"Shhhh!" I whisper, giggling as my boyfriend kisses my neck, my parents are in the next room and this all feels, well, cheeky.
He suddenly grabs my face and whispers - "Katie, marry me." It takes me a second to register, he must be joking. He's definitely joking right?
"Will you?"
Oh god - not joking. Thing is, the only thought that's stopping me is how young we both are, 18 is too young to be married, isn't it? But why not? We love eachother and -
He stops me with a kiss and all my worries melt away, why did I ever doubt it? "Yes, yes I will," I say, now with no cares at all and on top of the world. "Let's go out to celebrate, I want the whole world to know you're going to be my wife! Grab your coat, I want to treat my fiancee..." He grins. I leap up and go to grab my coat, "Me and Jack are going out!" I yell to my parents, they won't care, they trust him with my life, and so do I.
Later in the car I ask about where we're going, we've driven past the main town centre so he must have somewhere really special planned. "Jaaaaaccckkkk, just tell me where we're going? Pretty please?" I paint on my cutest face, maybe he'll tell me if I look that desperate.
"Look just stop asking okay, I told you it's a surprise now just shut up." He snaps. I'm shocked, this is unlike him. Maybe he's just joking around?
"Okay I'm sorry alright, would just be nice to know whe..."
"What did I just say?" He replies. I'm worried, this is nothing like the Jack I know and if this is what married life would be like then no thank you. I decide to keep quiet, I'm not in the mood for going out anymore and clearly neither is he. "Look, if you want to just go home then that's okay, we could just watch a film or something?" No reply. I decide to put it out of my mind and start singing along to the radio, when we pull over. I'm confused, we're at a house and it's not his. He turns to me and makes me promise not to leave the car, he just has to get something from a friend.
I agree and continue to hum along. I wonder what he's getting, maybe a gift? A ring? That would make sense. The longer he is the more I think about why he was so snappy earlier, perhaps I'm overthinking it, I was being irritating after all. Whilst lost in deep thought I hear a sudden bang on the boot of the car, I turn and see a huge shadow hitting something on the car's boot. I look closer and see it's a person - shit Jack! I'm frozen, I still don't know if 1, it is even Jack or 2) if the person's seen me. I am probably in huge danger but I'd never forgive myself if something happened to him. I brace myself to get out the car, but felt the door open and knew I'd been rumbled.
"Ello sweetheart, you must be my payment." It was the same man I'd seen at the boot of the car and before I could even scream my mouth had been covered and I was being dragged out of the car. I resisted as much as I could but this man was huge, there was no way I could escape. I lost all hope when I saw a body on the floor - Jack. He was either dead or unconcious and no help to me now - fuck.
I was carried into the house and shocked by its size, hardly a house and more of a mansion, I was dropped onto the hard floorboards. Men began appearing from every doorway, all smartly dressed and smoking, it was like something from a 1920's film. I sat up quickly but was abruptly stopped by a kick to the nose from the man who brought me in, now in floods of tears and with a huge flow of blood streaming from my nose.
A man descended from the spiral staircase to my left, clearly of importance as his velour suit and cuban cigar suggested. And also the bowing, there was a lot of bowing. All the men now surrounding me dipped their heads at him and then gasped as he pulled out a gun and shot the man in the head, just like that. He fell down next to me and I felt myself gag at all that blood. He turned to me and put the gun to my head, I closed my eyes and thought of my family, if this was the end I wanted to remind myself how lucky I've been to have them. I heard a laugh as he withdrew the gun and turned to me.
"Ah I'm sorry that was priceless, don't worry princess I would never hurt you," he said, stroking my cheek. "It's just I couldn't keep him after he did that to your pretty face. Shhhh, don't cry, we'll look after you." He leant closer to me and I could smell the whiskey on his breath, certainly not put at ease by his words. "Take her up to join the others, and if any of you hurt her... well, I'm sure you can use your imagination..." He went to walk away before turning back around, "Oh, you can call me Boss by the way princess."
