Chapter 10 The Plan
Now that I look at it, my life was too dull. Too lifeless. I lay on my bed gazing up at my pink ceiling. The once cheerful ceiling now seemed devoid of colour and taste.
The knock on the door signalled the time for dinner. Another meal that would end in bitter silence. It’s been a month since the incident. I couldn’t stop worrying about Bryon. Apparently he was locked in the basement of our mansion, but of course those were only rumours. My father wouldn’t be crazy enough to keep someone that had kidnapped me in a place where he could easily capture me again. Although I did hope. I found myself mindlessly wandering down to the door of the basement, only to be shooed back by the guards that surrounded it. It was normal for there to be so many guards surrounding the basement. Now that I knew the truth about my father, I wondered what sort of demonic activities he did in those cellars he had claimed for his “work”.
Making my way down the stairs, I slowly dragged my feet across the cold Heart Pine floor. As I neared, I heard chattering coming from behind the door, which immediately ceased as I came into the dining hall. I stared at the scene before me. Glared would be a better word. The once empty dining room table was now full of people. They had all looked up at my entrance. Sixteen pair of eyes bore into me as I walked over to my parents.
“What is this?” I whispered.
“Nothing. This is a dinner party. I’m simply looking out for your future. I mean you are nearing eighteen, and I thought that it would be best if you found a suitable male companion.”
“Father, the only suitable male companion is the person you have locked up in the basement.” I hadn’t meant for the last part to slip, but since it had, I tried to judge my father’s reaction. My father, being the man that he was, let no emotions flicker across his face.
“I don’t know who you’re referring to. Please sit down, our guests has been waiting for quite some time.” With that dismissal, our butler Harry guided me to my seat, which was across from a young man who looked around my age.
“How do you do Miss Santos,” his raspy whisper was painful, but familiar, I shook my head, I must be delusional. His voice, it wasn’t like the smooth melodic one that Bryon had once used to lull me to sleep. Or the one that he had used to wake me up everyday. My eyes started tingling, just like it often had when I thought about Bryon, however I was getting better at holding back my tears.
“Miss Santos?” The young man still had his hands extended across the table. After having neglected his hands I quickly extended my own and shook it.
“I’m well, thanks for asking Mr…?” I trailed off so that he could complete the sentence for me. I felt kind of bad; he had known my name, yet I was unaware of his. My father should have told me in advance. Sure I would have thrown a tantrum over it, but at least I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to guess my proposed match’s name.
“Mr. Amador, I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me.” He stared at me expectantly. Trying to push past the wall that I had set up ever since I got back, I scanned my memories. Suddenly, I remembered. How could I forget the face of Zaydn.
Smiling, in what I felt like a long time, I held onto his hands. I inspected the rest of our company and saw Wilhelm and two others whom I had seen around Bryon’s household. Except instead of the normal attire that I was use to, they were all in fancy suits and dresses.
“May I present my family? My grandfather, Mr. Radke, my mother, Mrs. Amador and my cousin, Miss Hale.” I nodded my greeting as I gave Mr. Amador a secret smile.
Soon after, we were served a five-course meal, starting with a nice French Onion soup. I couldn’t wait for the dinner to be over so I could talk with Zaydn. The chatters continued around me and I was forced to make pleasantries with the people around me. Dinner couldn’t have been more agonizingly slow. As soon as our plates were cleared, we were ushered into the living room. Having not been able to talk over dinner, I dragged Zaydn into a corner. We were “chaperoned”, and by that I meant Wilhelm stood guard as we discussed the whereabouts of Bryon.
“Have you not heard anything Collette?”
“Well I have, but I’m not sure if they’re just rumours or if they’re facts. I heard that Bryon might be locked up in the basement. It would make sense considering that it is one of the most heavily guarded place in the whole mansion, however my father would never be this stupid to have someone like that locked up mere steps from where I am.” Zaydn considered my comments, his eyes gleamed softly in the light of the chandelier.
“But it wouldn’t matter if the person in the basement was injured severely. Plus have you ever been to the basement? Do you know the layout?”
I grasped at my memories, and came up with nothing. That’s odd, how had I not ventured down into the basement. I was quite the adventurer when I was little, I was pretty sure I had scoured every inch of this house, yet, why was I unfamiliar with the basement? Looking up, I realized that Zaydn had been regarding me with a hopeful look.
“Sorry, I don’t recall anything about the basement, but however, I do know where I could get a hold of the floor plans to this house.” Suddenly Wilhelm coughed and Zaydn and I both turned our gaze in the direction of the butler. I saw my father making his way towards us, and quickly I began some aimless chattering about how I was doing, what I was up to, and the normal boring conversation topics that you would hear at dinner parties. My mind wasn’t into the conversation, and either was Zaydn’s we were both thinking hard about the basement rumour, although I was thinking more of my lack of knowledge of the basement.
“How are you both doing?” My father’s voice broke through. I wasn’t sure as to how to answer that, my mind hadn’t switched gears fast enough. Luckily, Zaydn had such a way with words.
“Lovely, Miss Santos is absolutely a delight to talk to.” He smiled at me, and I faked a blush.
“Oh, you’re much too kind, but didn’t we agree to call each other by our first names? ” I said. I didn’t want to accidentally call Zaydn by name when he was using such formalities, it would seem odd.
“Ah yes, we did. Your beauty was just too stunning for me to remember half of our conversation.” That comment earned a real blush. Zaydn’s sly tongue was both a curse and a blessing.
“I see you two are doing well then, I’ll leave you to it,” My father said happily as he was called out by another guest to talk about the recent decline in stock market prices.
I let out a sigh of relief that we had manage to keep up the façade. I stared at Zaydn long and hard.
“Did you really have to say all that? Now come along,” I dragged Zaydn behind me.
“Where are we going? Won’t it look weird if we both left?”
“We’re teenagers, everyone will just think we couldn’t take our hands off each other, and now we’re finding a quiet place to…” I trailed off to let Zaydn fill in the blank.
“Are you looking forward to that?” Zaydn’s mouth was close to my ears. I turned to give him a glare before looking back to the front.
“I’m kidding. I think Bryon would kill me for it if I ever did lay a hand on you.” I couldn’t help but smile at Bryon’s protective and jealous tendencies. He had grown up too fast for him to really experience those high school relationships and emotions.
I was now outside of the intimidating metal door. The one that led to the family safe and all our riches and important documents. I was breaking the family rule by bringing Zaydn in here, but things had to be done. For a room that held all our precious belongings there were many blind spots where the security cameras could not pick up. It was utterly ridiculous. I told Zaydn to stay at the entrance to stand guard as I made my way to the cabinet. Pulling out the drawer with the floor plans I looked for the one thirteen years ago and the most current one, which was dated about five years ago. My father was a big fan of renovating our house to accommodate his new tastes so we had a new floor plan every several years. With the two papers in hand, I silently slipped back out of the room and guided Zaydn towards my room.
Upon entry, I rapidly made space on the floor and opened the two blueprints of the house. Peering at the two blueprints to the house I looked closely for the difference. It was odd there weren’t major differences in the two. It took nearly ten minutes before I noticed something odd about the basement floor plan. I should have focused on the basement more, considering how it was our prime suspect right now.
We didn’t have a basement. No, the floor plan told us so, a basement didn’t exist in our house. Instead, my father had tunnelled into the earth to build what seemed like many tiny rooms. I pushed the floor plan closer to Zaydn so he could see what I’d saw.
“My God your father is horrible. Those are jail cells,” Zaydn exclaimed loudly.
“How can you be so sure? You normally can’t tell based on some shapes on a piece of paper.” I questioned him, refusing to believe that my father would build such a thing in our house.
“I’ve built a police station before. I’ve seen the blueprints, why else would you have such tiny boxes that aren’t big enough to be a room, but not small enough to be anything else. Besides, the fact that it’s underground should be a big factor.”
A knock coming from the door caused us to start scrambling. I pushed the blueprints under the bed and quickly Zaydn and me leaned against the bed, making it seem like we were just making conversation.
“Come in,” I commanded. Wilhelm walked in with two glasses of champagne. He handed it to us.
“Wilhelm, you scared the pants off of us, we thought you were my father.”
“Sorry my lady, it seems that people are becoming aware to both of your absences.”
“Make sure that you convince them we just wanted some quiet time so we could get to know each other better. We’re just going to come up with a plan to get the young Master out of the place where he is,” Zaydn said calmly. With that Wilhelm turned to go out the door. I jumped up and locked the door before pulling the blueprints back out. We began discussing possible attacks. There was only one entrance to the whole underground. It would be heavily guarded as I had seen. We would have to either create a distraction or tunnel in from another place. Each time we thought we were close to a solution, we discovered the flaw in our plans. Every time we came to a dead end I couldn’t help but groan. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Bryon to be trapped down there, now I was hoping that the rumours he was in the basement were just rumours.
Another knock on the door broke my last groan short. I repeated the process of shoving everything under the bed and went to open the door.
“Collette, what are you doing in there?” My father demanded.
“Oh, um, hi father. I’m just talking with Mr. Amador, getting to know him better,” I said. I pushed my door further open to show him. Zaydn stood up at the mention of his name and bowed. Before he could say anything my father came into the room.
“Now I don’t know what you two are up to here, but you guys better stop before things get too serious.” For a moment my blood froze. Did my father know what we were up to? That we had sat here for god knows how long trying to find a way to break Bryon out?
“Father I can explain…” I stammered. My father ignored my comment and turned to Zaydn.
“If anything happens to her, I hold you responsible. I know that you teenagers think you’re young and you can do anything, but it’s unsightly for people to do this before they’re married.” I stared dumbfounded as I tried to piece together what he had just said. Did my father think I had been sleeping with Zaydn? My father did have such medieval viewpoints. Suddenly, I flushed red. I guess those groans could be misleading. Now I could either deny or stay silent. I wasn’t sure which was the better choice. To my relief Zaydn came to my rescue.
“Sir, we weren’t doing anything of that sort. We were just playing cards and I was beating Collette.” Zaydn gestured to the floor to where there were now some cards lying around. Zaydn was really stealthy. He kind of reminded me of a ninja. Maybe he had been one in his previous life.
“Father, do you really think that I would do something so scandalous? Do you not know me?” I exclaimed in fake disbelief.
“Oh, well…” My father was flustered at the misunderstanding.
“Anyways, you can go now,” I said, dismissing him.
“I came up to tell you that Zaydn will be staying here until further notice. Now, I will go and leave you guys to your silly childish games.” I waited for my father to go down the stairs before closing my door. I started laughing so hard that my stomach began to hurt.
“You’re a freaking genius. Where did you even get the cards?”
“I was bored on the plane ride and I was playing cards with Wilhelm.”
“Man that was awkward. Note to self, stop groaning randomly when frustrated.” I shook my head.
“I mean it would be possible. A teenage girl and boy in a room… Locked.”
“Whatever.” I flopped down on my bed. Tired. My eyes were really heavy and I couldn’t help my eyes from closing.
“We’ll just continue this tomorrow.” I felt Zaydn help me into my bed and pull up the blanket. As I drifted off, I felt something soft brush across my forehead.
***
“Yes that could work.” I was so excited. After nearly three weeks of planning we finally had a plan. We had been observing the door to the dungeon, as we had named the place, for several weeks. There was only one guard in the afternoons because that was when the house was at its busiest and knowing father, he wouldn’t want to draw unnecessary attention on something that he needed to hide.
We were going to put the plan into action in a few days. My father and my mother were going to go to Thailand for some charity fundraising event. Previously I would have had multiple bodyguards and my parents would have hired a nanny, but Zaydn had managed to convince my father that I would be in good hands with him. Considering how Zaydn did have multiple black belts in Tae-Kwon-Do, and Karate, not to mention the fact that I myself had a black belt in Judo.
Zaydn has been hanging around me quite a lot that my father has began to think that we’re really connecting. I swear he’s starting to hear wedding bells. If only he knew.
The day came where we were finally going to break Bryon out. I had on my most seducing clothes ever. I don’t even know why my father hired such young guards. Were they cheaper? I mean my father could be frugal sometimes.
Coming out of my bathroom I stepped into my bedroom where Zaydn was. At my entrance his eyes opened wide and he let out a whistle.
“How’s this?” I inquired, surprised at his reaction.
“Looks good. That guy does not stand a chance. Now, look a bit sad. Are you ready for this?” I nodded. We made our way down the stairs.
As we neared the door to the dungeon we began our fake fighting. He signalled to ask if I was ready, and I gave a slight nod. Then Zaydn hit me hard. It stung for a few seconds and real tears began pricking at my eyes. I gave him a thumbs up and prayed that my acting skills would be up to par.
Running I made my way to the top of the stairs to the door. I stumbled along hoping that if I fell the security guard, whose name was Nate would catch me. I stumbled on the last step and fell against him.
“Help me, Zaydn… he…” I trailed off and began tearing. Nate looked down at me, and I felt his eyes roving my skimpy outfit.
“Miss Santos, what’s wrong?” Nate gulped loudly as he tried to tear his eyes away from me.
“Zaydn was enraged about something and he hit me. Now I’m scared to be up there by myself. Please stay with me? I can only depend on you. You’re the only one who’s capable for the job.” I pouted prettily as I looked up at him. I was trying to remember every flirting trick in the book. I pressed into him as I began to sob.
“Sorry, I’m getting your uniform dirty.” I continued sobbing hysterically.
“Miss, I’m sorry, I can’t leave my post. I’m the only one on duty, so I have to stay here and guard this place,” He muttered, but already I could see his resolve weakening. Why were all guys this easy?
“Please, I promise I won’t tell my father. It’ll only be a while, just until he calms down. You can’t possibly leave a young girl by herself when she’s in trouble, can you?” Slowly I took him by his hands and tried to drag him up the stairs.
“Miss…” Nate’s resolve completely crumbled as I brushed my lips over his. Trying my best not to wipe my mouth clean, I made my way up the stairs, with Nate in tow. I looked over at where Zaydn was, in the shadows near my room, in case anything didn’t go according to plan, and I winked at him. When I finally reached my bedroom, I slid in and locked the door. I told Nate to sit on my bed as I took out a bottle of red wine. I made sure to bend down really slowly to the mini fridge, like the way Zaydn taught me. I took out two glasses; one was drugged with sleeping powder. Pouring the wine into the glasses, I picked them up and made my way back to where Nate sat. His face alluded vulnerability.
“Here, have a drink. Think of it as a reward for staying with me for the whole afternoon.” I gently clinked our glasses together before sipping at mine. I sat down in his lap and gazed at Nate. In that moment, I felt so disgusted. I would never have done this. This was so wrong, if I ever got out of this, I would never wear this outfit ever again. Nate reached out his hands to grab at me, but thankfully the drug kicked in. The glass fell from his hands and he fell backwards onto the bed. He was supposed to be knocked out for two days, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I bounded and gagged him and left him in my closet. I felt around for the keys to the dungeon and I smiled when I felt a key ring. Fishing it out, I found a gun and a knife. I pocketed the knife and took the gun with me, I would give it to Zaydn. Jamming a broomstick in the handle I swiftly made my way out. Tossing the gun at Zaydn we both ran down the stairs. Wilhelm and the others were dealing with all the servants and butlers.
As we stood in front of the door we held our breaths. I had hoped that no one was manning the security cameras. The door seemed even more daunting than before. Who knew what was behind it. Would we be faced with something so hideous? Or would it be something that I we had never planned for? I unlocked the door, remembering to close it behind me. To say it was chilly would be an understatement. I could feel goose bumps rising on my skin. If only I had remembered to put a jacket on. It was pitch black and we had our hands out in front of us, hoping not to bump into anything unwelcoming. We crept along until we saw a yellowish glow coming from the torches. What I saw was completely unreal. Zaydn had been right they were prisons. In the back of my mind I had been hoping that maybe he had been mistaken, now as I looked at the rows upon rows of barred doors I became speechless. I couldn’t deny the truth anymore.
“Come on, we don’t have much time.” I was jolted by Zaydn’s voice to the reality of our mission. We scurried along looking into each cell, but they were all completely empty. The cells were horrid. It only had a toilet and a sink. No windows were in view. At least there weren’t any smells.
Suddenly, I heard a moan from behind a bookshelf. Odd, what would a bookshelf be doing here? And why would it be completely full? I couldn’t imagine my father sitting down here in this dank place reading, and I doubt the books were for the prisoner. Abruptly, I remember back to all the mystery novels I had read as a kid, I started pushing the books. I couldn’t believe that Nancy Drew would be able to help me.
“What are you…?” Zaydn was cut short by the soft hissing sounds as the bookshelf slid open. A horrific sight greeted us as we peered in. My mind was a jumbled mess. The only clear thought that I had was: Bryon was here.
***
Hey guys, Merry Christmas. As promise this is my present to you, my lovely fans. Thanks for being so supporting. I'll try my best to post a new chapter ASAP. Love you all <3