____...○ ○ ○ O L I V I A ○ ○ ○."What do you want for dinner?" I stared at the man who was staring back at me with no emotions on his face. I gulped. I knew this. I had seen way too many movies and documentaries where this happened. Fred was the nice guy, the friendly guy who showed some kind of compassion to his hostages. That would mean this man, equally rugged as Fred but looking older and lacking any light in his eyes, would have to be the bad guy. "Oh, let's order something we have never ordered before!" Fred was on his feet. "Like steak, maybe. I mean, we have the money to do that now, don't we?" For someone who was annoyed by the presence of Fred a moment ago, I was actually glad that he was in the same room with this guy right now. He looked like he wanted to rip my throat out. "I wasn't asking you." He said in his gruff voice and then cocked his head in my direction. "Miss, what do you want for dinner?" I blinked. Oh. "I am not hungry," I muttered, finall
____...○ ○ ○ O L I V I A ○ ○ ○.Every single cell in my body screamed in protest.I could hear a faint buzz of chaos around me, but no matter how hard I tried to open my eyes or move my hands, I just could not.I let out a groan and all the buzz stopped immediately."Dude, she is waking up." I heard a gruff voice over the deafening ringing in my ears. "Should we call the boss and let him know?" "I will do that. You stay here." I heard another man. I could hear a door opening and closing, and as I squinted my eyes open, a rugged guy, but still seeming to be no more than in his early twenties, walked over to me. I finally adjusted to the room. It was a well-furnished room, and I was on a canopy bed which looked like my childhood dream and my daughter's worst nightmare. "Who... Who are you?" It was an effort to speak. "And how did I get here?" "You have been kidnapped, duh." He shrugged as if he were talking about the weather. Was this man for real? "I can see that," I sai
______...○ ○ ○ J A C K S O N ○ ○ ○ .“Do you know what this feels like?” Olivia spun on her heels and looked at me with a questioning brow. “What?” I asked, looking around. We had been silently enjoying our respective ice cream cones and we had not talked about anything for a while. I did not know what was going through her mind. Was she going to bring up something that I did when I was busy being an idiot?“The whole situation.” She waved her hand in the air in general. “It feels like we are trying to solve a puzzle without finding all the pieces. And sometimes, it feels like we have too many pieces and too many puzzles and we don't know what goes where.” I rubbed the back of my neck. She was right about that. It did feel like life was shit these days. "So what do we do? How the hell are we supposed to find out whether we are stuck with one puzzle and a few missing pieces? Or whether we are stuck with multiple puzzles and too many different pieces?" I asked
______...○ ○ ○ O L I V I A ○ ○ ○."So what is the story behind the hair?" I asked as I placed the plates of muffins in front of us. Jackson slid into the seat next to me with the tray of coffees. And he gave a look. The man did not seem as interested in Agatha as I was. I knew where he was coming from. I was talking to a potential criminal like she was a friend from high school. But she was so old and looked so sweet and had the prettiest hair. I aspired to have her kind of confidence. Here I was, in my thirties and never even plucking up my courage to get my hair dyed in any other color which strayed two shades away from my original brunette waves, and then there was this ancient woman, at least in her seventies - if not in her eighties - with the most punky looking hair out there. Agatha shrugged. "I never got to live my life like I wanted when I was younger. So now I do what I want, because how the hell am I supposed to look my mother in the eye when I get there?
____...○ ○ ○ J A C K S O N ○ ○ ○.I was never one to pretend that I was a good guy. In fact, there was a time when I used to be proud of the fact that I was a piece of shit who would go to any extent to get what I wanted. But, I guess those days were over. Because all of the bad things that I did to others were coming right back at me. And it was not a good feeling. I guess that was my lesson. Now I knew how it felt to be stabbed in the back. How it felt to have all my options crashing against each other. To have to run and run and run and only find myself in a dead end. I felt as if I was stuck in the middle of an ocean, and I did not know which direction to swim. I was trapped, and I was trapped with Olivia. But she seemed infinitesimally more positive than I did. Maybe because she was not overburdened by all the things. Her priorities were simple. One, protect Lilith Corp because it was my mother's legacy and she could not have someone like Thomas Abrams taki
_____ . . . ○ ○ ○ O L I V I A ○ ○ ○ . I felt like a teenager who was doing something that I was not supposed to do behind my parents. Which did not make any sense since I was thirty-years-old and I was here with my so called husband. And technically, it was my Dad who started this by not listening to reason and going on a revenge rampage which made no sense. To hurt Jackson, he was allying with a man who had hurt the love of his life. Which was horrendous. If Mom found out, she would be devastated. My father did not care about me as much as she cared about my mother. I felt like it was more of an ego bruise than some real hurt regarding me that was making him do it. After all, all of this shit had happened right under his nose for all these years and he had not even caught a whiff of it. That must have hurt his feelings. California was a cool and cheerful as compared to the serenity of the Chateux. I mean, I would have enjoyed the stay there if it was not for