For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed in vivid color. Every morning I wake up, and I remember every last second of the dream I had the night before. There have only been two exceptions to that rule.
The first was when I had my tonsils taken out as a child. The sedative they gave me knocked me out, and not even my wild dreams could break through the drugs. And the other was right now.
It takes long moments for me to open my eyes, the haze behind them causing my stomach to flip uncomfortably. The sheets beneath me are foreign, just as soft as the ones I have at home, but they’re new. They don’t have the same lived-in smell mine do when they come out of the dryer at the estate.
I blink slowly, waiting for my eyes to come into focus, but when they finally do, I almost wish they never did.
This isn’t my room, and this sure as hell isn’t my house, but everything looks… familiar. The mattress I’m lying on is the same one I have at the estate. The bedside tables are the same too. Even the painting on the wall to my left is the same, but I know in my soul that I’m not in my house. My hands rub down my body, dread settling over me and making it hard to suck in a breath until I’m sure I’m still wearing the same clothes I was when I got dressed this morning. The button of my jeans digs painfully into my stomach, and the only piece of clothing I’m missing is my coat. Okay, at least that’s a good sign.
I sit up, causing the world to spin around me, but I can’t remember anything from before I woke up. This morning I was thinking about slipping my security detail to go for a drink. Did I do it? Where did I go? How did I find myself here?
Once the dizziness subsides, I shuffle to the edge of the bed and carefully stand, making sure to hold on to the bed in case my legs give out beneath me. They shake as I take careful steps toward the door. Every time I turn my head, it spins, and I have to grab a hold of the closest steady object, but everything about this room grabs my attention. The closer I get to the door, I realize the wallpaper is the same as my room at the estate, and so is the door, right down to the fucking handle.
Did I wake up in another goddamn dimension?
I reach for the handle and twist, but it doesn’t budge. I turn it the other way. Nothing. What the hell?
A laugh claws up my throat. I’m so stupid, of course I know what’s going on. My brothers are teaching me a lesson for sneaking out all the time, they’re trying to show me the dangers of slipping my security team by scaring me. My racing heart starts to slow as I swallow the giggle lodged in my throat. I can’t let them know I know what they’re up to. It’s more fun if I let whatever fucked-up plan they have run its course.
I cross to the window next, I’m interested to know where exactly they’ve brought me for this little lesson, but when I look out into the street, I don’t expect what I see. We’re in the old part of the city, the part where the rich singles live in fancy brownstones. Why on earth would they bring me here? We’ve never even been to this part of the city, and I’ve helped Wynter enough to know we don’t own any property around here.
A flicker of doubt ignites in my belly. What if it wasn’t Rayne and Storm playing a prank? What if someone actually took me? And not just any someone. A someone who knows exactly what my bedroom looks like from the inside, right down to the brand of sheets and the decorative pillows I bought in Paris last year on a girl’s trip with Mom and Wynter.
The thing is, and the thing that has a cold sweat breaking out on my brow is that my brothers wouldn’t get all these details right. Even an interior designer would have a hard time getting every single one of these aspects right.
I turn toward the door again, my eyes running over everything in the room once again. The dizziness I felt when I stood up returns, and a moment later, I crumple to the floor, the plush rug softening the blow when I hit the ground. The softness envelops my body, the familiar texture almost allowing me to pretend I’m at home in my room. When I was in high school, my friends and I used to lie on the rug while we flicked through magazines and talked about boys, and it’s that memory that I allow to drag me back into unconsciousness.
Sometime later, I wake, my body surrounded by plush bedding. Someone moved me. Someone was in here, and they moved me back to the bed.
I sit straight up, fear beating through every fiber of my being as my eyes dart around the dark room. The moon shines brightly out the window, and the street below is quiet. What time is it?
Slowly, I slip out of bed, the rug I fell asleep on soft beneath my feet. Instead of feeling groggy like I did when I woke up the first time, energy courses through my blood. I need to figure out where I am, who has me, and how the hell I can get out of here.
My eyes fall on what I think may be the bathroom on the far side of the room, and I quickly cross to it. Once I’ve done my business, I look around the space and sigh with annoyance. The tiles are the same as the estate, the clawfoot tub almost identical, and even the products I use every day in the shower are lined up on a shelf just like the one at home.
This has to be a fucking parallel universe.
I pick up my favorite shampoo, the bottle full and unopened. My brothers wouldn’t have thought of this much detail. They may be the best at organizing large shipments of weapons and wide-scale hacking into government databases, but there’s no way they would think to stock wherever the fuck I am with my favorite beauty products.
I need a weapon. Something to protect myself when whoever has taken me comes in here to get whatever they want. There has to be a reason they’ve taken me, but I don’t have a clue what it could be. I’m not involved in any of the shady shit my family does. I never have been, and I’m almost certain I never will be. They’ve always tried to protect me from the extent of what we’re involved in, and I’ve never felt the need to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but maybe I should have asked a few more questions.
It never occurred to me that I could still be in danger after the Russos were killed. I thought they were the end of the danger. Not that them being on the loose ever stopped me from slipping out from under my securities’ nose occasionally.
But maybe I should have listened to my brothers when they told me how dangerous the city can be, especially for someone like me. I’m the weakness of my family, not because I’m not strong, but because I’m the youngest. There’s nothing my brothers and sister won’t do to protect me, and every bad guy in the city knows it.
I drop to my knees, the cool tiles making me wince on impact, but I ignore the pain and start rummaging through the cupboard below the vanity for anything I can use as a weapon. I know self-defense. My brothers insisted I know how to protect myself, considering how little I liked having a security detail, but something tells me this is different. This isn’t a matter of fending off some two-bit thug on the street. This is someone who has planned to take me. Someone who has plotted over a long period of time, someone who has watched me, who has been in my house enough to know every single thing I have in my bedroom and bathroom. Whoever has me probably hasn’t taken me just to extort my family out of money.
No. The man who took me wants something much more sinister. I just don’t know what yet.
