Beaufort

_01_

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

'Robert Louis
Stevenson got
a few things wrong
about Jekyll.
He never lost
control over when
his disguise kept on
appearing. No, it
was not the side
effects of the
serum. He did not
need the serum.
Hyde never existed.'

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Xanthe's body ached from sitting still on a chair for almost 6 hours. She fell asleep 3 hours ago, and when she woke up, she forgot she was strapped to the chair, bound with several layers of rope. It restricted her from moving at all. Jett is sitting across from her, amused at Xanthe's distress.

     Her wrists are pinned behind her back, and the tight sailor knots are at the front, out of reach for her to untie. She cannot lift up her legs, her ankles are secured to the chair legs. The chair is rock solid, no chance of breaking. Jett smirks at the fact he has done another successful abduction, all on his own.

     He again demands he see his children. Xanthe tried to speak another refusal, but only small muffled grunts came out, not aware until now that a thick piece of gray duct tape has been covering her mouth the whole 6 hours she has been there. This is just like what happened 12 years ago, except it was a different man.

     That was the time when David and Ash were on their honeymoon and Xanthe had to live with her mother for a few days. On the 2nd day, Regina forgot to pick her up from the bus stop and a guy dragged Xanthe into his car to take revenge for something Regina did.

     Regina has been a prostitute as soon as she was 18. Even though she had many men she got in bed with that she lost count, she only ever had two children. She can't have kids anymore now she's too old. But she's still a prostitute. So when she turned down this man in 2014, he hunted Xanthe down.

     It took 18 months for her to be found. David and Ash banned Regina from seeing her ever again, but she said she didn't care about her anymore. The day Xanthe was found, she witnessed that the man had died of a brain aneurysm. It wasn't long, 6 months of freedom in between until she was kidnapped again.

     That was the time when it was Onyx that kidnapped her, Alekszandar and their friend Jasper on Xanthe's birthday. Onyx was her and Jasper's English teacher, Amethyst's biological father, and he illegally adopted Jett. Also that day, Onyx was also furious at Xanthe's book review on Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The adoption was illegal because Jett was already legally adopted by Jasper's adopted parents. The two boys are not biologically related at all, so Jett got mad and thought he was been replaced and ran away. Jett was the local high school's bus driver, he had a crush on Xanthe and took advantage of her in front of Alekszandar.

     Onyx was furious that Amethyst didn't want anything to do with him. He actually planned on just kidnapping her, but it went all wrong, he wasn't there. He got Jett and his friends to do it instead, and they mistook Xanthe for Amethyst. They only took Jasper and Alekszandar because they were in the way.

     Onyx didn't mind the mix-up, as he hatched a plan to make Amethyst think her friends will be set free on the condition she'd live with him. The cops found them 3 months later. Onyx, Jett and his friends were only sentenced to 3 months in prison. Jett should have been in longer, but neither she nor Alekszandar or their friends could convince the court she was raped.

     Back to the present time, Jett slowly removed Xanthe's gag so she could feel a lot of pain. He placed the used gag in the bin beside him. No shriek left her mouth. He asked the same question again, she didn't speak, she just shook her head. He smirks at her and wraps a new piece of duct tape around her mouth.