Captured By The Billionaire

His FaceIn The Frame

She woke up in a room she didn't know

The ceiling was high and pale, morning light pressing through curtains that weren't

hers, and before she had fully registered any of it she already understood what the rest

of the room was telling her, the sheets, the floor, her dress in a heap near the door, the

particular ache in her body that she couldn't explain away

She sat up

He was already awake, watching her with an expression she couldn't read, patient and

completely unbothered

"You're awake" he said

Ella said nothing, she pulled the sheet up and looked around, expensive furniture, thick

curtains, dark wood, a wardrobe taking up most of one wall, and on the bedside table a

glass still half full she had no memory of

She looked at her hands, then at the dress on the floor, then at the window, and she put

together what she could and felt sick with it

"What happened to me" she said

"You had too much to drink" he said "I brought you here so you'd be safe"

She looked at the glass on the table

"You put something in my drink"

His expression didn't shift "you're being dramatic"

"That is not an answer"He settled back against the headboard, completely at ease "you were happy last night

Ella, you were having the best night of your life, don't spend the morning rewriting it"

"Did I say yes to anything" she said "did I make any choice you can point to and say she

chose this"

Something moved across his face, brief and unreadable, and then it was gone

"You should have some water" he said

She got out of the bed and picked her dress up off the floor, turning her back to him

while she pulled it on, her hands steady even though her chest was not, she needed to

leave, she needed to think, she needed out of this room

Her shoes were near the door, she stepped into them and reached for her bag on the

chair and that was when she saw the photograph

It sat on the dresser in a simple dark frame, five or six people arranged with the ease of

people who belong to each other, arms around shoulders, someone caught mid-laugh,

and she looked at it without meaning to and then one face stopped her

Her cousin

Marcus, who had left their family six years ago after a falling out so severe his name had

been quietly erased from every conversation, whose photos her mother still kept in a

drawer she never opened, who Ella hadn't seen since she was sixteen, standing at the

edge of a family gathering watching him walk away

She stepped closer

And there, beside Marcus with his arm across his shoulders, was the man in the bed

Same jaw, same dark eyes, same mouth, a few years younger in the photograph but

undeniable

The floor shifted

She turned around very slowly

"Tell me your name again" she said, her voice gone quiet

He looked at her like the question was strange "you know my name"

"Tell me again"

A beat "Daniel"

The room contracted

Daniel, Marcus's younger brother, the boy she had met twice at family gatherings when

they were children, someone she would never have recognised in a dark club on a loudnight when she was happy and trusting and not looking for anyone she had reason to

avoid

She pressed her hand flat against the dresser and breathed

"Are you alright" he said from the bed, ordinary, unbothered, and the casualness of it

made her angrier than anything else he had said

"No" she said

She picked up her bag and walked to the door

"Hey" he called after her, lazy "where are you going, it's early"

She didn't answer, she got the door open on the second try and walked into a hallway

that led to stairs that led to a front door and then she was outside

The morning air was cold and she stood on the step and looked at the street, unfamiliar

buildings, unfamiliar road, a city she didn't know well enough to navigate by feel

She started walking anyway

She walked without direction for a long time, just putting distance between herself and

that room and that photograph and the expression on his face when she asked if she had

said yes, the way the question hadn't seemed to land on him

She sat down eventually on a bench in a small square and stared at nothing and tried to

sort through what she knew

No money beyond the little in her purse, no change of clothes, her phone on eleven

percent battery with three unread messages from Jade she wasn't ready to open, and a

graduation dress that now felt like it belonged to someone else entirely

She thought about calling her mother and immediately knew she couldn't, there was

nothing her mother could do from that distance and everything she would say would

make it worse

She thought about the police, turned it over carefully, thought about what she could

actually prove, and let it go

What she needed was simple, she needed to leave this city, she needed distance, she

needed to start somewhere else

She straightened her dress and walked to the nearest bus station