The Celebrity Copycat - A Heartthrob Tale

Chapter 12

Chapter 12:

"He locked you in a dog cage?" asked Mikayla. She wasn't sure if it was better or worse than her isolation room.

"He let me out twice to use the bathroom and fed me once a day," said Marie.

"That's horrible."

"Nico did a lot of regrettable things." Marie looked like she wanted to say more but was holding her tongue. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn't so far gone.

"So, why are you all lovey dovey now?"

"Well, things changed. Nico spent the first four days on the film set, so I hardly saw him. But then Saturday came and he let me out and took me up to his room. And he . . ."

"Raped you," said Mikayla matter-of-factly.

"No! No. He made love to me. And for the first time in my life I truly felt beautiful."

"You are beautiful. How did him assaulting you change how you felt?"

"Look, I understand how it looks. But I struggled with my body image for years and Nico . . . Nico saved me. I can't really explain it, but now I feel confident. We spent time together and I fell in love with him."

"You do know that you have Stockholm Syndrome, right?" Mikayla wanted to like Marie, but it was so hard to like her when she was so delusional.

"I was a psychology student. I know all about Stockholm. Maybe I have it, but then again, how is it any different from making friends. We feel affection for people who we're forced to hang out with."

"No one forced me to be friends with anyone. Every single one of my friends was someone I felt a genuine connection with. Sure my best friend was my college roommate and she had little choice. But my friend Renee was just someone I met at a club meeting in college and started hanging out with. And my friend Liz was sitting near my friends in the dining hall. I didn't Stockholm syndrome my friends. They all had a choice." Mikayla was rambling again. She started scratching her arm, trying to remind herself that she had to stop rambling.

"Look, it wasn't like I fell in love with him overnight. But I did fall for him. Once things blow over with my case we're going to reintroduce me to society as his girlfriend and eventually his wife."

Mikayla stared out the window. She felt like she was about to cry.  She wasn't usually a crier, but this situation was messing with her head.

"And what about your family? Your friends?"

"They'll be fine without me. My mom died when I was a kid. My dad's been in a happy relationship for the last three years and I'm sure she's taking good care of him. And it's not like I had a lot of friends. So I'm sure they will be fine without me. I'll have a new life with Nico."

"And what's going to happen to me? Am I going to rejoin society and lose my place in it. Am I going to lose all my friends and family and my career, which was finally starting to take off?"

"That's not up to me, that's up to Jackson."

Mikayla stood up and started pacing back and forth. "So, why are we here? Why did two A-list celebrities decide to kidnap women?" Mikayla only knew what Jackson told her.

"From the way Nico told me, he and Jackson were hanging out one night when Nori Fintan was on TV talking about her second kidnapping. You know about that don't you?"

"My biggest role to date was actually playing Nori Fintan on a Netflix series," sighed Mikayla. Her career would be over before it really started if she didn't get out of here.