The Billionaire and His PA novel Chapter 111

"Good morning. I’m Dorothea Sinclair and welcome to today’s session of Under the Spotlight. I am sure that some of you are wondering where I am today and why this background looks different. That’s because, for this interview, I left the studio to conduct this interview in the home of our guest who is no stranger to the spotlight.” Dorothea announced.

“Some of you might know her from September last year when she and her best friend, Isabel Gomez, were held hostage by two gunmen who kidnapped them from the club they both worked in. Some of you might also know her from her interview with me on this very show in March where we talked about her revolutionary app, Care Compass which was, and still is, making waves in the medical field. However, some of you might know her from everything that went down two months ago when she was kidnapped from a supermarket and held hostage for a week. Join me to welcome, the very beautiful and very intelligent, Cassie Peters.” She said and signaled to the cameraman to move backwards so that the camera frame could also capture Cassie’s smiling face.

“Hi.” Cassie greeted, waving to the camera. “I’m glad to be back here with you.”

“So, Cassie, on this day two months ago, you earned your freedom from not one, not two, but four kidnappers. What was that like?”

Cassie took a deep breath. “As you can imagine, it was liberating to finally be free. But I won’t say that I earned my freedom, it was more like it was handed to me, really. I wouldn’t have gotten off that roof without the help of the police officers that came to the rescue.” She admitted.

“Oh, my God. How did you get on a roof?” Dorothea asked as if she hadn’t already heard the story from Cassie a couple of minutes ago while they were prepping. “Wait, I’m asking the wrong question. If it’s not too traumatizing, could you please go over how you were kidnapped?”

“Sure,” Cassie said. “As most of you already know, I was taken from a supermarket when I went shopping with my boyfriend, Felix. It happened when I doubled back to get some milk. Once they saw me leave Felix, they had put up a caution sign for wet floors and then, they injected me with a sedative and took me out through the back door.”

“That must have been horrifying.”

“Yes, but I was mostly unconscious for that part. Anyways, I woke up at the back of a van…”

“A kidnap van?” Dorothea asked, her eyes as wide as saucers.

Cassie nodded. “There I was given another dose of the sedative and when I regained consciousness again, I saw that they had put me in a room.”

“Now, I understand that the house that you were held in belongs to the Callahan family. Why did your kidnappers pick that location?”

“Two of the kidnappers were Felix’s mother and stepfather, Bethany and Luther Hart. The other two were Robert Smith, who’d escaped from prison, and Hazel Emerson, Felix’s ex-fiancée who was presumed to have died in a car accident. Robert was mostly in it for revenge but the other three wanted the payout from Felix’s life insurance. I think they used the Callahan family mansion because it’s off-grid, large and quiet. The two times that I managed to escape from the room that they kept me in I had so much trouble finding my way around.”

Dorothea nodded in understanding. “What was it like in there?”

Cassie’s face fell in remembrance. “It was horrible. On the first day, they put me in a room that had absolutely nothing in it. Later that day, they moved me to this other room that also had nothing in it but it was slightly bigger than the first room and had a working shower. Every day, while I was in the shower, someone would come in and leave me a cup of ramen noodles and a bottle of water. That was all I had throughout the day. Predictably, I was so malnourished when I got back that the doctors had to prescribe me a ton of multivitamins and supplements, some of which I still have to take till today. On the sixth day of my kidnap, I had gathered up all the empty ramen cups, bound them together with a sleeve of my dress and filled it with boiling water. The next time the door opened, I poured the water all over Robert and ran out of the room. Somewhere down the hall, Hazel pointed a gun at me and handed me over to Robert who choked me unconscious and is responsible for these faint scars on my arms.” She explained holding up her hands so that the camera could get a good view of her scars. “They used to be a lot bolder than that but a friend of mine once told me that if I used aloe vera on scars, they’d fade faster. They’re still a bit visible because I haven’t been very consistent.”

Dorothea offered Cassie a tissue from the box in front of them as some tears started to drip from her eyes at the memory. “Do you want to take a break?”

“No. I’m fine. My therapist says that it’s good to talk about it. While I was held hostage, the only thing that kept me going was the desire to see Felix and my siblings. I just wanted to be with them again. It was the memories I had of them that kept me going.” She said, dapping her tears away. “Sometime during the whole shebang, someone called Felix and got him to come over but then he got a sedative too and they tied him to a bed. I had managed to grab Robert’s keys while he was strangling me so I used that to open the door. I found Felix and we escaped through the window but then Robert started shooting and Felix got hit. We managed to make it up the roof but Robert had followed us up. He was out of bullets and he tried to attack us but Felix pushed him off the roof. He clung to Hazel for a while but she kicked him off.”

“Did he die?”