EPISODE TWENTY

'curious cats bite dusts'

"YOU KNOW, YOU'RE the last person I thought of who'd kidnap me but also one of the firsts now that we're in this situation."

Keeping calm was my first priority, and hopefully getting that ringing in my head that was making me wince out as well. I did that by taking stock of my surroundings (a basement of sorts, damp and smelled — there was a door at the corner but no windows), the number of people in the room (four men with bored looking faces, two of them guarding the door), the number of exits (only one, guarded too heavily). Who could overpower me in seconds and what movement wouldn't shock them enough to shoot.

I had it in my best interest to know that if they're willing to kidnap someone in broad daylight with about as much witnesses — as one of those, a Scotland Yard police — then they had firepower. Or that they wholly believed they could overpower me in seconds.

From the odds tipping so heavily out of my grasps, I had no choice but to agree.

I sat up slowly, hissing through gritted teeth at the pound in my head. Nausea rose but I kept myself from vomiting and met Aoi Nakamura's eyes. I hadn't seen her at all during her own engagement party — its was either we were too focused on the doctor or getting caught, but the photos I had already obsessed over didn't do her looks justice.

Aoi Nakamura was doll like, sitting on the lone chair in the room. She had such a porcelain skin with a porcelain face; her button nose, her small but fully pouted lips. Her eyes were more doll-like than the rest of her — they were half glass. A cold emptiness that I couldn't see or figure anything out of. There was not a single emotion — fleeting or otherwise — I could glean from them.

And despite the built and fear the other men in the room possessed and surely showed, Aoi Nakamura who I couldn't read at all, was the most dangerous one in the room.

"And why is that?" she asked as soon as I was properly sat up. I was on a dirty mattress, pushed against a wall.

I didn't want to think what a mattress was doing in a place like this, but I leaned against the wall, a support I needed from the weakness in my system. I felt like I had cotton in my mouth, the nausea getting worse in my head, and there was a painful throb at the back of it that pounded, just at the top of the nape of my neck.

"You're kind of hard to read," I admitted, taking a lot of energy with just talking. "A friend of mine had a hard time trying to piece your profile, and even then it felt too glossy. Like a magazine where every word is fixed to one journalistic trajectory; that you work in the fashion industry, that you were all over in high class New York and Paris before you met Lorenzo Moretti. That you were the girl he was having an affair with, splashed across news sites before the year started. That the actress he was married to for four years, Eleanor Wayne, was caught leaving the house they had in California in tears, no wedding ring in place, and divorce papers filed as soon as the morning broke.

That despite all this bad drama on your spotlight, you kept your head high, your smile in place. Because you have the man in your corner, and you won the war." I shifted against my laboured breathing. Aoi's face had not changed at all, the polite mask still perfectly in place. I needed something, anything, and I had one card in my deck. I had no choice. "But that wasn't the real war isn't it? It was all to put things in place. Dominic said, in his video, that you were part of his past. His true past. And I only found out today what that was."

I exhaled, my head swimming. There was no concrete proof yet, all we had were pictures and suspicions. But I trusted my gut. I trusted my conclusion. I just needed to see one shift — a single shift on her face — to confirm it for me. I had to find something. I had to make this count.

"You were a victim too. You were like him. You were kidnapped then... trafficked."

Aoi's face changed. But only a little. Her lips rose into a smile that sent shivers down my arms and spine. "出て行け."

The men in the room shifted, confused. One of them moved forward, braving a question in his tongue. But Aoi lost the smile so fast, when he saw the sinister expression on her face, he bowed his head and couldn't retreat fast enough. The three followed suit, still confused but rushed out from the look on their comrade's face. It was complete fear.

When she turned to me, she didn't bother changing expressions. It sent shivers down my spine and if I wasn't experiencing the after effects of being drugged, I would've had a worse reaction. But it was still uncomfortable enough for my flight or fight instincts to kick in. I could do maybe a few damages but nothing to feel safe about those four that were still outside. She moved then, putting one leg over another, her eye contact not breaking at all.

"And what were you going to do with that information? From the looks of your continued assessment of my face, you don't have anything but a cool hunch. You look shock." She smiled prettily. "It's obvious. Ever since you woke up and realised the predicament you found yourself in, you've been studying the room, the people, my face. But it is weird, isn't it? Why you're applying such a victimised version of a flight or fight instinct. From my personal findings, people who asses the way we do have usually been abused in their life, enough times for them to asses their abuser and work around it. Since you know something about me, you can see why I have it. But isn't it curious why you do, Ms. Cain?"

The foulness in my head moved to my tongue. I met her stare, my heart pounding.

Her smile stretched. "Will you really not tell me? I mean, I'm more than willing to tell you who I am if you're willing to tell me who you are. Unlike the boys — even Dr. Hamel who I've met once or twice — I don't know you at all. Matteo called Enzo and I to warn us of something suspicious that Dominic may have done, prior to his death. They knew how vindictive he was, even then. By the time we figured it out someone was trying to sniff our tails, we had taken the doctor in a rush and the Morettis made a show of keeping him as a friend. But the damage was done — Leon Song was in on the bloody case with that infuriating sister of his and a country bumpkin by his side, ready to solve the murder."

She flipped her hair over her shoulder, laughing lightly as if we were old friends on a planned afternoon tea. "Of course Cordelia Song could get Milo Cavendish to back down — that man is weaker than putty in the hands of that woman — but I was truly surprised when you somehow managed to get Cassandra. I saw the CCTVs in the place and I had wiped it."

I blinked. "Why?"

"I have my own plans and if Cassie's mummy found you first, then things would've gone to trash, right? Her mother is a different entity entirely. She had kept her daughter close — so close that when Cassie found out things she shouldn't have, she made sure she was still innocent. Cassie doesn't even do drugs, her mother got her hooked. Her pretty little brain is all fucked up now. The price to pay for being innocent among these people is high, Miss Cain. It costs them their life.

So... will you deign me with the question? Will you tell me who exactly are you, Miss Cain, and if you're important enough to Mr. Song, then we can decide if you're worth keeping alive, right?"

That stilled my blood. "You're... you're not going to kill me."

But my conviction, already unstable, went down the drain when I saw not a single hint of hesitation or lie on her face. She continued to smile, her eyes black and empty like the glassy beads on doll's heads. "Dominic came out of nowhere, my dear. As you thought, I paid my time, my body, and my soul so that I could enact my revenge. I became a man's whore willingly, so that when the time came, I could break him apart piece by piece. Tendon by hamstring, skin by nail. Eye by fucking tooth. If your life is what's stopping me from getting that..."

She leaned back against her seat, chin titling up. She lost her smile and she was staring at me like a stubborn puzzle that wasn't part of the part of the piece she was working on.

"I'd kill you right now if I needed too, Miss Cain. A random girl who a weirdo like Leon Song keeps around will not be my undoing. I refuse for you to be my undoing. So tell me, in precise detail, why you're more worth to me alive than dead? Sell yourself to the devil, darling, and let's see."

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NEXT

EPISODE TWENTY TWO

THE REAL WENDY CAIN

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[ japanese translations ]

'出て行け' - get out

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Hello, kids! Did you see this happening? How are you coping? How do you think Wendy's coping here? Any ideas from the little hint from the next chapter title? I didn't want to halve this chapter, but I realised things were getting too long and I had to, my apologies.

But DOAP is still really shaping up to be longer than LS.