She's No Beauty Queen

Angelina was fairly certain she was hanging onto what remained of her sanity by a thread. She had sung the entirety of several musicals by now using the books her captor brought her and still didn't have the slightest hope of being rescued.

She had four seizures without her medication, she couldn't see properly so she had a constant headache, and she still hadn't been able to shower. She did her best to clean herself with the soap and water available in the sink of the half bath she was allowed to use but without a change of clothes it was sort of a moot point.

Since being shown those pictures from her social media accounts she had been torturing herself wondering what on earth was going on and whether or not Eddie even noticed she was gone. Maybe he really didn't care and had decided the imposter was a better mother for Aria because she was willing to stay at home with her instead of wanting her own life.

The thought threatened to destroy her because she knew she wasn't a good mom. How could she be when she never wanted to be one in the first place?

Angelina tried to kill her daughter before she even got the chance to live, not once but twice. First with planning to abort her then with her suicide attempt. She did her best with the little girl when she was around but she wasn't around nearly often enough.

If she survived this she still wouldn't be around much because of medical school and then her residency. Things would calm down once she was a board certified doctor and had normal working hours because most neurologists worked primarily with outpatients but by then Aria would be eleven years old. She would have missed the most important years of her daughter's life.

Tears filled her eyes. She had never been cut out to be a mother in the first place; she was too damaged from her own childhood.

Angelina wasn't good enough. She had never been good enough for anyone despite all of her pageant crowns. She wasn't enough for her overly controlling mother. She wasn't enough for Eddie to care about her beyond her role in Aria's life. She wasn't good enough for Aria either.

Now here she was, likely to end her short miserable life in a cage with only a psychopath and her own pessimistic thoughts as company. What a fitting end for someone as unlucky as her.

What had she been thinking anyway? Someone as sickly as her could never handle medical school. Everyone always tried talking her out of it anyway. She couldn't even handle her Miss California schedule!

Not taking care of herself properly was what got her kidnapped. If she had taken her medicine she wouldn't have had a seizure and at least would have been able to try running or calling 911.

Angelina curled up on the floor of her cage in fetal position and cried her heart out. Nobody needed her. Nobody wanted her. Nobody even knew she was gone.

The front door slammed open with a bang and she immediately composed herself, wiping away her tears so her captor wouldn't get mad. She choked back her sobs. No crying. Not when it meant he could kill her faster.

Though sometimes she wondered if it might be better to get it over with because no one was coming for her… If she was going to die anyway wouldn't it be better to do it sooner rather than later?

But for some reason her sense of self-preservation wouldn't let her do that. Hence her instinctual pulling herself together.

"You lied to me!" the man spat. "Those pictures were recent! Look at this. LOOK AT IT."

He shoved his phone in her face yet again and she saw a picture of her extremely convincing imposter—honestly, they looked exactly alike—arm in arm with Mark Hanover. That gave her a little jolt. What was she doing with Eddie's assistant?

Angelina had seen him plenty of times even though the two of them rarely interacted. He was always coming and going from the house but she was hardly ever there. Sometimes she wondered if he spent more time there than she did when she was on the road.

"I didn't lie! I have no idea who this person is." That much at least was true. She was completely baffled by this doppelgänger that seemed to have taken over her life.

"Which one of you is the real one?" the man demanded.

What sort of ridiculous question was that? He had been satisfied with her voice for this long, hadn't he? To the point of not killing her yet. The imposter might look exactly like her but their voices couldn't possibly be the same.

"Of course I'm the real one! I'm just as confused as you are!" Angelina insisted. "You said you liked my voice at a pageant before. Isn't it the same as in your memories?"

This seemed to calm him slightly. He started talking to himself holding some sort of debate about whether or not she was telling the truth. Watching it was unsettling to say the least and her heart pounded frantically.

Was this what would finally cause her to die? An imposter looking exactly like her that she had absolutely nothing to do with?

Her captor did something that filled her with dread. He unlocked her cage and grabbed her roughly by the arm before dragging her somewhere that was not the bathroom. Since arriving here she had never gone anywhere but the bathroom or her cage.

This was really it. She was actually about to die!

He took Angelina to one of the bedrooms and opened the door, putting her in a headlock as they stood in the doorway. She barely managed to hold back a scream when she saw what was inside.