Chapter 59: Pink Diamond Ring

Leonie examines the tag. The script is elegant but masculine, and the words almost take her breath away: "If you fall in love with me, I will be with you for life."

Her heart pounds as she opens the box, and it almost stops when she sees the pink diamond ring. The huge stone has been cut and set perfectly—every angle gleams and refracts dazzling pink light. Leonie can only imagine how much a large, rare diamond like that costs.

Jealousy arises in the pit of her stomach. The thought that Evan wants to give such a gorgeous and valuable ring to another woman makes her want to scream. She can't bear the thought of the perfect ring on another woman's finger—even if that woman is her own sister.

Before she could stop herself, she slid it onto the ring finger of her left hand. She has dozens of ways she can use the ring to her advantage, but she's terrified of what will happen if Evan catches another one of her schemes. He's already unhappy with her, and she can't risk alienating him even further.

Still, she's unwilling to lose an opportunity. Chances like this don't present themselves every day. She looks at the ring on her hands with a vicious, hungry gleam in her eyes. She wiggles her fingers in the light and enjoys the way the light dances across the back of the car. She takes out her phone and snaps a few photos of the ring on her finger, and then she guiltily puts the ring back into the box.

Evan is talking intently on the phone, and he takes no notice of Leonie. After speaking to his security team and bodyguards he calls Avery. When she doesn't answer he calls her again. And again.

"Damn it! She's the only woman in the world who won't rush to take my calls," he thinks, "I warned her not to ignore me!"

Evan's phone rings and he answers it eagerly. His face falls when he realizes it's not Avery, but Robert.

"Mr. Howel, I've managed to track Avery's location," Robert says, "According to the GPS on her phone, she's still at the hotel. In fact, it seems like she's still in the dressing room."

"Turn around," Evan orders.

The tires squeal on the pavement car makes a sharp turn, throwing Leonie against the door. When she realizes that they're heading back to the hotel, the color drains from her face.

"Excuse me, Evan, where are we going?" she asks nervously.

"Back to the hotel."

"Back to the hotel? I thought you wanted to find Avery, and as I said, she must have snuck away from the dressing room."

"Stop talking and get out of the car," Evan growls.

Chastened, Leonie pressed her lips together and stared unhappily at her lap. The car abruptly stops at the side of the road and Leonie knows she has no choice but to get out.

The lights suddenly went out in the hotel's dressing room. In the confined dark space of the showers, Avery could hear nothing besides the water flowing from the showerhead. She was in the middle of washing her hair when she was suddenly plunged into darkness.

Dazed and scared, she exited the shower and stumbled toward the lockers, groping her way along the wall. In her confusion, it took her a minute to realize that there was still water falling on her head. A faint light filtered into the room from a ventilation duct, and as Avery's eyes adjusted she saw that water was spraying from the sprinklers on the ceiling. She inhaled deeply, but couldn't detect any smoke.

"Anyone here?" she asked nervously, groping her way toward the door.

A sudden bang echoed across the tiled room and Avery flinched. She reached for the door handle and tugged, but the door wouldn't budge. She tried again, throwing all of her weight against the door, but it wouldn't move at all.

"Is someone here?" she asked again nervously.

The echo of her own voice answered her. In a panic, she began banging on the door.

"Anyone? Leonie?" she screamed.

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Suddenly, a thought dawned on her. When she entered the dressing room, she and Leonie were alone. If Leonie isn't there now, it means she's the one who has locked her in. Though Avery doesn't trust Leonie, she found it hard to believe the woman would do something so bold while Evan was just across the hall.

"Leonie!" Avery screamed with rage.

She clenched her fists and slammed the door again and again. Although her hands ached and her throat was hoarse, no one responded. She cursed the fact that the hotel was virtually empty, abandoned by guests and staff alike. It could be hours before someone hears me, she thought grimly. She tried to console herself with the thought that Evan knew where she was.

"He's been acting so jealous lately," she thought, "He'll definitely come looking for me soon."

The cold water from the fire sprinklers continued to pelt her and she shivered. Still weak from her fever, she knew that the freezing water could be dangerous. Determined to find a drier place, she reached her hand in front of her and blindly stumbled through the room.

She stepped on something hard and jerked her foot away. The sudden movement caused her to lose her balance and she fell onto the slippery tiles. She tried to push herself to a sitting position, but a terrible tearing pain in her waist stopped her. She tried again, but it only hurt her waist more.

Overwhelmed by pain, she vaguely wondered how badly she was hurt. In a daze of pain, she lay curled on the floor, pelted by freezing water. In the back of her mind, she remembered the last time she lay on a cold dark floor: Leonie had accused her of intentionally breaking one of Mrs. Florence Howel's prized china teacups, and the old woman had her locked in a dark closet.

She remembered the overwhelming fear. She cried and banged the door for what felt like hours. Finally, someone opened the door and she saw Evan. He complained that she was making too much noise and instructed a servant to drag her to another closet in a more remote wing of the house.

Her new closet was located at the back of the house near a wooded area. At night, the wolves screamed and howled in the forest and the wind blew like a ghost. In the absolute darkness of the closet, she came to believe that the walls were dissolving. It sounded like the wolves were in the room with her. She spent the night screaming until she finally passed out from fear and exhaustion.

Her hands clenched into fists as she remembered.

"I'm no longer that helpless woman," she reminded herself, "I'll act to save myself this time."

Clenching her teeth against the pain, she dragged herself across the floor. When her hand touched something soft she wanted to cry with relief. She realized she'd found her cosmetics bag, containing a small towel and the lipstick Claire gave her.

"It's stupid to have thought that Evan would save me," she thought, "He never saved me in the past and he won't save me now."

She dug through her cosmetic bag until she found a pair of nail scissors. Slowly she used the nail scissors to cut the white towel into different sized strips. Then she took the lipstick and scrawled, "Help me! SOS," on the shredded towels.

Avery smiled to herself with determination. Last time she was trapped in the dark she allowed despair to get the better of her, but she refused to give up this time. She knew that the light coming through the ventilation duct must be coming from outside the hotel, but she knew it would be impossible to reach the duct with her injured waist.

She balled the towels up and slowly and painstakingly began throwing them at the vent. In the dark, she struggled to see, but she was fairly convinced that at least one made it out.

Evan arrives at the gates of the hotel as angry and fierce as if he were at the gates of hell. Robert follows him as he storms across the lawn, trying to keep up with his boss' long strides. Out of the corner of his eye, Robert sees something fluttering in the breeze. He looks up and sees some shredded fabric covered in blotches of bloody red.

"Wait, Mr. Howel—look at that," Robert says.

Quickly he runs and retrieves the pieces. Evan looks at the towel in confusion. The red smears appear to be words—cries for help. Evan raises his eyes and sees a ventilation duct high on the wall. The towel seems to have fallen from the duct. 

The realization almost knocks the air out of him: that duct is about where the women's changing room is.

"What the hell happened to Avery in there?" he wonders, "And dear god, why is the message written in blood and whose blood is it?"

Without a second of hesitation, he sprints across the lawn and runs through the hotel like a madman, murder boiling in his blood. 

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