THE UNSEEN PATH

PIPER'S POV

Standing in the middle of my room in all this dubious glory was Rowan Archer. He cocks his head to the side,  his lips still pulled into that irritating smirk. 

I'm yet to take a step, I can barely move though I can feel my insides heating up with barely contained anger. "W-What are you doing here?" I ask just as another one of those bulky men pushes past me and into the room. He has a cardboard box in his hand, which soon carries the textbooks to my bed, and the few that lay at the foot of my bed. 

"I'm here to pick up my new bride." He states coolly. 

"Your bride?! What do you mean by that?!" My voice raises a pitch, though it stays steady and wavering. Everything's happening so fast, my body feels light and the room spins. I place a hand on my forehead, glaring at him from beneath my lashes. "I have no idea what you're on about. Please leave before the police get involved. You're trespassing on private property."

"Oh, am I?" He feigns ignorance, yet his voice remains dry and disinterested. "I don't think so. According to the agreement your father signed, you're my soon-to-be wife. Which means we're family."

Stunned, I stood there just staring at him. Had he gone mad? An agreement? Signing? Wife? All that didn't make sense. "You've gone crazy." Hell, he'd always been crazy. The arrogant bastard couldn't tell right from wrong and had gone mad from all those years he'd spent being able to control people however he liked. 

But whatever hold he thought he had on me, it was nonexistent. 

Rowan narrows his eyes at me. Shivers run down my spine at the look but I don't let my defiant glare waver. I clench my jaw and turn away from him, scoping my surroundings. My room - sans my furniture - had almost been completely cleared out. My clothes, bags, and shoes, they'd all been taken out. 

"What the fuck." I say just as I trudge over to my walk-in closet and push open the doors. To no one at all it was empty save a couple of socks on the floor. "He has gone mad," I whisper beneath my breath. 

My father was just talking to me about this agreement, but what does he mean he's already signed it? There's no way he signed anything, without me whatever has been signed should be invalid. 

"So what," I spin on my heels towards him, throwing my hands to my sides and they fall to clap against my hips. 

Rowan, as per usual is unfazed, his sculpted features are calm and stoic, and that stupid smirk from earlier was nowhere in sight. "You came all the way here to tear down my room and kidnap me!"

"I guess that's the plan seeing as it doesn't look like you're going to be coming willingly."

He snaps his fingers and before I can decipher that sentence, my feet no longer touch the ground. Someone has me over their shoulder in mere seconds. The air is knocked out of my lungs and I'm left disoriented and dumbfounded for a good two seconds. 

I kick against the person holding me up as we exit my room and descend the stairs. All the while, Rowan walks beside us, stoic and unfazed. I kick and scream until we're outside and I'm being thrown into the backseat of a car packed to the brim with men dressed entirely in black. 

Through my haze, I watch through the tinted windows as Rowan walks to a car in front of the one I sat in, and the cars start moving. 

It all happens so fast. I turn to look through the backseat window. My mom and sisters are kicking and screaming at the cars behind us, I can't think, I can't even bring myself to say a word as the car rolls out of the villa and down the busy streets of LA. 

The look on my father's face didn't seem surprised, he just stared, brows knitted with an unreadable look in his eyes as I was pushed and carried away from his home without my consent. 

I hadn't realized I had begun to cry until the teardrops fell and wet my arms. The guards beside me could be less concerned as I sobbed at Archer Manor. 

I'm let down from the car, weak and still in shock, I slowly let the men escort me into the mansion. The place is surrounded by trees and lakes, high up a hill, and far enough away from civilization to ensure peace but still cause chills of dread and anxiety to run deep into one's bones. 

Anxiety was far from how I felt at the moment. I was practically shaking in my boots. Only in a thin white t-shirt and pink sleep shorts, the night breeze caused goosebumps to ripple across my skin. 

I'm taken into the dark mansion, Rowan walks in front of me, leading the way into his dark gloomy home. It screamed dark erotica in a way I couldn't put into words. High ceilings, and furniture varying in different shades of grays, blacks, and reds. Old paintings and vases of roses sat in odd corners. 

I'm led up a flight of stairs of a grand staircase, down a long hallway lined with grotesque paintings that seem to follow me with their eyes, and then into a large library. Large shelves that seemed to reach up to the sky, stacked with dusty books illuminated by the dim orange glow of the fireplace, circled the room. 

In the middle, a red rug, two chairs that face each other, a lamp, and a small coffee table. 

Rowan takes a seat on one of the chairs and waves the guards off. The two men who'd escorted me in left with a curt nod. 

Alone in this room with him, the man who'd just so rudely kidnapped me from my home. It felt suffocating. Yet, I stayed in place, my gut told me trying to make a run for it wouldn't end in my favor, seeing as I had no idea where I was, or where to head. 

For all I knew, home no longer was home.

Rowan beckons me forward with a come-hither bend of his fingers, the rings adorning the long slender fingers glittering in the light of the auburn flames emitting from the fireplace. 

I gulp down my pride and take tiny steps towards him, he motions towards the seat opposite him and I sit. I narrow my eyes at a folder that sits on the coffee table, I hadn't noticed it before seeing as I had more pressing matters on my mind. 

"Go over everything carefully. Seeing as this union is for life you want to make sure you're not going into something you'll entirely regret." He shrugs, cooking his head to the side boredly.  "You've already been sold to me, but why don't we make it official? Have it all out on paper, just in case you decide to run." He crosses his legs, his chin in his palm, his ringed pointer finger absent-mindedly tapping against his jaw at an irritatingly slow languid pace. 

Blood rushes up my cheeks in anger as I hurriedly scoop the file from the table. I tore it open, and in it sat a document I hoped to never see for as long as I lived.