Chapter - 5

Ivy's POV

I was sitting on my favourite swing in the park where my mother used to take me as a kid. My feet were too small to reach the ground beneath me but I wanted to swing.

I called for my mother. "Mom! Please come and push me!" 

My mother flashed me a tender smile from her spot on the bench a few feet away. "Sure, baby girl," she said before getting up and coming towards me, her fiery red hair flowing behind her in the wind. 

Soon, she began to push me. I giggled in delight, cheering her on. "Yes, mom! Higher!"

The wind carried the sound of my mother's laughter to me and I giggled harder. I loved making mom happy. 

"Ivy?" She shouted over the sound of the wind.

"Yes, mom?"

"You have to save him, you hear me? You have to save him and then I'll come back to you."

What was she talking about? 

"Save who, mom?"

There was no answer.

"Mom?" I tried to turn around to look at her but she wasn't there.

Slowly the swing came to a stop. 

I jumped down, frantically looking around for my mom. "Mom! Mom where are you?" 

I ran around the park in circles trying to find her, but she was no where to be seen. After the third round, my eight year old self broke down in tears. "Mom, please come back. I'll save whoever you want me to. Please come back, mom." 

Again, there was no response.

I cried harder. "Mom, please come back. Please."

"....Ivy? Ivy, wake up! Ivy?" A voice was frantically calling out my name. But it wasn't my mom. The voice was a male one. I wanted my mother.

"Ivy, wake up! You're having a nightmare! Ivy!" Suddenly, I felt my body being shaken violently and my eyes snapped open.

Startled, I looked up only to come face to face with Chris, his grey eyes full of worry as he looked down at me.

"Chris," I croaked out, my throat hoarse, almost as if I'd been shouting.

His grey eyes seemed to darken a shade before he sighed in relief, his minty breath fanning my face. "Finally, you're awake. You've been shouting the place down."

Well, that would explain the hoarseness.

Without me having to say anything, he pulled back and straightened up before handing me a glass of water. I took a few sips greedily before finally looking around the room I was in.

It was the same one where Chris had brought me earlier. I was lying on the bed with a soft duvet covering me.

I frowned. I didn't remember coming in here or falling asleep. "What happened? How did I get here?"

"You fainted last night so I brought you up here. The doctor said it was probably because of exhaustion and that you needed to rest."

"Oh," I nodded in understanding. I hadn't ever fainted before, but I hadn't ever been in a situation such as this before either. 

Speaking of the situation I was in, was I his captive? Or was I free to go? Even if those two men had brought me here as a captive, Chris hadn't treated me badly at all. If anything, he'd protected me from those two vile individuals and had taken good care of me so far. Besides, he didn't strike me as the kind to go around kidnapping innocent little girls like me. 

But then again, those men had brought me to him, which meant that he was their leader. Everyone here addressed him as Alpha and while I didn't know what it meant, it seemed like an important title. But then, he had told me that he hadn't asked them to kidnap me, and for some reason, I trusted him.

Before I could make my head hurt by thinking about this some more, there was a knock at the door. 

Chris opened it to reveal a woman wheeling in a small food cart. 

"Leave it by the bed and go," Chris snapped at her, his tone cold.

The woman did as asked, bowed to Chris before beating a hasty retreat as if the devil itself was after her.

I frowned at Chris. "You should treat the help better. She brought food for us,the least you could've done was be polite," I chastised him. He had probably scared the poor woman half to death with his snappish attitude.

Chris stared at me with his usual mask of indifference before simply shaking his head a little and coming towards the food cart. 

"Eat. You haven't had anything in a long while," he told me, completely ignoring my previous statement and taking a seat on the foot of the bed. I would've argued with him over it some more if the sight of food hadn't made my stomach grumble loudly. I ducked my head in embarrassment before picking up a strip of bacon and shovelling it into my mouth.

Chris watched me silently as I polished off the tray of food before washing it down with some good, ol' orange juice. 

When he still continued to stare at me as if trying to solve an intricate puzzle, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "It's rude to stare at people like that."

"I never claimed to be polite." 

I huffed at his reply, rolling my eyes. "It'd be a lie if you did anyway."

He ignored my jab. "What were you dreaming of?" He asked instead.

I hesitated. "It was about my....my mom," I admitted softly, biting my bottom lip.

His eyes seemed to darken a shade before he reached forward and freed my lip from my teeth. Sparks shot up from where he'd touched me and he probably felt them too for he pulled his hand back almost instantly. "Don't do that," he muttered, pinning me in place with his heated gaze. The temperature in the room seemed to increase suddenly and I shifted in my seat.

"O-okay," replied a breathy voice and it took me a moment to realise that I was the one who had spoken. 

I cleared my throat. But before I could say something else and embarrass myself further, he spoke up, "Speaking of your mother, I'll help you find her but I want you to stay here until I've found her. I don't want you to go back to your home alone. It's not safe there. If my men could break in so easily, so could anyone else."

"Why did your men break in?" I asked the question which had been burning on the tip of my tongue for a long time now.

And for the first time since I'd met him, the Chris who always looked into my eyes when talking to me, the same one who didn't like it if I looked away from him while talking to him, avoided my gaze. 

"Tell me why, Chris. If I'm not going to be able to go home then I at least want to know why," I pleaded when he hadn't said anything for a while.

Chris looked at me again. "It's your father. It's his research people are after."

"What kind of a research is it that so many people are after it?"

"An important one."

"You don't say. I would never have figured that out on my own."

"Good thing I told you then."

This man...! I groaned internally, realising that I wasn't going to get any more answers out of him. Clearly, I wasn't going to go back home any time soon. If the research was as important as he said it was, then more people were bound to come looking for it. And I had no intention of being home when they did.

Staying with Chris was the safer option. At least until I had found mom. Then we could plan something. My only focus for now was finding her. And I trusted that Chris would help me. He seemed like a powerful enough person with a lot of resources so I had high hopes that he'd be able to find my mom. 

Speaking of Chris, "Hey, what do you do for a living? I mean you seem pretty powerful and well off. Are you like a CEO or something?"

He seemed to mull the question over in his head for a while before answering. "I'm the head of an organisation."

"What kind of an organisation?"

"A powerful one."

This time I didn't even dignify his statement with a reply. Clearly, he wasn't going to tell me more about it. Besides, it didn't really matter as long as he helped me find my mom. As soon as she was back, I'd be out of his hair forever. 

Silently, I looked around the place I was going to be living in for the next few days. Where was I anyway? I'd been out like a light when my two captors had kidnapped me and brought me here. So I had no idea where 'here' was. "Where am I?" I asked him.

"A small town in Canada."

My eyes widened. "Canada?"

"Yes."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Do I look like I am?"

I looked at him carefully. He definitely did not look like he was joking. "Shit, I really am in Canada."

"I believe we've already established that."

"Oh, just shut up and let me be dramatic in peace."

His lips twitched, letting me know that he was amused but he didn't say anything. And once the shock of being in a completely different country faded, I realised so was I. I'd always wanted to travel the world but had never gotten a chance to go out of the States. Never in a million years would I have thought that I'd travel to another country like this, kidnapped and unconscious. 

I looked up at him with a grin on my face. "Can I go sight seeing tomorrow?" 

"Uh, I mean later today?" I corrected myself hurriedly when I looked at the clock on the wall opposite me and realized that it was seven in the morning already.

"Sure, you can even go buy yourself some clothes and other essentials while you're at it, too. I'll take you later today."

I was shaking my head long before he'd even completed his sentence. "I don't have any money on me right on."

"I'll take care of that." 

I shook my head again. I couldn't take money from him. 

"My men brought you here, the least I can do is make sure you're well looked after."

I hesitated. He was already doing so much for me. Thinking I would return the money to him as soon as I had some, I agreed. "Okay."

He nodded at me. "Stay here until I come get you to go shopping. I don't want you getting lost here or getting into any trouble wandering around on your own," he told me before getting up to leave.

I nodded at him as he left. But then again, what fun was there in doing as you were told anyway?