A/N: Okay so I’ve had this idea for quite a while, but I told myself I wasn’t gonna work on it until I had the first chapters of my like five other ideas written. I lied to myself. This one just came surprisingly easily to me, and since I’d been struggling a lot with my other ideas, I ended up actually writing it.

WARNINGS:  1.) This is for the ship Tomione, which is Tom Riddle and Hermione Granger. That said, if the ship makes you uncomfortable then you should probably leave now. 2.) While I don’t/won’t write non-con or rape, I have no problems writing literally anything else. This story is going to be dark. Again, if you don’t like that then you should probably leave. 3.) This is the only warning my story is going to have. I will not be putting up warnings for individual chapters.

If you’re still here after all that, happy reading!

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Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.

Victoria Schwab

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The car smelled of leather and an unidentifiable air freshener, a surprisingly pleasant combination. It should have smelled like blood, and rot, and decay. It should have smelled like the putrid festering of disease.

But it didn’t.

The duct tape stretched across her mouth stuck to her frizzy hair, ripping strands out. Her bound hands strained behind her back. Bruises, sickly greens, purples, and yellows, had already begun to crawl their way around her arms.

Child locks, able only to be opened from the front seat, trapped her inside the car.

Trees rushed by out the window.

“I’ll take the tape off soon, but if you scream I’ll have to put it back on,” the young man, her captor, said. His eyes remained locked on the road. Waves of hair almost dark enough to be classified as black framed his pale, angular face.

Hermione glared out the tinted glass of the window. It had been at least an hour since they’d passed the little sign that announced they were leaving her town. She knew they weren’t far from the main highway that would take them far away from the safety of home.

Her lip trembled, and a fresh bout of tears blurred the world. Her chest shook and her lungs heaved. The tang of blood filled her mouth. Pressure filled the spaces in between her ribs. It felt like sorrow, and it felt like death.

They’d gotten to a traffic light before the ramp onto the highway when, without warning, her captor turned halfway around and ripped off the tape.

Hermione gasped. She fell silent again when he didn’t react. Once more his attention was on the road.

A dark blue car blared on its horn when her captor swerved a little too close as they merged onto the highway. She wished it had hit them. She wished it would ram right into his side of the car, mangling his limbs and crushing his ribs through his heart. She wished it would, but it didn’t.

More than once she considered kicking the back of his seat. Hermione imagined planting her foot on his face and breaking his straight, aristocratic nose. She pictured the comical look of shock that would paint his features as she drove her heel into his eye socket.

“What’s your name?” The polite question startled her. She looked at the overhead mirror and saw him raise an eyebrow at her silence. “Well?”

“What does it matter?” Hermione asked bitterly. Her brows furrowed together and lips twisted, sticky with residue from the tape. Still, her heart raced at giving such a rude response.

“I need to call you something, and I think that just referring to you as ‘girl’ would feel rather degrading, would it not?” Amusement colored his tone. She hated it.

Rather than answer, Hermione asked, “What’s your name, then?”

“That’s not how this works,” he stated, dark eyes leveled on her in the mirror. They were emotionless. Icy dread wrapped its fingers around her neck. “I will ask you questions, and if you answer them then I will consider answering some of yours in return.”

“Okay,” she hesitated, wondering if it was a good idea to give him her full name. “You can call me Granger,” she said after a pause.

“And you may call me Riddle,” the man replied. “It’s my last name,” he added, again looking right into her eyes using the mirror. He knew. Riddle smiled, displaying two rows of shining, even teeth. The rest of his face remained blank and empty.

“So, Granger,” he drew out the syllables of her name, molding the shapes of the letters with his mouth, “how old are you?” Red flags sprung to life in Hermione’s mind.

“Sixteen,” she lied. She’d turned seventeen three weeks prior. “How old are you?”

“I’m twenty.” Riddle tilted his head to look at something out the window. The last light of the setting sun bathed his profile in gold. Shadows played around his eyes, masking the emotions there.

Dull crackling filled the air as Riddle turned on the radio. A grainy, distorted version of what sounded like a Frank Sinatra song filtered in.

“What’s your favourite subject in school?” he asked.

“I can only have one?” For a moment he looked surprised, but his expression flattened again.

“Yes, just one.”

“Well,” Hermione began, “I’d probably have to say Chemistry. It’s fascinating.”

The atmosphere felt taut and oppressive. She was holding a relatively normal conversation with her kidnapper.

Frank Sinatra held out a long note at the end of his song.

Riddle grinned. “Really? And I assume that you get all A’s?”

Without thinking, Hermione raised her nose at him. “Of course my grades are all A’s,” she said, the note of defensiveness ringing all too clear. If he minded her attitude, he didn't show it. He looked calm, almost serene. It scared her more than if he'd yelled at her.

“How many others have there been?” she asked, trying not to sound like she cared about the answer. Her hands tingled from being trapped behind her for so long.

“What makes you think there have been others?” He sounded genuinely interested.

She wouldn’t let him distract her. “How many?” Hermione pressed.

“You are the third.” The calm expression seemed stiff, almost frozen, as though he were forcing himself not to let the mask drop at his revelation. Only his eyes held any emotion, a mad gleam that flickered as the shadows on his face shifted.

“I see.” Hermione swallowed the growing lump in her throat. She gnawed on her lip.

“Do you know why I kidnapped you?” Riddle’s lips curved into a smirk. “Why I kidnapped them? Why I took you from that alley on your way home from school, Granger?”

Hermione ground her teeth together. “No, I don’t. Why did you kidnap us?”

His eyes flashed red with the light of a neon sign as they drove past. He smiled then, and it was the realest emotion he’d shown since he dragged her into his car. “I was bored.”

Pain shot through Hermione’s arm as she shifted in her seat.

“Do you want to know what happened to them?” he asked. Air burned it’s way to her lungs. She took a ragged breath.

Voice thick, she answered, “I think I already know.”

He turned the car onto an exit ramp illuminated by a single yellow light. In the distance, Hermione saw the outline of Chicago, bright against the darkening backdrop of the evening sky. Deep reds and burgundy purples were the only remainders of the picturesque sunset.

Mansions, cold and towering, passed by on either side. Their manicured lawns stretched as far as the eye could see, wasteful in their vastness. Imposing iron fences guarded the impressive homes.

Riddle turned then, onto a long, winding driveway lined on either side by sculpted bushes. Hermione started at the sight of the lavish house they were approaching. It was bigger than any of the mansions they’d just passed, and at least doubly extravagant. Curved stairs led to an enormous pair of gilded doors, each with a large family crest. Marble columns held up an engraved archway that read Sanctimonia Vincet Semper in proud Romanesque letters. Fountains and statues adorned the yard, as well as what looked suspiciously like live albino peacocks.

A blond man dressed in casual slacks and a blue polo watched them impassively from the top of the stairs. Riddle’s jaw clenched as the man crossed his arms over his chest.

Confusion mixed with stark panic rippled through Hermione. Against Riddle alone she might have had a chance to escape, but against these two men together she knew her odds were significantly worse.

Riddle turned the car off and then glared at her in the mirror. “I’m going to go talk to him, and when we come back to get you, you are not to speak a word to him. Do you understand me?” She nodded. The line between his brows deepened.

He left his door open. She wondered if it was a test. It didn’t matter. Even if she could manage to climb from the backseat to the front with her hands bound, there was no way she’d be able to do so without being noticed and subsequently recaptured. Her efforts would be in vain and would only serve to make him angry.

When she escaped, she would do so only when she was absolutely sure it would work. And then she’d kill him. She’d drive a knife into his chest until he was choking on his blood. The malicious glow in his eyes would fade, leaving them glazed and unseeing.

Hermione strained to hear what Riddle and the blond man were saying, but they were too far away. They both looked upset, though. She could see Riddle gesturing wildly as the other man pointed in her direction. After several minutes of this, it appeared they had come to some sort of agreement because they began to walk to the car.

Riddle slammed his door shut as the blond man came to stand outside her door. He peered in the window at her. Hermione raised her chin in defiance, making sure to look right into his eyes.

“This one is going to be trouble,” the blond man stated, eyes still not leaving hers.

“Come now, Abraxas, you’re not doubting me, are you? After all we’ve been through? I’m hurt.” The blond, Abraxas, looked away from her to send a disgusted expression at Riddle.

“Don’t forget, Riddle, there will come a time when you no longer hold any leverage over me, and I will not be forced to do your dirty work.”

“But today isn’t that day,” Riddle said smoothly. He glanced at her. “It’s time to go inside now. Make sure she doesn’t manage to escape.” With that, he turned and walked towards the mansion, whistling a chipper tune.

Abraxas heaved a sigh. He opened her door and held out a hand as though to help her out. She stared at it. He thrust his hand farther towards her, the formerly blank look on his face contorting into irritation.

“Why aren’t you taking my hand?” he bit out. Hermione looked at him as though he might be stupid, and then slowly shifted in her seat to show him her bound hands. Abraxas flinched, something unreadable flashing across his face.

Silence danced around in the cooling night air.

“You’ll be comfortable here,” he assured her. Hermione doubted that.

Abraxas grabbed her arm and pulled her up, grunting with the effort. She didn’t struggle, didn’t try to break free. His grip on her arm tightened.

“Why did he kidnap me? What’s he going to do to me?” Hermione whispered. Her breath caught in her throat.

She had to know. She needed to know.

Abraxas began walking towards the mansion, dragging her along beside him. “I don’t know,” he admitted after a pause.

Hermione dragged her feet as they climbed the stairs. The fabric on the toe of her shoes scraped with each step.

He stopped, then, a few feet from the imposing doors. “He’s not all that he seems. You’d do well to tread with caution.” She started to ask what he meant, but Abraxas twitched, shaking himself, and then proceeded to open the doors.

Riddle stood in the midst of the most impressive hallway she’d ever seen. Black and white marble tile offset the deep burgundy walls adorned with intricate paintings. Gold chandeliers sparkled and cast a warm glow. Busts of both metal and stone stared out from their decorative tables, grotesque smiles forever etched into their cheeks. The ceiling stretched up into a glass dome, complete with gold inscriptions too small to be made out.

“Good, you made it,” Riddle commented, voice empty of inflection. Abraxas pushed Hermione in his direction. She glared at his back as he turned to close and lock the doors.

“Why here?” Hermione asked. Riddle tilted his head to study her. His dark eyes bored into her brown ones.

If eyes were the windows to the soul, then he didn’t have a soul. There was nothing in his eyes, not the faintest flicker of life.

“Why not?” he smiled infuriatingly. “Come, I’ll show you your room.”

Riddle offered her his arm. “I can’t.” His smile grew, the corners splitting his face into something vicious and animalistic.

“And why is that?” His eyes were locked on her face.

“My hands are still tied behind my back,” Hermione hissed. Her eyes flashed and her nostrils flared. Riddle chuckled low in his throat, the sound made of deep, poisoned honey.

“You do not seem to fear me.” He stated it casually. But he’d gone still, every line of his tall frame rigid. Hermione swallowed.

She straightened to her full height, ignoring the wild beating of her heart. “I don’t fear you.”

She did.

He studied her a moment longer and then nodded. “You will.”