at me a lot. Had they been playing with their food before eating it?
I might never know.
I stared at the TV. Today, they were showing restaurant critiques. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t hungry. I might never be again.
Chapter Twenty
I lay on the bed, this time with my sisters on either side of me. We all stared at the ceiling together. There was nothing good on television. I’d had my morning therapy, where we’d talked about my inner turmoil that had caused me to run out on my fiancé. Funny she was focusing on that. I was kidnapped, lady. Kit was a douchebag. A dead douchebag, but a douchebag, nonetheless.
That felt like a million years ago, and if I really listed all the ways I’d either been fucked or fucked up in my life, I couldn’t say that I was ranking running out on Kit as being that important. Maybe that made me a bad person.
“Dad has fled the country,” Bridget announced, and Hope and I both sat up to look at her, colliding elbows in the process. Bridget sat up slowly.
Hope had fallen silent, so it fell to me to ask the obvious question. “What? Why?”
“The FBI wanted to talk to him for obvious reasons. As of this morning, he’s a fugitive in another country. Some place that doesn’t extradite to the US.”
Hope blinked. “France maybe? Don’t they not extradite?”
I shook my head. “They do. It’s only French citizens they won’t. Dad, they would send back. Roman Polanski has a French citizenship.”
Why did I know that? I was full of random information sometimes.
“Does Russia?” Hope asked me, and I shook my head. They didn’t. But Dad wouldn’t go there, right? I mean, I’d been kidnapped by some Russians. It would probably be a very bad idea for him to head there.
“I hate him.” Bridget sighed. “I know that’s a terrible thing, and all of our years of various schools taught us to not use it like we’re allergic to it. To be more articulate. You’d be more articulate, Layla. But I don’t want to do the ‘when Dad behaves this way, then I feel’ thing right now. Well, maybe I do. When Dad flees the country after getting my beloved sister kidnapped by Russian mobsters, that makes me feel like I knew I already felt, which is that I hate him.”
Hope and I both stared at her. That was actually quite a lot said for Bridget. “He was going to marry me off to Kit to seal a deal with the mob.” It wasn’t funny, but I started to giggle. “And I was dumped five minutes before I got kidnapped. It’s all…ridiculous.”
Bridget rubbed my back. “You know, if you’re going to have a nervous breakdown, this is a great place to have it, Lulu.”
I almost startled at the nickname. No one had called me that for so long. Our nanny when I was six had given it to me, and I’d loved it because it was something a mother might do. A gentle nickname. It had lasted for a little while with my sisters.
Hearing it was…nice.
I asked the question that plagued me whenever I thought about it. “Why didn’t they kill me? They’ve killed Kit and his family. Why not me? What were their plans for me?”
The group who held me was part of a larger, for lack of a better word, conglomerate. I wasn’t dead because Michael, who was really a lot more badass than I’d ever given him credit for, had saved me and killed that group.
“Because what they wanted for you was ransom. Dad wasn’t a betrayer, just a problem. The Allards were considered betrayers,” Bridget supplied. “Michael explained it to me.”
I groaned. My father might now be persona non grata, but I hated how much I owed him. My wedding. Now this. “How much did Dad give to get me back? Frankly, I can’t believe he did. He tried to slap me on the street.”
“He didn’t.” Hope yawned. My sisters had been here the whole time with me, never leaving. Was it a week now? They couldn’t be comfortable sleeping on beds in my room.
Her words penetrated my scattered brain. “What?”
“Dad could barely afford this place. He lost all his money. The company is crumbling. He paid for this, probably because I badgered him about it and it was easier to shut me up. This is about the end of his income, I imagine.”
None of this made sense. “If Dad didn’t pay them, then why