Page 7 of Abducted By the Mafia Don

I recognise the rug from something I pinned on social media. The acres of bookshelves hold the contents of my online wish list. The curtains are the fabric I admired on a website last week, and the bed covers are from a shop I browsed in just two days ago.

Several laps aren’t enough, I can’t stop.

There’s a mini-library, with shelves in a deep-blue that reach floor to ceiling, and there’s a ladder. With wheels. I give it an experimental push, and it glides over the wooden floor perfectly. I step onto it, and climb right to the top, where there are pretty, hardback editions of classics. Lower down, there are rows of fantasy romance paperbacks, and at the bottom, reference books and key psychology texts that I’ve been reading for university. Stepping back down, I leave my foot on the bottom rung. A little shove and the ladder rolls across, and I’m grinning like a loon as I do it again.

This is… Look, it’s so good it’s definitely an illusion. But I’m obsessed with it.

I slip books off the shelf and run my fingers over cushions. There’s a perfect little reading sofa that I liked a post of something similar recently.

There are three missed calls and four messages from my grandmother when I pull out my phone. It went into “sleep” mode hours ago, which I suppose was considerate of it. Letting me party—and be sort of kidnapped—uninterrupted.

“Taggie, where are you?” Granny answers on my second ring.

“Safe,” I tell her. “Everything is fine. I’ve ended up…” I consider how to phrase this in a way that won’t make her worry. “Going back to someone’s house.”

I cross my fingers behind my back, even though there’s no one to see.

“Who is he?” Granny asks after a beat of silence.

Uh. She’ll flip out if I say he’s a mafia boss twice my age. And it doesn’t matter, as I’ll be home tomorrow, I acknowledge with a pang of regret. I glance around the room that has all my favourite things, and think of the man I’ve just met, who feels so familiar I’m really wondering if he were deliberately following me.

Absurd.

So I confess the simplest part of the story. “I was having a bit of trouble at the club?—”

“What sort?” she interrupts me. “Was it the Essex cartel?”

“It was just some guys, I’m not sure who they were exactly.” Essex is a bogeyman in London, and Granny has always been bordering on paranoid about the mafias. I don’t want my ageing grandmother to freak out, given I’m perfectly safe now. “And this other man came to my rescue.”

“A stranger?” she demands.

“I’ve seen him around.” I press my crossed fingers tighter together.

“That’s fine.” She sounds relieved. “Someone from university then, and it’s late. You should stay.”

I’m grinning before she’s finished the sentence, and kicking my feet with glee. I get to spend the night in this amazing bedroom, and play at the idea a hot, older man wants me! Whoever said reality was better than fiction doesn’t have as vivid an imagination as me, and so much to feed it.

A squeal of excitement must escape me, as Granny laughs.

“Someone is happy,” she comments.

“I like him,” I admit impulsively, thinking of Dom. My dark saviour. The man who cleaned me up with such deliberate care. Who shot three men for me without a second thought.

“Well.” I hear a smile in her voice now. “I take it you’re calling me to tell me you won’t be home tonight. Have a lovely time.”

Ooff. My reality is getting further and further from this white lie I’m telling.

“Thanks,” I say, hiding how pathetic I feel. “Good night.”

We hang up, and I look around the room again. I wonder who it’s for? A girl with more courage than me, that’s certain.

On impulse, I search online for Dominic Richmond. There’s no mention of a girlfriend, or daughter. But I remembered correctly—he’s hard and dangerous. His whole family was killed in a mafia dispute with an Essex Cartel member, and Dom “miraculously” was the only one who survived, and “conveniently” took over his family’s mafia. There’s a lot of scepticism about the timing of those circumstances.

Whatever he did in the past, today he saved me. I look for a long time at a photograph of Dom at one of the London social events. He’s wearing a tux and appears as handsome and serious as when I’ve seen him in the last week. Following me? I still can’t believe that.

There’s something wrong with me that it doesn’t put me off him that I saw him kill three men, and that he might have been complicit in his family’s murders. I’m oddly certain I’m safe with him, despite his clear lack of ethics.

He told me to lock my bedroom door so I feel secure.