Take Me To Paris

Chapter 25

*Ansel's POV*

"I love you too."

That's the last thing she said before she pushed past me and walked out the door.

I trudge out of the elevator once it reaches my floor. Adrien and Loba stand outside, hopeful looks on their faces.

"Did she stay?" Loba asks as soon as I'm close enough for me to hear her.

"Does it fucking look like it?" I growl, walking through the door.

"Well, we thought that since she saw you, and she's infatuated with you, that you could make her stay." Adrien says. So that's why he smiled at me before he left for our room.

"She's just scared. She'll come back." Loba says with much uncertainty.

"No. She's terrified. Of herself to be exact. She loves us, so she doesn't want to hurt us. I understand that, but without her, I feel alone, and empty." I say, feeling tears well up in my eyes. I blink them back, not wanting to cry. "I have to track her down, and bring her back."

"What are you, a bounty hunter? Yeah, have fun with that. If Vix doesn't want to be found, then she won't be. She's a very secretive person, she has her ways of disappearing. One time, I didn't see her for a week, I thought she was staying with someone else. Turns out, she was there the whole time, surviving off of cheesecake, and leftover pizza." Loba says, smiling at the memory.

"Wow... I can see that... Anyways, I'm going to leave out first thing in the morning, and I'm going to find my Princess."

🌹

I walk down the sidewalk on the seventh day of looking, looking for anything and everything that could lead me to Vix. I check in small hotels and inn's. Any place she could've been... She wasn't.

Could she have been arrested? Raped again? Hurt? Kidnapped? Murdered?

I need to calm down. She can take care of herself. I'm just overthinking. I breathe deeply, and walk into one of the hotels a few streets away from our suite. There's a woman at the front, her board straight black hair flowing to her shoulders before bluntly ending. She looks at me through piercing green eyes, and speaks to me in French. I look at her slightly confused.

"How may I help you, Monsieur?" She asks, obviously annoyed, in a thick French accent.

"Um, I needed to know if a Vivian Jones was here?" I ask, my voice slightly shaky. The woman, Jane as her name tag clearly states, sighs and types quickly on her computer.

"No. There isn't a Vivian Jones here. Never has been." She says, her voice impatient.

"Oh, sorry I bothered you." I say quietly, before walking out of the lobby, exhausted.

The next three hotels are the exact same. The women were different, obviously, but they were all rude and barely spoke English.

"What're you doin, Shortcake?" A small woman in an even smaller red, strapless dress asks me from the front of an alley.

I don't answer, and instead keep walking, avoiding eye contact.

"Hey, she asked you something!" A man came up behind her. He was beefy, with hams for hands. Well, not literally, but that's what it they looked like.

"Yeah, and I didn't answer." I say quietly, walking a little faster. The man reaches out, and grabs my arm. His whole hand almost covers from my armpit to my elbow. "Let me go." I growl, darkening my gaze.

"Quit looking at him like that, Shortcake, we just want a little fun." The woman says suggestively.

"'Fun', meaning holding an unwilling man against his will?" I ask sarcastically.

"No, Shortcake. 'Fun', by getting pounded by both of your pretty little selves. $100 an hour." She says, a slight French accent coating her words.

I widen my eyes a little. They wanted a threesome? What the fuck?! You don't go around asking that from random passer-by! That's just gross!

"I-im good, thanks." I say, trying to pry the man's thick hand from my arm. Just to say, my arm isn't that small, so this man is just unnaturally strong.

"I don't think so." The man says, pulling me into him, and planting a firm kiss on my mouth. He tastes like wintergreen with a hint of something gross, almost rotten.

"Mph! Let me go!" I yell, shoving myself away.

"That was a horrid mistake, Shortcake." The woman says quietly, before turning and clacking quickly out of the alley in her tall heels.

"W-what do you mean?" I ask the retreating woman.

"You'll see. Or not, depends on the damage." She says, before disappearing completely around the corner.

Damage? He wasn't going to hurt me, was he? What did I do besides decline his offer (more like demand) to bang him and the woman in the dress.

He pulls out a small gun, I'm not sure what kind, and points it against my cheek.

"Holy shit." I squeak out, before he presses it further into my cheekbone.

"Don't. Speak. This is what you deserve. We were going to pay you for three hours. That's four hundred dollars. I would've tak-"

"Actually, that would be $300. Red told me that it was $100 an hour." I cut him off, making the anger apparent in his face.

"Shut the fuck up." He growls.

"Well, if you're going to do math, I suggest you do it right." I smile a little.

The man shoves me to the ground, and I land on my butt, and the back of my forearms against the concrete. He points the gun at me, and I dodge at just the right time, because he just barely misses. The second time, he hits me in the left of my chest. I gasp, not able to breathe suddenly due to a sharp pain in my chest.

"Little shit." The man sneers, before walking away.

🌹

I don't know how long I lied there, not being able to cry out in pain.  A small man, around twenty, but he was really slim, walked above me in my view range.

"Holy- were you shot!?" He asks in a slightly deep voice. He was wearing all sorts of Paris souvenirs all over, and he has a British accent, so I think he's a tourist. "I'll call an ambulance!"

Soon, I'm in an ambulance truck, going down the highway. The woman in the truck keeps telling me to calm down. Like, but I am calm, you calm down. My vision is blurry, and I can't see much around me.

The man who called the ambulance for me decided to stay where he was, said something about having a weak stomach.

My head starts to fog over, and I can't really hear anything. But I do hear one very special thing.

"He's from Florida, emergency contacts: Adrien Blodwen, and Vivian Jones."