21-year-old Florence Ivelle struggles through college to claim freedom but gets trapped into a deal with her brother, Alastor, leaving her at his mercy until she graduates. She doesn't expect to be kidnapped into breaking it.
Three masked men take h...
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I was told when I was younger, that my mother died because she was sick. Since then, I often found myself wondering if the same sickness would kill me when I grew, and sometimes, I wished it would.
We used to make pancakes with whipped cream and berries every weekend, my mother and I. That was back when weekends weren't scary and filled with my father and Alastor. My father took Alastor under his wing at his CBD shop, and my mother took me under her wing with fairy tales and love.
"When you're older," my mother told me, tapping my nose with whipped cream and causing me to giggle, "you're going to be a pancake queen."
"What am I now?" four-year-old me asked her giddily, standing on my stepping stool so I could help flip the pancakes.
She ruffled my knotted hair from a restful sleep. "A pancake princess."
"Are you the queen, Mommy?" I wondered, resting my cheek on her hip as I watched the batter bubble. "Oh, it's ready to be flipped, Mommy, see?! I'm gonna flip it like the bestest princess in the whole entire world! Watch me, watch me!"
I ended up flipping it over the side of the pan and making a mess, but my mother just laughed and tickled me, making a fun game out of cleaning up back when games were still fun and not laced with Alastor's torture.
I stared at the wall, the room not as dark now that it was morning. I'd slept fitfully, startled at every sound and step. No one had come in to hurt me whilst I slept which surprised me, and when I realized I'd been safe to rest properly, I was upset to not have taken advantage of it.
Looking at my irritated wrists, I tried to rub them to alleviate the tension the handcuffs caused, but it only made it worse. Annoyed, afraid, and hungry, I sat and faced the door, willing someone to take me to questioning.
I had an entire night to toss and turn and come up with the answers they might want to hear. I had a good memory, which was more of a curse than a blessing, but in this case, it would help. Although I didn't know what Monday's shipments were, I remembered the truck's design. It was a different truck from the rest, and I assumed that would be helpful.
I'd also come up with a way to ask about the murders. If they didn't have any proof as they had said, I would offer to hack into security cameras around the scene and time of the crime to prove my innocence and show the real culprit in action. I'd only successfully hacked into security cameras once, afraid the police would be alerted somehow if I did it again—and they would tell my father. That was four years ago, but for my life, I was willing to try again.
When the door opened, all my calm preparations fell away as I made eye contact with Jungkook. I'd decided, also during the night, that he scared me the most.
He strode across the room lazily, absently swiping at his bottom lip. Taking note of the slight bruising beneath my eyes and the twitch in my brow, his lips quirked with cruel satisfaction. "All night."
