, reassure her that everything’s okay… even though I don’t know if things
are
going to be okay. Things definitely don’t seem great right now.

I grit my teeth as I struggle to scoot closer to her. I can feel that I’m still wearing my white dress, same as before. So at least I know they didn’t undress me or anything. I shudder at the thought. Some timid voice in the back of my head suggests that maybe this is just a misunderstanding. Maybe it’s just a really, really bad hangover. I’ve never had one before — maybe it’s always like this. Maybe you always feel this scared and lost.

But I know that’s not the case. As much as I want to believe that any second now the lights will flick on and we’ll find out that we were panicking for no reason… it’s not going to happen. This is a grave situation. And Will and his friends put us here. I kick myself for ever trusting him in the first place. I should have known from the very second he offered me a drink of his champagne on the flight here that he was bad news. Cute boys like that don’t talk to me just because they like me. Of course he saw me as easy prey — small town girl with no real world experience, no solid footing, desperate for a friendly face. And Maggie was easy, too. All it took was one charming smile and she was hooked. I wanted to cry in frustration at how stupid we were, going to that bar. How could I have been so irresponsible? So trusting?

Finally I scoot across the floor and feel my knee brush against something vaguely warm and trembling. Maggie yelps and starts wriggling around in fear.

“Shh, it’s me. It’s Liv,” I mumble, my lips finally remembering how to shape real words.

“Mm! Mmm!” she whines. I fumble around until I find her hand. I give it a squeeze and feel her instantly relax a little bit while I start untying the fabric strip binding her mouth. Once it’s pulled off, she starts to sniffle and cry.

“Wh —what happened? Where are we?” she murmurs, her words slightly garbled.

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. I can feel her heaving with quiet sobs as I help her to sit up. She falls into me, shaking and weeping. I let her fold into my arms, her frame crumpling into the fetal position as I hold her.

“Those guys… they must have taken us,” she chokes out between sobs.

“Yeah. I think you’re right,” I concede sadly, forcing myself not to cry, too. At least one of us has to hold it together, and it might as well be me. I have the feeling that if we were to both fall apart there would be no hope at all. I have to be strong, for both our sakes.

“Do you hear that?” Maggie gasps suddenly, clutching at my arms. We sit stock-still and silent, listening intently. There’s a faint rustling, scraping, squeaking sound. Rats.

“Oh, gross,” I breathe, shaking my head. Maggie, however, is inconsolable.

“I hate rats. Oh god, oh god. What if they crawl on us? Or bite us? They carry rabies and other diseases, you know. And oh my god, if there are rats there are probably cockroaches, too,” she rambles, trembling as her voice gets higher and higher.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. They won’t mess with us, I’m sure,” I tell her quickly. But I pull my legs in close just in case, trying to minimize the space I take up. I just wish we could see something, anything at all. But it’s so dark.

Even with my eyes trying to adjust to the lack of light, I still can’t even make out shapes in the darkness. As cold and smelly as it is here, my mind starts going crazy trying to figure out where we could be. Maybe we’re underground? The atmosphere and total lack of light seems impossible for a house or building above ground. We’ve got to be subterranean.

“What is this place?” Maggie whimpers. I can feel her tears dampening my arms.

“I —I think we might be underground or something,” I answer. She shivers, her shoulders shaking with sobs. “Listen, we’re gonna figure this out, okay? I promise everything is gonna be alright. Do you have your phone or anything, or did they take it? I think they took mine.”

She shakes her head. “No, no, they have everything. I’ve just been lying here in the dark. I didn’t even know you were down here until you made a sound. I thought I was alone.”

“Well, let’s be grateful they didn’t separate us.”

“Yet,” she adds ominously.

“Hey, don’t talk like that. Let’s see, what do you remember about how we got here? About last night?” I press, trying to take a more proactive stance.

I can feel Maggie shrug. “Not much. I remember… being in the cab and getting to that bar in the eleventh arrondissement. With the graffiti.”

“Zero Zero, yeah,” I agree, the memories trickling back to us both.

“Oh god, Liv. This is all my fault. I’m the one who made us go there. You just wanted to go back to the flat like a good girl and I — I got us into this mess. I’m so stupid,” she cries, sitting up by herself. I can feel her withdrawing into a tight ball, rocking back and forth slightly.

“No, I could have stopped us. I wanted to go, too,” I lie, trying to assuage her guilt. It’s true that I didn’t really want to go to the bar. I’d had my suspicions before we even arrived on Rue Amelot last night, but I ignored the warning bells in my head and went along anyway. And besides, I’m the one who was gullible enough to get involved with a guy like Will. So the guilt is equally shared between Maggie and me. We’re both to blame.

“I’m so sorry, Liv,” she weeps. “What if they kill us?”

“Stop! Don’t say things like that. You don’t know what they’re doing or what they’re planning, but you can’t just keep assuming the worst. You’ll fall apart if you give in to that kind of thinking, Maggie,” I protest, reaching out to pat her shoulder. She flinches at my touch.

“My parents were right. I can’t handle the real world on my own. My first time striking out by myself and
this
happens,” she whimpers, clearly too distraught to heed my advice.

“Well, what about me? My parents trusted me enough to let me go off to another country on my own and I allow something awful to happen! But it’s not our fault, okay? These guys… they clearly know what they’re doing. I don’t think this is their first rodeo. In fact,” I continue, realizing the truth of my words with a painful jolt as they come out of my mouth, “I bet that Will started hunting me the second I walked onto that plane. How was I to know he was a bad guy? And how were you to know a get-together at a public bar would end up this way?”

“My parents always told me there were bad people in the world,” Maggie goes on, heedless of my words. “They always warned me to stay within the lines and follow the rules. Don’t do anything stupid. And here I am! God, if I ever get out of this, I’ll never disobey my parents again.”

I want to reassure her, remind her that even though we might have screwed up this time, her parents aren’t totally faultless, either. I know that if they hadn’t kept such a tight, restrictive leash on Maggie her whole life, she probably wouldn’t have felt the need to rebel in the first place. I saw it all the time with sheltered kids: the more closed-off and limited their upbringing was, the more outrageous their rebellion was. It was like pulling back a slingshot. The farther you try to reel it back, the farther the stone will fly once it’s released.

I know I’m a victim, too. It wasn’t until arriving in France that I realized just how bored and starved for new experiences I was after a lifetime in rural North Carolina. As soon as I set foot on that plane, I was itching for an adventure. And by god, I got it.

“Maggie, listen to me. We’re gonna get out of this, somehow —” I start, but my sentence is interrupted by the sudden deep, low creak of door hinges somewhere out in the darkness. Maggie squeals and falls into me again, grasping for my hands in terror.

We both blink uncomfortably in the dim pillar of light widening before us as a door swings slowly open to reveal the massive, hulking silhouette of a man.

I
pull
up to the student living quarters and head up the stairs. There are a few residents hovering around, and I get a few peculiar looks as I make my way towards the room Liv and Maggie were assigned.

I have to admit, the student housing is pretty nice, as far as student housing can go. The area is somewhat secluded by Parisian standards, mostly in hopes of giving the students and athletes the chance to lead a somewhat adult lifestyle rather than tossing them to the wolves, so to speak. The gardens of the park nearby are well-maintained, and the sidewalks leading around the buildings are spotless. More interestingly, there’s nothing around indicative of a wild party last night.

The girls have a place on the sixth floor, and I march up the staircase, my eyes flitting out to the city skyline, the sun lighting the whole sea of buildings up like a glittering sea of color. I try to put myself into the perspective of a foreigner experiencing this place for the first time, but I’ve been here far too long to relive such things.

Reaching the door, I raise a fist and pound on it several times. I say nothing as to not reveal myself on the off-chance they truly are dodging class, but as I turn my head to listen, I hear nothing — no shuffling, no hushed whispers, and no groggy moans of a hangover. Strange.

My fist pounds on the door again, but the whole floor is silent. All of this particular building’s residents are back at the class I left in the care of my associate. I realize it’s possible the two of them could be out enjoying the city in the morning, but to alienate themselves from everyone else in their class so early?

Something sits very ill with me, and I run a hand through my short, dark hair and down to my stubble-ridden face as I check the stairs to make sure nobody is coming. What’s running through my mind could get me fired easily. But I have a gut feeling, and it isn’t a pleasant one I can easily ignore.

I feel around in my pocket, and my fingers brush against a large paperclip I kept from some papers I’d been working on earlier this morning. Drawing it out and keeping it low, I use my fingers to subtly pry it open into a shape I can work with. I quickly draw my jingling keys out of my other pocket to make it look like I have a legitimate means of accessing the door before stepping forward and moving both to the lock, slipping the paperclip into the keyhole and carefully twisting it and turning it before I hear the lock click in short order, and I pop the door open, slipping inside before swiftly shutting it behind me.

A quick survey of the room tells me that my suspicions were correct — the apartment is empty. Americans are notorious for finding European living quarters cramped, the walls thin, and someone inside would have been stirred by my knocking and entry.

But it strikes me how little the apartment looks lived in. The place is virtually spotless, something I never would have expected from the equivalent of college freshmen in their first time away from home. The only sign I see of someone having moved in at all is a Kindle plugged into a charger by the wall outlet, a little current converter awkwardly bulging from the end. By now, I’d expect to see clothes strewn about haphazardly, boxes of leftovers about the tables, and maybe a few wine bottles in the garbage, but the place looks impeccably tidy.

I take a few more strides around the room, inspecting the place for any signs of what might have happened. It’s clear that they’ve at least entered the apartment, but for such tidy people to have abandoned the first day of class makes me even more suspicious as to what might have happened. With no further hesitation, I take a few steps into the girls’ shared room.

Here, it’s almost as bare as the living room, but there are more signs of life. The beds are newly made, and the suitcases are hardly unpacked. I glance between the two beds and raise an eyebrow with a soft smile. One of the beds surrounded with suitcases, each one laden with clothes to the point of bursting, and I can spot designer outfits in the open suitcase, along with a number of other personal affects that betray wealth. The other bed bears a lone suitcase with a few store-brand outfits stuffed neatly inside. Having recruited the girls personally, it’s plain as day as to which belonged to whom.

I can’t help but feel a little sympathy for Liv. Her frugal belongings remind me of my own upbringing back in Russia. It was harsh, harsher than anything I’d ever wish on the likes of any of the girls here, and far more frugal. I was never given the kind of opportunity I’m able to give the girls now. But for people like Liv, I can only imagine how overwhelming and inspiring this kind of chance must be. I almost chuckle to think back on the harsh winters of my homeland, my one good friend and I getting an offer to be whisked away from the frigid and desolate Siberian tundras to the city of lights and magic that is Paris — to get a university education, of all things. We probably would have turned it down, knowing us. We were too concerned with scrounging for food and not freezing to death each week to bother thinking about the kinds of luxuries France enjoys.

I can’t help but see something of myself in Liv. Her little American hometown with probably fewer citizens than this university has gymnastics students didn’t know wealth of any sort. It might not have been the crushing poverty I knew, but it was not a life of ease by any measure. I want to see her succeed. And I know talent when I see it.

And that makes me all the more sure something is amiss here.

I spot a laptop open on Liv’s bed, and I turn it towards me, brushing my fingers over the touchpad to wake it up. The screen lights up, and I narrow my eyes to look at the email notification in the corner, pulling up the newest one that’s already been read.

It takes me a moment to realize what I’m looking at, but realization dawns shortly, and my eyes widen.

“A party,” I mutter out loud, my brow furrowing. The email I read doesn’t sit well with me in the least. So the girls did indeed go out for a night on the town last night. Ordinarily, that would simply mean that they might be sleeping off a hangover this morning, and that they’d stumble into the gym later on, but as I straighten up and look around the apartment once more, the events piece together.

The girls get to the apartment, they set their things down, start to unpack, and then this email comes in around the time they’d be getting settled. A couple of young foreigners might be easily enticed by the idea of a party with some Parisians...but who’s this inviting her? What kind of man digs up a young woman’s email address from a roster like that?

Then again, I think to myself, what kind of man breaks into his students’ apartment on a hunch? But my motives have some purpose behind them. She doesn’t seem to know the sender of the email well, though.

I start to run a hand through my hair, thinking twice about my actions. Perhaps I truly am overreacting. It’s perfectly natural and fairly frequent for young people, particularly these college types, to flirt and hook up with one another right off the plane, as it were. Liv probably met this man and decided to really start enjoying herself for her first night in Paris. Can I really blame her for that?

Of course not, but some things simply don’t fit here. Suppose Liv really is waking up beside her new French lover in his cramped apartment — why is her roommate not around either? They must have been watching each other, so why would they have not helped each other home? And the email I see before me suggests that Will was the one making the advances when they met, and he was apologizing. He stepped over the boundaries and Olivia seemed to have rejected his advances. So unless something changed at the bar, what are the odds that she’d have gone home with him after turning down his kiss?

But all I have to go by is this email address and the name of the bar, I realize as I curse under my breath. There’s nothing definitive here. But the evidence is deeply concerning: however I rationalize it, two young American girls went to a party their first night in Paris and did not come back home. I think back to my past, to everything I saw back in Russia. Even what I saw when I headed west. I grimace. Even in the best cases, that doesn’t look good.

Then my heart sinks. I feel a burning drive to dig deeper into this matter, but as I glance back at the little email address on Liv’s computer, I realize that I don’t have the expertise to follow the rabbit hole further. On my own, the trail stops here, my lack of technical know-how finally catching up to me.

Anger swells within me. Two young women go missing, and what can I do? Sit in their apartment and strut around furiously while the trail gets colder because I don’t know how to maneuver the backdoors of internet and computer systems. I’ve never taken kindly to my rustic background holding me back, an icy chain digging into my flesh no matter how hard I fight against it.

Perhaps that’s overly dramatic; in truth, I
really
don’t want to reach out to the one man who I know could open those encrypted doors for me.

I pull out my phone as I walk back into the living room, grimacing at the screen as I flick through my contacts to the name I have on my mind. A few times, I think again, putting the phone away and going back to the laptop myself, trying to trace it through a few simple searches and going through the university’s database. Nothing.

A low groan escapes me, and I want to punch a wall as I draw the phone out yet again, staring at the contact on the screen before taking a deep breath.

One push of a button later, I put the phone to my ear and listen to it ring.