RTB - Villain

I am on the phone with a client who wants to know how to spin a leaked video of him in a latex harness being whipped by his wife's sister, and I am three seconds from telling him that maybe he should have kept his family reunions to the dining room, when a black SUV jumps the curb behind me on Cheapside and two men in suits get out like it's the most normal Tuesday in the world.

"Amelia, I have to call you back," I say, already stepping sideways, already doing the math on foot traffic and exit routes because that is what eleven years of fixing other people's disasters trains you to do. You start seeing every street as an equation.

"Wait, what, why does your voice sound like that," Amelia's voice crackles from the speaker, but then the phone is gone, ripped clean out of my hand and shattered face-down on the concrete. A gloved hand clamps around my bicep, digging in hard enough to bruise.

I have negotiated with men who thought they owned the world. I have talked billionaires down from ledges made entirely of ego. None of that stops my body from doing exactly what a body does when a stranger grabs it. I scream. I dig my heel into his instep and feel something give, and he grunts and swears in Italian, which is new information I file away even as my heart tries to punch its way out of my chest.

"Get the fuck off me," I spit. It doesn't come out polished or crisp like my boardroom voice. It comes out raw, ugly, the desperate screech of someone who is genuinely, thoroughly terrified. "Get your fucking hands off me right now!"

The second man reaches for my other arm and I elbow him in the throat, an honest, satisfying crunch of contact, and he staggers back choking. For one absurd second I think I might actually win this, might actually walk into that Pret across the street and order a flat white with my hands shaking, and then a third man appears from nowhere and there's a cloth over my mouth that smells sweet and wrong, and the street tips sideways.

I wake up in the back of the SUV with my wrists zip tied in front of me, which is at least polite of them, and my head feels like it's been used as a percussion instrument.

"She's awake," the one with the bruised throat grunts, rubbing his neck as he glares at me through the rearview mirror like I'm a sudden storm front.

"No shit, Sherlock," I snap, blinking through the pounding in my skull. "Who taught you bastards manners? Where the fuck are you taking me?"

The man in the front passenger seat turns around. He's younger than the others, twenty-five maybe, with a face that would be handsome if it weren't currently smirking at me like I'm a mildly interesting problem instead of a person he's committed a felony against.

"You're very fucking talkative for someone who just tried to crush Sal's windpipe," he remarks, shifting in his seat to get a better look.

"Sal should have thought about that before he grabbed me off a public street in broad daylight," I fire back, leaning forward against the constraint of the zip ties. "Does Sal have a lawyer? Because Sal is going to need a miracle to keep his ass out of prison."

"Sal doesn't really do lawyers," the young one chuckles, flashing a dimpled grin that makes me want to kick his teeth in. "I'm Matteo, by the way. Since we're going to be spending some quality time together."

"I don't give a shit what your name is. Pull this fucking car over and let me out before you turn a kidnapping charge into a murder trial."

"See, that's the spirit I was hoping for," Matteo beams, completely unfazed by the threat. "Very dramatic. You'd do great on television."

I stare at him, and somewhere underneath the fear a colder, more useful part of my brain starts working. Italian curses. A driver who handles the wheel like a professional, not a thug. Suits that fit too well for street muscle. This is not a random mugging. This is organized, funded, and deliberate, and none of those words make me feel better.

"You have the wrong person," I say, because it is true, though I don't yet know it is true in the specific, catastrophic way it actually is. I say it the way you say it to a mugger who's grabbed the wrong purse, a bluff, a Hail Mary, something to buy time.

"That's what they all say," Matteo scoffs, waving a dismissive hand.

"No, you arrogant little shit, I mean it. I run a crisis management firm. I fix scandals for billionaires. Whatever the fuck this is, whoever you think I am, you have made a catastrophic error of truly historic proportions."

Sal, from the front seat, still rubbing his throat, mutters something to the driver in Italian. The driver answers without turning around. Matteo watches me with an expression I will later learn to recognize as his default setting, delighted amusement in the face of catastrophe.

"You talk like you rehearsed that," he notes, tapping his chin thoughtfully.

"I don't usually practice getting abducted on my lunch break, no."

"Could've fooled me. Very smooth. Ten out of ten delivery," he applauds softly.

"I will fucking destroy you," I promise, holding his gaze with cold, absolute venom. Matteo bursts out laughing, shaking his head as he wipes a tear from his eye.

"She's feisty," he nudges Sal, who merely glares ahead, his throat still mottled purple. "I fucking like her."

"You won't like me when I get these ties off and shove them down your throat."

"Promises, promises," he winks.

The car eventually stops on a private airstrip, the kind rich men use to avoid customs and consequences, and they walk me up the stairs of a jet that costs more than most people's houses, one hand gripping each of my arms like I might sprout wings. I consider screaming again and decide against it, because there is no one here to hear me except men who work for whoever is paying for this jet, and screaming into a void is not a strategy, it is just noise.

"Seatbelt," Matteo murmurs once we're settled, leaning over me to click the metal tongue into the buckle with the easy efficiency of an flight attendant. "Safety first, sweetheart."

"You bound my fucking wrists and now you're worried about a bumpy flight?"

"We're professionals," he shrugs, flashing those infuriating dimples. "Mostly."

"Mostly," I mock, rolling my eyes. "That is incredibly fucking reassuring. I feel so much safer now."

"You want a drink? We've got wine. Good wine, actually, not that airport shit."

"I am not drinking with my fucking kidnappers."

"Your loss. It's a brilliant Barolo," he sighs, pouring himself a glass.

I stare at him, at the easy, almost friendly way he says it, like we're two strangers who happened to end up on the same flight, and something in me wants to laugh, which frightens me more than anything that has happened so far. Hysteria, probably. My therapist would have a field day with this.

"Where are we going," I demand, keeping my voice level, professional—the exact tone I use to handle panicking board members. "And I'd like an honest answer, not another stupid joke, if that's within your limited skill set."

Matteo's grin dims a fraction. He glances at Sal, who shrugs, and then back at me.

"Italy," he offers, swirling his wine. "That's all you need to know."

"Fucking brilliant. Beautiful country. I hear the human trafficking industry there is lovely this time of year."

"You're taking this remarkably well," he observes, a trace of genuine admiration creeping into his eyes that makes me want to claw them out.

"I am not taking this well. I am taking this exactly as badly as a person should take being drugged and zip tied and put on a private jet by strangers who won't tell me why. I would just rather do it with my dignity intact than screaming and crying, because I strongly suspect that's what you're expecting, and I refuse to give you the satisfaction."

Matteo considers this for a moment, head tilted, and then nods like I've said something genuinely wise.

"Fair enough," he concedes, raising his glass in a mock toast. "For what it's worth, this isn't personal."

"It is entirely personal, you prick. You have my body locked in your private airplane."

"Okay, that's fair too," he chuckles, taking a slow sip.

Somewhere over what I assume is France, the adrenaline finally starts to burn off and the shaking in my hands turns into a bone deep exhaustion I don't have room for yet. I keep my spine straight anyway. I have built an entire career on not falling apart in front of people who want to see me fall apart, and I am not about to break that streak for a man named Sal with a bruised throat and his cheerful, wine offering friend.

I don't sleep. I catalog instead, because it is the only weapon I have left. Two men plus the driver plus whoever is waiting on the other end. Italian, organized, wealthy enough for a private jet and good wine, casual enough about violence that Matteo can joke about it between offers of Barolo. Everything about this says money and structure and rules I don't know yet, and none of that adds up to a random abduction. Someone wanted a specific person taken off a specific London street, and somehow, through some catastrophic error I have not yet fully understood, that person is apparently me.

The plane begins its descent as the sky outside goes the deep bruised blue of early evening, and Matteo leans over to check my seatbelt one more time with an attentiveness that is almost sweet if you ignore the context entirely.

"Almost there," he warns, leaning over to tighten my restraints. "Brace yourself."

"For the landing or for whatever fucked-up shit happens after?"

"Both, honestly," he replies, his playful demeanor finally hardening into something sober and tense.

When the doors open, the air outside smells like cut grass and something floral, warm in a way London never manages even in July, and for one absurd second it almost feels like a vacation, right up until they walk me down the stairs and I see it.

The estate rises out of the dark like something built to be looked at from a distance and feared up close, stone walls high enough to swallow the horizon, floodlights catching on the barrels of rifles held by men positioned along the perimeter like they're guarding a president instead of a private house. There are more armed men here than I have ever seen outside of an airport, and every single one of them is watching me with the flat, uninterested attention of professionals who have done this before and will do it again.

"Home sweet home," Matteo mutters, his hand on my elbow tightening as he guides me down the metal steps into the warm night air.

I look up at the massive iron gates swinging open ahead of us, at the house lit up gold and merciless behind them, and I understand, in the pit of my stomach where all the useful animal instincts live, that whatever mistake brought me here, it is about to become very difficult to fix.