The Cold Tyrant's Remedy

Episode 5: Kidnapped

The bus ride home took forty minutes, but Lucia didn't notice because she had barely sat down on the bus when her phone started ringing.

She glanced at it and immediately groaned as LANDLORD flashed on the screen.

For a second, she considered letting it go to voicemail.

Then she remembered the twelve unanswered messages already sitting in her inbox and reluctantly answered.

"Hello?"

"Miss Vasquez." Her landlord's voice came through the speaker sharp and impatient. "I've been trying to reach you all day.”

Lucia closed her eyes briefly before replying. "I was working."

"So was I. Which is why I'm calling about the rent you still haven't paid," he sneered.

A knot formed in her stomach. "Mister Delaney, I told you I'd have it soon."

"You told me that last week," he snapped. "And the week before that."

Lucia winced.

"I'm trying," she said quietly, not wanting anyone to hear her conversation.

"Trying doesn't pay my mortgage, Miss Vasquez."

She rubbed her forehead. "I get paid in a few days," she said in an attempt to pacify him.

"Please,” she added before he could respond.

There was a brief silence, then her landlord sighed. "You have until the end of the week, Miss Vasquez."

Relief immediately flooded her chest and she said, "Thank you."

"If the balance isn't paid by then, I'll have no choice but to begin the eviction process," her landlord added before her relief could settle.

"Mister Delaney" she began, but he cut her short.

"I'm sorry. I truly am. But I can't keep extending deadlines forever."

Then he ended the call.

Lucia lowered the phone and stared at the dark screen.

Perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

As if tonight hadn't been terrible enough.

At that thought, the events of the night flashed through her mind.

Nathaniel Crowe.

Although she hadn’t known who he was when she'd seen him on the floor, she knew the name. Everyone did.

The Crowe family owned hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, research foundations, and probably half the city's medical industry. They were old money, the kind of old money powerful enough to hide entire hospital wings from public records and influential enough that even whispers about them rarely surfaced in the news.

And somehow, she had managed to walk right into their private business.

What horrible luck she had.

The bus stopped her off three blocks from her apartment building, which meant she had to walk the rest of the way home. As she did, she absent mindedly threaded her keys between her fingers, a habit she had picked up after the second mugging on her street.

The familiar weight of metal against her palm offered a small, false comfort as she began the long climb up to her apartment.

The elevator in her building was broken again.

As she climbed five flights of stairs, her legs heavy with exhaustion, she thought about why she was putting up with all of this again. Then she remembered her mother's medical bills and sighed.

When she finally unlocked her apartment door and stepped inside, the silence felt almost suffocating.

Everything looked the same as she had left it.

The stack of medical bills still sat on the kitchen counter, their red lettering a constant reminder of debts she couldn't pay. Her futon remained unmade, sheets tangled from restless sleep the night before. The framed photo of her mother rested on the windowsill, her smile still soft and warm in a way that hurt Lucia to look at sometimes.

Lucia locked the door behind her. Then she checked the window locks out of habit, testing each one twice before stopping in the middle of the apartment.

She examined her left wrist again. The skin looked completely normal. There were no bruises or marks. Nothing proving any of tonight had actually happened.

But Lucia knew it had, because she could still feel the pressure of his grip on her wrists.

She could still picture those pale gray eyes opening to meet hers, and still remember the way they had fixed on her face with an intensity that made her breath catch. The sudden stillness that had spread through his body the moment he touched her had scared her for a moment. But when he'd said her name, low and rough, something in her had reacted.

She hadn’t wanted to admit it then, but she'd felt a pull, attraction maybe?

She didn't understand what it all meant. And she wasn't quite sure she fully believed that her touch had healed him. But deep down, some quiet instinct was warning her to never find out.

Lucia showered in water as hot as she could stand, letting the steam fill the tiny bathroom until she could barely see. Afterward, she changed into old sweatpants and a loose T-shirt before sitting on the edge of her futon with her phone in her hand.

Whatever strange thing had happened tonight, real life would still be waiting for her in the morning. Bills didn't care about her personal worries.

Lucia sighed and opened her phone. She set her alarm for six and finally lay down in the dark, and eventually, she fell into a restless sleep.

---

Lucia woke to sunlight pouring through a window she didn't recognize.

For one confused moment, she thought she was dreaming.

The ceiling above her was too high. It was soft cream instead of the cracked white ceiling in her apartment, with its water stain and peeling paint. The sheets beneath her felt smooth and cool against her skin, real cotton instead of the cheap polyester set she had bought during a clearance sale three years ago.

Even the pillow felt too comfortable, the kind that molded perfectly to support her neck.

She sat up quickly, and the room spun slightly, making her vision swim.

It was a bedroom.

Just not hers.

With wide eyes, she looked around.

Morning light was spilling through tall windows covered by pale gray curtains. Against one wall sat a dresser with a small vase of fresh white flowers resting on top, their petals perfect and unblemished. Another doorway revealed part of a large bathroom with marble counters shining beneath soft lighting.

Lucia looked down quickly, her heart hammering.

She was still wearing her sweatpants and T-shirt.

That small detail grounded her immediately, cutting through the rising panic.

The last thing she remembered was falling asleep on her futon.

Lucia shoved the blankets aside and stood carefully. Her legs held steady, though her pulse continued racing.

The floor beneath her feet was warm. The room had heated floors.

For some reason, that frightened her more than the giant bedroom or the expensive sheets or any of it.

Heated floors meant money. Money meant power. And power meant she was in serious trouble.

Lucia walked toward the door and grabbed the handle. The bedroom door wasn't locked. That surprised her.

She opened it slowly and stepped into an expensively decorated hallway, which then led into a living room so large it could fit her apartment several times over.

Standing at the kitchen island, calmly pouring coffee into two ceramic mugs as though this were the most natural thing in the world, was Nathaniel Crowe.