She didn't look like she could kill someone.
Then again, she didn't look like she could kidnap someone either.
He felt dazed and tired, his eyelids felt heavy and his throat felt dry.
It took him sometime to finally be able to open his eyes and another few seconds to adjust to the bright lights. Once he was able to see properly, he found himself staring at a white ceiling decorated with some fancy ceiling lights. The walls were painted in what seemed to be off-white but were decorated with paintings and some more fancy lights, the windows covered with heavy dark curtains. He frowned. This was not his room.
His frown deepened when he heard a somewhat familiar voice but could not remember where he had heard it.
“Oh he is awake!” The same voice spoke, a bit louder this time. “Rise and shine, handsome.”
He turned his head to see the owner of the voice and as soon as his groggy brain registered the face, the events from earlier came crashing in. In an instant, he was wide awake and sitting up on the comfortable bed.
For a second he felt his head spin, but he dared not close his eyes, clearly afraid of what that woman might do to him.
“Here.” He saw her approaching him with a glass of water in her hand. He eyed it warily.
“Come on, handsome. You gotta trust me.” She then proceeded to take a sip from the glass before extending the same towards him once again. “See? Absolutely nothing.”
He didn’t want to. But his throat felt so dry that it was beginning to hurt a little. Tentatively, he took the glass from her and took a sip. What he had decided would be a little sip, turned into big gulps as soon as the cool water hit his throat, soothing the little burning sensation at the back of his throat.
A chuckle was heard and he opened his eyes, which he had unintentionally closed while drinking the glass of water, and looked up to see the woman.
She was no more dressed in those badass looking denims and flannel but was wrapped in a rather fluffy light green bathrobe that reached her knees. Her slightly wet hair was down and her highlights looked darker.
He kept his eyes on her. So, he was a little startled when he felt someone take the glass away from his grasp. Looking to his side, he saw one of the bodyguards standing there holding a tray while another filled the now empty glass with water. Both the tray and the glass were placed on a bed table that was then placed right in front of him on the bed.
“I was not sure what you would like and also didn’t think you would want to have anything heavy before the performance so I had them make some vegetable soup. At least, it’s healthy.” She shrugged. “If you prefer something else, you can always tell them.”
“What performance?” He was confused. He was tempted to devour the soup. Not that he loved soup. But he had had a light lunch before the shoot, which had lasted for more than 3 hours and did not get any chance to have anything else in between except for some juice. He was famished to say the least. So the soup did look tempting. But before he attacked it, he wanted to know what she meant by performance. And more importantly, who was she and why was he kidnapped.
“Oops! My bad.” She gave a sheepish smile. “Don’t worry, though. I will explain while you enjoy your soup. You were out for more than an hour and I don’t think you should keep your growling stomach waiting for much longer.” As if on cue, my stomach let out an embarrassingly loud growl. She smiled. “Told ya.”
Not wanting to embarrass myself any further I spooned a small amount of the soup and tasted it. It tasted like heaven.
“Tasty right? My cook has magical skills, I tell you.” She grinned. The woman looked innocent, completely harmless with that smile of hers. It didn’t look like she wanted to harm him. So what did she want from him? He was growing more and more curious.
“So, you can hate me all you want but you gotta do me this favour, yeah?” She began. “And it’s not really my fault, you know.” She sat on a single seater armchair that was placed in front of the bed. “I did call your manager to book an appointment like a month ago. But she insisted that you were not available. Something about tight schedules and shoots and stuff. So I had to do this.” She shrugged again.
“I still don’t get it.” He said. He was halfway through his soup and was thinking back to the past couple of months. Sure he had shoots. That’s what he did for a living, being a model. He was also recently launched as the face of an upcoming TV drama series. But the shooting had not started yet and was not scheduled for another month or so due to the pandemic situation. So he was trying to understand why his manager would turn down a booking.
“My best friend is a huge fan of yours. Like from the very beginning when you started your modelling career. And she is getting married next week. So I wanted to surprise her by booking you to perform at her Bachelorette Party. I tried to explain the same to your manager too. I even said that I would throw the party whenever you would be free and even double the amount. But she was being damn adamant and refused to listen to anything.”
As her words sank in, he finally understood why his manager had refused. He had received similar offers during the beginning of his career as a model from big names in the industry for private parties but had turned down each offer. And strictly told his manager to do the same if and when such offers came. And he had his reasons.
As stupid as it may sound, he absolutely did not want to end up brutally assaulted, physically or sexually or both in one of those private parties. He had seen enough crime shows to know what could happen in these kinds of notorious parties. Yes, he was a scaredy cat. Sue him.
“You ok there?” Her voice shook him out of his thoughts and brought him back to the present.
“Ye-yeah.” His voice broke. He saw her looking at him strangely and he could not decipher the look. But he was not curious anymore.
“What if I don’t want to? You do realise you have kidnapped me, right?” He asked, unsure where he got the courage from.
She tsked. “And I can kill you just as easily.” Her eyes held the same spark from before but other than that her face remained serious. “It took me around two weeks to find some juicy stuffs on these boys and another week to blackmail them to help me with this. And yet another couple of days to plan everything out in detail. Not to forget to get all the information about your whereabouts. And also preparing for the party. See all the hassle I had to go through. And you are here already, aren’t you? Might as well do it, yeah?”
A lump had formed in his throat. The soup was nearly all gone. He gulped down the entire content of the glass to get rid of the lump.
“What do I have to do?” He asked, not seeing any other way out.
“Well, you have around two hours to think about what you want to do. I mean, initially I had thought you could either sing if you wanted or dance or just sit there and look handsome. But I happened to watch a particular program and I could see that you are a really good dancer. Seeing that it was on national TV, I am sure the girls are aware of it too and would definitely not let you off the hook easily so you gotta perform something. The boys would be with you at all times, no matter what. You can eat and drink whatever you want, except alcohol. That’s only reserved for the bride-to-be and friends. You can finalise the songs to dance to and choose whatever you want to wear from this closet.” She pointed towards one side of the room that had a double door. “Don’t think about trying to run away because you will get caught. This whole bungalow is surrounded by guards. Though they have specific instructions of not hurting you, I can’t guarantee the dogs won’t tear off your limbs if they see you running.”
“Do-dogs!” His eyes widened. His little scaredy cat mind raising its timid head.
“Yeah. My babies. They are so cute. See.” She unlocked her phone and showed him some pictures of huge hounds. While most of them were singles of only one dog or a dog with the woman standing or sitting beside the beast, one particular picture seemed like a group photo with the woman in the middle, surrounded by around 10 or 12 huge dogs.
How could she call them cute?! And click pictures!!
But seeing her phone, reminded him of something. He started searching for his phone. “Where’s my phone?” He asked, not finding it on his person.
“Oh, here.” She threw it towards him. What landed in front of him was not his phone but the remains of what used to be his phone, dismantled and broken to pieces. “By the way, I texted your manager letting her know that you met one of your friends and are going to be spending your night at his place, catching up and stuff, before putting a hammer through that thing.” She winked at him as she stood up from the armchair and walked towards the door. “Let them know if you need anything at all, yeah? See you later, handsome. Ciao!”
As she had said, two guards stayed back in the room with him.
He let out a sigh.
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