SWNOVELS Stolen Heir: Chapter 8
NESSA
I wake in a dark room, on a strange bed.
The first thing I notice is the dusty, ancient smell. It smells like old wood. Dried rose petals. Ash. Musty drapes.
My head feels swollen and heavy. I’m so tired that I want to go right back to sleep. But a nagging voice in my brain tells me that I’ve got to get up.
I sit up, making the blanket puddle around my waist. Just that movement sets my head spinning. I have to lean forward, hands pressed against my temples, trying to steady myself.
When my vision clears, I look around, blinking and trying to make out the shape of the room.
Even though the windows are uncovered, barely enough moonlight filters in for me to see anything. I’m sitting in a four-poster bed, in what appears to be a huge bedroom. Several massive pieces of furniture are set against the walls, each one the size of a half-grown elephant—a wardrobe, a vanity, and something further off that might be a writing desk. Also, a gaping hole large enough to stand up in, which I think is a fireplace. It looks like a cave. A cave that could have anything inside.
Little flickers of memory float in my brain, like sparks around a campfire. A steering wheel shuddering under my hands. A flash of sunlight as I climbed out of the car. A black-haired man with a sympathetic expression that didn’t quite extend to his eyes.
My heart starts racing. I’m in an unknown house, brought here by an unknown man.
I’ve been fucking kidnapped!
This realization isn’t quite as foreign to me as it might be to a normal girl. I’m a mafia daughter. While I might sail through sunlit seas, I’m all too aware of the sharks swimming right below the water. There’s an undercurrent of danger at all times. Overheard in conversations as I walk past my father’s office. Hinted at in the strain lines on my parents’ faces.
So I guess I always knew something crazy might happen to me. I’ve never felt entirely safe, no matter how sheltered I might seem.
Still, theory and reality are two different things. I’m not wrapped up in my parents’ arms anymore. I’m in the house of an enemy. I don’t know who he is. But I know what he is. These men are brutal, violent, and without compassion. Whatever they do to me, it will be ugly.
Which is why I have to get out of here.
Right now.
I slip out from under the covers, intending to run.
As soon as my feet hit the floor, I realize I’m missing my shoes and socks. Someone pulled them off my feet.
It doesn’t matter. Unless the floor is made of broken glass, I can run away barefoot.
However, when I try to take my first step, my knees crumple under me and I fall forward onto my palms. My head feels like a balloon barely tethered to my shoulders. My stomach flips over and over in nauseating loops.
I feel vomit rising in my throat and I have to swallow it back down, my eyes stinging with tears. I don’t have time to puke, or to cry. I just need to leave.
I creep across the room toward the door. It feels like I’m traveling the length of a football field. I’m crawling across an antique rug, and then for a stretch of time over bare hardwood.
At last I reach the door. Only then does it occur to me that I’m probably locked inside. But to my surprise, the knob turns easily under my hand.
I pull myself upright using the door handle, giving myself another minute for the room to stop spinning. I take slow, deep breaths. This time my knees stay steady, and I’m able to walk. I slip out into a long, dark hallway.
The house is utterly silent. There’s no light, and no sign of any other people. This place is so old and creepy that a ghost might pop out of the walls any second. I feel like I’m in a horror movie, in the part where the girl wanders around like an idiot and the whole audience covers their eyes, knowing that something awful is about to happen.
I can’t really be alone.
I’m not stupid enough to think that someone went to all the trouble to kidnap me only to leave me completely unattended. They could be hiding all around me. They could be watching me on camera right now.
I don’t understand this game, or what they want out of it.
Is my kidnapper a cat, playing with their food before they eat it?
It doesn’t matter. My only other option is staying in my room. And I’m not going to do that.
So I keep heading down the hall, looking for the most likely route out of this place.
It’s nerve-wracking, walking past so many empty doorways.
This place is huge, bigger than my parents’ house by far. Not nearly as well-maintained, though. The carpet in the hallway is threadbare and lumped up in places; I have to shuffle my feet along, so I don’t trip. The windows are thick with dust, and the paintings on the walls have been knocked askew. It’s hard to make out the subjects in the dark, but I think some of them are mythological. I definitely see a long oil-painting of a convoluted labyrinth, with a Minotaur lurking in the center.
At last, I come to a wide, curving staircase leading down to the lower level. I peer down it, but I don’t see any light in that direction. God, it’s disorienting walking through a strange place in the dark. I’m losing my sense of time and direction. Every sound seems amplified, but that only confuses me more. I can’t tell if the creaks and groans I hear are a person, or only the settling of the house.
I hurry down the staircase, my fingertips trailing along the bannister. My head is clearing by the minute. It does seem unlikely that I’ll escape this easily, but maybe it’s possible. Maybe they miscalculated whatever fucked up drug they gave me, and they expect me to sleep all night. Maybe they’re just incompetent. I might have been snatched by amateurs, or by crazy people who don’t think things through.
I have to cling to my optimism. Otherwise I’ll be enveloped by fear.
Once I’m down the stairs, I look for the front door, but I’m lost in a rabbit warren of rooms. Old architects didn’t care for open floor-plans. I’m wandering through libraries and sitting rooms and billiard rooms, and who knows what else. Several times I bump into an end table or the back of a couch, and I almost knock over a standing lamp, barely catching its pole before it hits the ground.
With every minute that passes my nerves become increasingly frayed. What the hell is this place, and why am I here?
At last I catch a glimpse of the same cool, pale outdoor light I saw from my window. Moon or stars. I hurry in that direction, through a large glass conservatory packed with tropical plants. The thick foliage hangs down from the ceiling. The pots are so tightly clustered that I have to push my way through the leaves, feeling like I’m already outside.
I’ve almost reached the back door when a voice says, “Finally awake.”
I stop dead in my tracks.
I can see the glass door in front of me. If I run, I could probably get there before this person can grab me.
However, I’m at the back of the house. I’d only be running into a yard—if the door is unlocked at all.
So instead, I slowly turn around to face my captor.
I’m so dazed and terrified that I almost expect to see fangs and claws. A literal monster.
Instead, I see a man sitting on a bench. He’s slim, pale, and casually dressed. His hair is so blond it’s almost white, on the long side and swept back from his face. His sharp features only appear more so in this light—high cheekbones, razor-fine jaw, dark shadows under his eyes. Beneath his black t-shirt I see full sleeves of tattoos on both arms, all the way down to the backs of his hands, and then rising partway up his neck. His glittering eyes look like two shards of shattered glass.
I recognize him at once.
It’s the man from the nightclub. The one who was staring at me.
“Who are you?” I demand.
“Who do you think I am?” he replies.
“I have no idea,” I say.
He sighs and stands up from the bench. Involuntarily, I take a step backward.
He’s taller than I expected. He may be lean, but his shoulders are broad, and he moves with a kind of ease that I recognize. This is a person in control of their body. Someone who can move quickly and without hesitation.
“I’m disappointed in you, Nessa,” he says. His voice is low and clear and carefully enunciated. It has a hint of an accent that I can’t quite place. “I knew you were sheltered. But I didn’t think you were stupid.”
His insult cuts me like a lash. Maybe it’s the expression on his face, his lip curled up in revulsion. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m already keyed up tight with terror.
I don’t usually have a temper. Actually, I can be a bit of a pushover.
My brain decides that now is the moment to finally get snippy. Right when it could get me killed.
“I’m sorry,” I say angrily. “Am I not meeting your expectations as a hostage? Please, enlighten me as to how perceptive you’d be if somebody drugged you and plopped you down in the middle of some creepy haunted mansion?”
As soon as I say it, I regret it. Because he takes another step toward me, his eyes ferocious and cold, and his shoulders rigid with anger.
“Well,” he hisses softly, “I’d probably be smart enough not to antagonize my captor.”
I can feel my legs shaking beneath me. I take another step back, until I feel the cool glass door against my back. My hand gropes blindly for the doorknob.
“Come on now, Nessa,” he says, his eyes boring down into mine as he draws closer. “You can’t be completely ignorant of what goes on in your family?”
He knows my name. He sent the man with the black hair to kidnap me—which means that guy works for him, as a soldier. And there’s a hint of an accent to his speech. Subtle, and unusual—nothing I recognize, like French or German. It could be Eastern European. He has that look—the high cheekbones, the fair skin and hair. Russian? No . . .
Four months ago, my family had a run-in with a Polish gangster. Someone called the Butcher. Nobody told me about it, of course. Aida mentioned it later, in passing. Her oldest brother killed him. And that was the end of it.
Or so I thought.
“You work for the Butcher,” I say, my voice coming out in a squeak.
He’s right in front of me now, towering over me. I can almost feel the heat radiating off his skin. The waves of loathing pour out of him as he looks down at me with those furious eyes.
This man hates me. He hates me like I’ve never been hated in my life. I think he could cheerfully peel the flesh off my bones with his fingernails.
“His name was Tymon Zajac,” he spits, each word clipped off as with scissors. “He was my father. And you killed him.”
He means my family killed him.
But in our world, the sins of the family are visited on all who share the same blood.
I find the door handle at last. I scramble to turn it behind my back.
But it’s fixed in place, like a lump of solid metal.
I’m locked in with this beast.