Chapter Text
By the time Gaby returns from the errands that Isabella sent her on, the guests are already one hour into the party. Although, judging by the level of inebriation in the main room to the right of the foyer, it would seem that the festivities are already over.
Everyone looks blissed out - wasted. As if they have already experienced the height of tonight’s entertainment and have the energy for no more.
How disgraceful.
These people have no sense of shame.
I had better not find Illya or Napoleon in this state.
It is not Illya that Gaby really needs to worry about, it is Napoleon. While Napoleon is a sensible drinker and is careful not to overdo it, perhaps because he is overly cautious and not too trusting nowadays, Gaby knows that he can be bullied into doing things that he normally wouldn’t. In the right circumstances, under the right pressure, the American can be coerced into sacrificing his morals as well as his dignity. However, the fault of his lack of resistance does not lie with Napoleon himself. No, that honor belongs to Sanders for ‘training’ Napoleon so well.
Over by the bar is Isabella. She has her back to the crowd and her hand on a drink. At her side is an average looking man with a shock of dark hair on top of his flat head and ears that stick out too far. He is definitely not Napoleon.
Nowhere in the drunken crowd of beige garbed socialites can Gaby see Napoleon or Illya. Or any other foreigners for that matter.
Casually leaning in close to a slightly younger girl who has been working for the De Luca’s for quite some time, Gaby makes a show of helping her collect discarded glass tumblers and cigarette butts from inside the plant pots and off of their poor burned leaves.
“This is a real pain in the ass, isn’t it?” Gaby plucks a piece of a cigar off of the singed remains of a fiddle-leaf fig as she rolls her eyes in exaggeration.
“Tell me about it,” Anna, one of De Luca’s favorite girls, agrees. “Why must they kill the plants when the garbage bin is not two feet away?”
“How long does it take to clean up after such a party?” Gaby is careful to keep her questions casual and her tone light so as not to arouse suspicion. The questions themselves should sound completely natural for someone who is new to this monthly occurrence in the household. So long as she doesn’t poke around where her curiosity is unwanted.
“Hours,” Anna groans. “And if we don’t keep up with the garbage during the party, we’ll need to stay overnight in order to get all the cleaning done.”
“It’s a lot of people to clean up after.”
Anna grunts in response.
“It’s funny, though, how some people chose not to come despite there being all this free booze.”
“What do you mean?” Anna asks in confusion. “Everyone who was invited came.”
“Oh?”
If that is true, then where are Illya and Napoleon?
“Not that I’m so great with mathematics or anything…,” - which is a total lie because Gaby is very good with numbers - “… but I’m only counting around forty-six people. I thought we were expecting fifty-nine.”
For a brief moment, Anna hesitates. She studies Gaby’s profile out of the corner of her eye before saying, “There were. Some left early.”
“That’s an awful lot of people for you to have to clean up after on your own. I should’ve arrived earlier to help out.” Gaby hopes that she does not sound as desperate as she feels.
“You were sent away on purpose,” Anna is quick to point out in a haughtier tone. “Only those who have earned Isabella’s trust are allowed to be present for the first half of the party.”
Well, screw you, too!
“What could possibly be—.”
“You ask too many questions.” Anna cuts Gaby off either in irritation or warning. “You had best do what you are being paid to do so that I can do the same.” Then she abruptly strides across to the opposite side of the room to try and save the trashed furniture.
The only reason Gaby’s partners would have left early is if Napoleon was successful in scoring a date with Isabella. In that eventuality, Illya would have exited the party with his new boyfriend.
No.
Illya would have stayed longer to confirm the layout of the building.
The temptation of so many priceless pieces of art lying around would have also been too much for Napoleon to resist. He would have stayed to collect a few souvenirs to take home with him while waiting for Illya to finish up on the second floor.
There’s only one way to know for sure if they have gone or not.
When Gaby is sure that nobody is looking her way, she slips into the dressing room. Even if she is caught and questioned, she can simply say that she is tidying up. Because who knows when a poorly stubbed cigarette butt might catch fire and burn the place down?
The dressing room is very well organized with little cubbyholes along the one wall for the belongings of guests. It does not take very long for Gaby to find the one that Napoleon has used because his folding technique is immaculate. He tucks his shirt sleeves in at sharp angles and presses the material down along the sides so that it looks freshly ironed once it is opened up again. His socks are also neatly folded inside of his polished shoes, and his tie is loosely rolled up inside the left one. So careful and deliberate. As always. However, the one thing missing from Napoleon’s pile of belongings is his wallet, which should have contained his fake ID and some emergency cash.
Beside Napoleon’s cubbyhole is Illya’s. For a man who suffers from psychotic episodes of violence, Illya is also meticulous with how he organizes his things. But he does so in a more practical manner by rolling everything up into the tightest ball possible so that it takes up very little space. He has even done it with his dress shirt as well as his slacks. Gaby wonders if Illya and Napoleon bicker about the way they fold or roll their clothes. The idea of them getting into it over something so trivial kind of amuses her.
Again, no wallet.
Illya’s identification has also been removed.
After having seen what all the partygoers are dressed in, Gaby is quite certain that neither Illya nor Napoleon would have been able to carry their wallets on their person. Not with how thin and revealing those tacky outfits are.
If their clothing is still here, then they could not have already left.
Moving over to the desk at the entrance to the room, which is now unmanned, Gaby crouches down and begins to go through all the documents in the wooden filing cabinet. She finds a stack of party invitations in the first drawer. Some of them are as is, while others have symbols or writing on them.
Adrian Sokolov.
Illya’s alias.
Attached to the invitation is a checklist with several options crossed off. Under height, Illya has been determined to be ‘too tall.’ His personality has been categorized as ‘confrontational/aggressive/unpleasant.’ Which pretty much sums up Illya when faced with people he doesn’t like or who don’t know him very well. Under physical appearance, someone has written ‘tough/good facial structure/cold blue eyes/short blond hair/perpetual scowl.’ At the bottom of a number of other selections is a stamp in bold declaring Illya as ‘Rejected.’
Not really knowing what to do with that information, Gaby digs through the stack some more until she finds Darren Jones, Napoleon’s alias.
At the top of Napoleon’s invitation is an ominous star and a rating of 5 out of 5 that was not there before. The attached checklist registers his height as being ‘tall but within guidelines.’ His personality is listed as, ‘charming/polite/people-pleaser/submissive.’
Gaby frowns. She does not know how Napoleon earned that last particular descriptor, nor does she feel ready to speculate on its significance. So, instead, she skims through the next few lines that describe Napoleon as being ‘handsome,’ which is on the same line as ‘pretty.’ His ‘sky blue eyes’ are also mentioned, as well his dark curly hair, plus very specific references to his individual body parts. Some of the details are vague, while others are overtly sexual in nature. And at the bottom of the page, in bold red letters, is a phrase that causes the blood to drain from Gaby’s face.
‘Accepted/Reserved for Auction.’
What the hell is this?!
What auction?!
They can’t mean…
If there is one thing Gaby is not, it is naïve. Just because she is unfamiliar with the type of operation that De Luca is running does not mean that she is incapable of understanding the basic concept of it. What she is having trouble grasping is how Napoleon was grabbed - because he most certainly did not leave of his own accord or without his fine threads - while in the presence of Illya.
Quickly putting everything back the way she found it, Gaby eases open the bottom drawer to find individual file folders containing ID cards, cash, and credit cards. At the back of the drawer is a separate folder full of what look like request forms. As she is leafing through the papers, her stomach begins to turn. These are not forms requesting services or supplies. What the senders have indicated on the forms is the kind of sex slave they are interested in. Most of the forms are stamped at the top with the word ‘fulfilled.’ So Gaby focuses on the ones that are temporarily labeled ‘unfulfilled.’ More than half of the unfulfilled pile have expressed a desperate interest in an average-to-tall young man with a pretty face, preferably blue eyes, dark hair, and a fit, but not overly muscular, body. Additional points include ‘submissive’ and/or ‘easy to train’.
I have to find Illya!
There is no way Gaby can rescue Napoleon on her own, wherever he has been taken. Illya was rejected, which means that if he was unable to protect Napoleon, then he is lying incapacitated somewhere on the premises.
Or dead…
No, Gaby does not want to consider that as a possibility. Illya is alive somewhere. Hurt, maybe. But he can’t be dead. He just can’t be!
As Gaby hurriedly leaves the dressing room, she nearly bumps into an obstruction of a man who also seems to be in quite a rush.
Before Gaby can nervously apologize for her rudeness, the man disappears around the corner. Apparently, he wants to be seen even less than Gaby herself does. However, after having served the handsy brute his drinks and cigars on several occasions, Gaby has no trouble identifying him as Isabella’s rotund husband. The husband that is supposed to be away on a business trip. Him lurking around when he ought to be in Austria for the week is strange enough, but the state of the man’s face sends chills down Gaby’s spine. From what she could see of him, his face was covered in bruises, his right eye swollen shut, and his lip split. Meaning that he has been involved in a fight.
Napoleon and Illya are missing.
Edoardo looks like he has been involved in a physical altercation that may have ended poorly for the other party. Still, whomever he has recently fought with managed to get in a few good shots before going down.
Napoleon?
This doesn’t make sense because Napoleon isn’t much of a fighter. He might have gotten one or two shots in before Edoardo knocked him out. But that’s it. Because a man of that size outclasses Napoleon in both height and weight. Illya, on the other hand, would have left a lot more damage… or killed Edoardo outright.
So either Edoardo was toying with Napoleon, or Illya was fighting with a handicap.
Whatever the case may be, Gaby realizes that this problem is outside of her area of expertise. She needs to find Illya and contact Waverly to have him send backup… before Napoleon winds up on the sex slave market - if such a thing actually exists.