Is sixteen really that sweet? For Hazel Hart it was pretty average, until she was taken in by soft smiles, musky cologne, and the broody enigma known as Erik Denholm. What does he want from her or is there something bigger to this situation than the two of them can comprehend?
PART VII - WAKING
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"Haschel."
Up until that moment, her heart had been beating slow and sluggish. Just like her vision. Just like her memories. Lagging and limping like a wounded animal being pursued in the forest by a predator from the shadows within.
As she comes to her senses she feels the chilly air, smells the stink and rot, feels the lumpy surface she is laying on, and hears...
Her heartbeat seems to stop altogether.
She hears...that voice...it is the voice of someone she trusts.
Or rather, used to trust.
Not anymore.
Her heartbeat speeds up exponentially because it is the voice that belongs to someone with an obvious intent to do her harm.
To render her immobile and helpless.
What exactly is Erik Denholm?
Her eyes start to water in panic; the situation is less than ideal and she needs to escape quickly.
"Haschel," he says again calmly, just as if he's talking to her in class or while they are working on a project. The effect is not the same, however. It terrifies her. She finds she is not restrained and quickly pulls herself up and backs away from him.
"What do you want? Why are you doing this to me? Where are we?"
Despite her best efforts, her tears start to fall. It's involuntary, brought on by the sheer dread.
He holds out his hands as if to ease her worry. If she wasn't so terrified she would scoff because she shouldn't be anything but worried when a boy she hardly knows has kidnapped her. What she does know, she doesn't even know is true. Was everything about him a lie?
"I'm not going to hurt you," he replies, not answering any of her questions. Is that a lie too?
This room they are in, wherever it is, is solid brick—a warehouse room full of dilapidated moving boxes, metal barrels, and crates. Discarded bottles and rusty blades.
She dares not breathe, trying to catch her falling chest onto one of her sobs to quiet herself and shakes her head.
"You'll only be here for a while until your father comes."
"My father?" her terror subsides slightly. Though it shouldn't, because she's only here because she defied her parents' grounding.
She almost, almost thinks it would be safer to stay than to face the disappointment, not to mention their wrath. She's never been on the receiving end of their tempers but can only imagine how upset they are at finding her missing. It's surely past the time her father would have returned home from work.
"Yes," is all Erik replies with as he quickly stands and turns his back to her, "The same man who murdered my father."
"What?" Hazel whispers, mostly to herself. She knows she cannot trust Erik, so this must be a lie or some kind of mistake. Her father isn't a murderer! He's a decent man who loves his family, even his disobedient daughter.
Erik must have heard her, for he elaborates, "He is an agent of spies. He shot my father in front of me when I was nine years old."
Hazel tries swallowing a lump in her throat but it doesn't seem to go down. There is so much devastation in Erik's voice that she doubts the best actors could even pull it off.
"You're lying," she chokes.
"I'm not," he replies. and sinks down to the cement floor and pulls his knees to his chest, reminding her all the world of a lost, little boy.
She can't even wrap her mind around it. She turns away from him, not bearing to see that look on his face, and holds her head in her hands.
Is this why her father was away so often? Is this why she didn't exactly know what he did for a living, even when she asked him and her mother when she was little and only received vague answers? The more she thinks about it, the more it seems plausible and she hates it. How could her father kill a man in front of a little boy? No matter what the reason, it was utterly cruel.
And what is to happen to her now? Does Erik want revenge? Is she to be the eye for an eye if her father fails to show up?
Her tears renew and sniffles in a voice full of sorrow, "So, all of this was to get to him. It was all a lie. From the moment you met me, you've hated me."
The mattress sinks a bit as Erik's weight falls onto it.
She freezes as she feels warm hands encase her shoulders in a gentle touch, a semblance of comfort.
"No. I never hated you, Haschel. You had no part in what he did. I regret you have to find out this way."
She abruptly stands and Erik follows but she pushes him away with anger searing through every fiber of her being, wiping at her eyes and glaring.
"Yeah right! You are a liar and I can't trust anything you even say! If you actually liked me, we'd have already had a nice dinner and bid each other good night! You want to see me hurt!"
He just holds up his arms and gives her a sad, helpless look but it's not going to work on her anymore.
"Haschel...I have to do this."
She raises her arms and curls her fingers into her palms. She took kickboxing lessons when she was in junior high, she knows how to fight if it comes down to it. Admittedly, Erik is taller and probably has more brute strength but if things get physical she is going to put up a heck of a fight!
"You don't have to do anything!"
"Yes, I do. You don't understand, and I never lied to you, not even once," he rebuttals. Just another lie.
"You didn't tell me you were going to kidnap me when you invited me to dinner!"
"I can't tell you everything you don't know."
"It seems like a pretty big detail to gloss over!"
At that, he smiles a bit, "Your father has lied to you longer and more purposefully than I ever could."
She wants to punch him in the face for that remark but they hear the plumb-awful screeching of a metal door and it causes their discussion to halt.
Through it, steps a woman who is slightly familiar. Hazel has never met her but has seen her before.
She says something sternly in a foreign tongue, likely Ruskslavan. She's holding a pistol.
Hazel is momentarily stunned and wipes her other eye of its tears. It's Erik's mother! Maybe she will talk some sense into him.
She notices Erik whip around and his whole figure goes stiff and cautious like a mouse sneaking near a nest of sleeping vipers.
His mother walks purposefully toward him, her voice raising slightly as she speaks in words Hazel can't understand the meaning of. She gives her son's cheek a slight caress of motherly affection before grabbing his chin to make him look at her with a sudden hardness.
From Hazel's vantage, she is unable to observe his expression but knows something is off from his body language, nearly cowering.
"Go, Erki. Leave us alone," she switches to common Simlish.
"But Mama—"
"Go."
The tone in her voice is cold and leaves no room for arguing.
Erik's shoulders slump forward and he puts his hands in his pockets.
"Don't disappoint me again," his mother adds.
He stops, hesitates as if he might say more, but thinks better of it and continues on his way until he leaves through the same set of iron-bar doors.
Hazel realizes she is now alone with a complete stranger, who is currently holding a deadly weapon. Erik's mother is silent as she turns her coal-black eyes onto Hazel in a moment of study. Hazel has a feeling the lady doesn't approve.
Hazel bites her lip before lifting her hand, figuring it'd be best to be polite in the situation.
"Pleased to meet you Ms. Denholm, I'm Hazel..."
"I know who you are," Hazel recoils as Ms. Denholm snaps and lifts the pistol, pointing it at her, "and if you say one more word without permission I will shoot you. Now, follow me."
Not a pleasure, after all, Hazel thinks and follows the woman across the room.
She stops in front of a series of drawers and crosses her arms as if she's very inconvenienced.
"I know you wonder what this is all about. Erki would have you believe I am upset because your father kill my husband in cold blood."
"But for honesty, I'm over that. In fact, I was counting on the SCIA to take him out sooner or later. What I am upset about is that SCIA stole this doll from our family."
Ms. Denholm pulls out a drawer and takes a familiar object out. It's the same doll Hazel spent countless hours playing with when she was a little girl, the same doll her father gifted to her after a long business trip overseas. Why was it so important, and more important than her husband? Did she even love the man?
Hazel doesn't have a lot of time to ponder on these questions.
The lady pops open the doll and removes the next in the series, setting it beside the first.
"The idiot decide to try and bargain for his life with the secret to our wealth. This was MY fortune! He had no business offering it up and leaving me, his soon-to-be-grieving widow—how you say?" She seemed to think then gestured wildly, "High and dry!"
"I spend years tracking down what could have happened to it and which agent has in their possession."
Hazel gulps, because it is a fact that the terror she felt upon waking up in this place with Erik is eclipsed by standing in front of this woman. Erik, for all his flaws, at least has a hint of warmth.
But his mother has nothing but a winter storm raging inside her.
"And when I find out who has it—Erki, he was supposed to go into your home and get out with all dolls but it just so happen he is teenage boy and does not think straight around pretty girl, and therefore did not check all were nested within!" she angrily explains and pops the third, smaller, doll out of the second.
She opens the third and shows hazel an empty space.
Hazel still doesn't understand why this doll is so important. It doesn't look particularly expensive or valuable, just old.
But she can't speak to ask to understand! Erik's mother made it clear she would shoot if Hazel made any more words!
"There is code etched on bottom of each doll that gives location and safe combination to our fortune. Agent Coda is going to deliver the last piece to me or else you are not going to be seeing any of your family ever again."
Hazel wants to tell Ms. Denholm that she is mistaken, there were only three dolls delivered to her that night so many years ago!
A fourth doesn't even exist...and if it does, her father wouldn't know where it is? Would he?
Hazel sure doesn't and she feels her impossibly fast heartbeats increase pace at her impossible predicament.
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