“Don’t touch me, you fucking creep.” She shrugged his hands off and walked ahead.
“Briggs and Sheffield, I need the perimeter secured. Consider Little Lox a flight risk for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Excuse me.” Jillian turned around, squaring up with the big guy. “I hope you realize that Little Lox is a grown-ass woman who can walk out the front door any time she damn-well pleases. If you try to hold me here against my will, there will be legal consequences.”
“Spare me.” McDonald rolled his eyes. “I’ve been in this line of work since before you were born. Do you have any idea how many little trust-fund cunts have pissed off their parents and been tucked away in a nice little padded room somewhere? I do.”
He nodded for her to keep walking, and she begrudgingly obeyed.
Is this guy serious? Would it really be that easy for her father to claim she was mentally incompetent? What scared her the most was that she didn’t doubt that he would be willing to do just that if he thought she was a threat. After the conversation they just had, there was no denying that she was.
McDonald continued barking coded orders through his blue-tooth headset. By the time they reached her room, there was already a team of guys carrying out her smart tv, her desktop computer, her tablet.
“You guys realize that the power’s out, right?” Jillian rolled her eyes.
“Yeah.” McDonald put a hand on her shoulder, shoving her down into the armchair in front of her vanity mirror. “And as soon as the power comes back on, we can’t have you venting your nonsense on social media.”
“Your loyalty is so inspiring.” She slumped back into the chair. “He sure is lucky there’s no shortage of guys like you enabling the corrupt douchebags that run this country. Thank you for your service.” She saluted him.
“Keep it up, you self-righteous little princess.” He chuckled. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life drooling down the front of a straight-jacket.”
“And you’ll spend the rest of her your life with your nose lodged firmly up my father’s ass.” She scoffed. “I wouldn’t trade places with you for all the money in the world.”
He sneered as the rest of his guys filed out into the hallway. As they left her in total darkness, the click of the door lock sounded like the final nail in her coffin. Jillian let out a long, exasperated sigh as she looked into the dark silhouette of her reflection of her vanity mirror.
Way to go, Jillian. She folded her arms on the desk and laid her head down. That was a great plan.
Sure, she stopped search and rescue from stumbling onto the cabin. But she might have been a tad optimistic about how much pull she had with her father. She never imagined in a million years that he would lock her up, but then again, she’d never really stood up to him before.
Opening the drawer to her vanity, she pulled out five white candlesticks that were left over from the last time Elaina had stayed over. Elaina brought the candles along with a spirit board to attempt a séance a while back. Jillian teased her about being childish from time to time, but as eccentric as her best friend was, Elaina did bring adventure into Jillian’s life, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do. She dug through the drawer and found a book of matches, lighting the candles and setting them up on her desk.
The delicate flames danced with their reflections in the mirror. Jillian pulled open the drawer a little farther and reached inside to make sure there were no more candles that had rolled to the back. Her fingers touched the smooth rounded corner of something she recognized, and a slow smile crept across her face.
Glancing toward the door, she pulled out the little pink laptop that she hadn’t used since high school. Of course, it was dead as a doornail, but she wasn’t ready to give up hope yet. In a box in the back of her closet, she’d discarded a bunch of old cords. To her delight, there was also a portable charging station.
It took a few minutes to go through the cords and find one that worked for the old laptop, but when she did, all that was left was to plug in the charging station and hope that the power core still held a charge. It was a long shot since she hadn’t charged it in months. She took a deep breath before plugging it in. To her surprise, a little green light came on next to the power button, and the screen went from utterly black to a luminescent charcoal color.
“Holy shit.” Her eyes lit up as she moved to the floor on the opposite side of her bed. If old McDonald decided to pop in, she didn’t want him to find her laptop. As the screen flickered on, displaying her desktop. She slid her middle finger across the touchpad, opening her word processing app.
Sighing at the grayed-out Wi-Fi icon, she realized that even if she typed out a message for help, she had no way to send it to anyone. With the power out, she was completely cut off from the outside world. Still, she had to do something. Placing her fingers on the keys, she started typing the title…
Lox Family Secrets
Jillian bit her lip as she tried to figure out where to start. She could lead with his involvement with the DuPonts and their dirty business practices. But that was only the latest in a long string of bad decisions her father had made
My name is Jillian Lox, and I’m the daughter of a corrupt politician. One of my earliest childhood memories was of my father shoving my
