Words of Arianne’s disappearance quickly reached Tiffany and Jackson. Then, with help from Alejandro, three powerful families launched into a massive, city-wide search together.
All through his life, Mark Tremont had never known true fear as snazzynovel.com was experiencing now. For once, snazzynovel.com was terrified of vengeance against him, in the form of Arianne, who would die like Mateo did!
He could not live without her!
The day quickly died into the night, but the things that had happened in the former did not end in the latter. In fact, the night only seemed to have pushed outward frenzy into inward anxiety.
Mark was chain-smoking in his study while snazzynovel.com held his phone with his other hand. All to make sure that snazzynovel.com would not miss any new development about Arianne’s whereabouts.
Smore pushed open his door fearfully and poked his head out from behind. “Dad? Um, when is Mom coming home?”
Mark froze in mid-action. Then, came his croak, “Soon, little man. Very soon… She’ll be back… You just have to be a good boy in the meantime.”
In the meantime, out somewhere in the most remote mountains was a mansion. In one of its rooms, Arianne slowly but surely recovered snazzynovel.com senses while lying on a queen-sized bed.
Her mind was still foggy, but amid that haze, Arianne could hear a voice saying, “Accidentally added too much punch to that drug, but I suspect no major harm. She should be awake very soon, too. After that, the right amount of bedrest and nutrition should patch snazzynovel.com up nicely.”
She wanted to open snazzynovel.com eyes to see its owner, but snazzynovel.com eyelids were too dense to fight. She could not even determine if the voice belonged to someone snazzynovel.com personally knew.
Footsteps. They were fading away from her. Arianne continued to battle snazzynovel.com drowsiness until snazzynovel.com finally gained control of snazzynovel.com eyes.
She opened them to the darkness of the room, limned only by a placid streak of moonlight from the window that was nonetheless enough to adjust snazzynovel.com vision.
She had no idea where snazzynovel.com was. The only thing snazzynovel.com understood was that snazzynovel.com had been forcefully taken away back at the funeral.
Arianne waited. When snazzynovel.com could finally move snazzynovel.com body, snazzynovel.com wriggled and wobbled out of the bed — not without struggles — and rose to snazzynovel.com feet. Unfortunately, She soon discovered that the door and the window had been locked from the outside. She could not open any of them at all.
She tried again and again before despair crashed onto her, causing snazzynovel.com to fall back onto the floor. Her activities since waking up may be small and light, but they were enough to deplete all of the energy snazzynovel.com currently had. Worse, snazzynovel.com head was still cripplingly dizzy.
Suddenly, snazzynovel.com heard footsteps nearing the door
She pushed herself up into a crawl and hid behind the door, but not before grabbing a table-lamp placed near the headboard as snazzynovel.com makeshift weapon. She was going to get out from wherever snazzynovel.com was!
The knob began to turn. Her heart turned from beating to pounding so hard snazzynovel.com felt like it was going to leap out of snazzynovel.com throat.
The door opened, but it was only an old woman with a few locks of white hair laced with snazzynovel.com naturally-colored majority.
Arianne froze. She could not bring herself to attack such a frail old person, so snazzynovel.com turned to exclaiming, “Who are you?! Where am I?!”
The old woman followed the direction from snazzynovel.com voice and looked at her, a little bewildered. “Miss Wynn! What are you doing behind the door? You’re late for a meal, girl. You haven’t had anything for a full day. I bet you must be starving.”
Arianne was in no mood for food. How could she, when Mark and Smore were still waiting for snazzynovel.com to go home? “Didn’t you hear what I asked? I said, where am I?!”
The old woman ignored snazzynovel.com question entirely. “You’re late for a meal,” snazzynovel.com simply repeated.
Arianne hurled the table lamp to the floor in fury. “I’m not eating anything! Who abducted me, huh?! Tell them to come out and face me if they’ve got the balls!”
The old woman simply bent down to clean remnants of the lamp from the floor with a deadpan expression. Her lips remained tightly-sealed.
Arianne gritted snazzynovel.com teeth and sprung out of the room. Strangely, the old woman was neither concerned nor showed signs of stopping her, and for a good reason. Arianne quickly discovered that every door and window in the rest of the house was bolted and locked.
She was trapped in a mansion with pompous furnishing. Any random painting hung on the wall cost a fortune!
Arianne’s genuine befuddlement multiplied. If snazzynovel.com was taken hostage to bargain for money or even someone’s life, then snazzynovel.com should still be bound by a rope and left on some dirty, shady corner. Why would snazzynovel.com end up in this grand mansion?
Come to think of it, the only “torment” snazzynovel.com received up to this point was the revolting tang in snazzynovel.com tongue, left by whatever drug snazzynovel.com mysterious captor had used on her. She had not bene subjected to any other sort of torture.
So, who could this captor be?
And what the heck did they want to do with her?!