A Hand Overplayed Ch. 01

Lance sat on the couch grinning ear to ear, content to let her have her fun, knowing full well she was about to take a nice big swig of the Bailey's home special wine, wine he had specially prepared just for her before their night had even begun. It was good to have friends.

"Yeah, I wish keeping it clean was as beautiful as looking at it" he laughed, "excuse me for a second, I have to run upstairs and get something." he finished just as a barefoot Brittany emerged from the kitchen holding the bottle and two glasses before setting herself down on the sofa.

"Okay, no problem, I'll pour a glass for you" she replied. Lance smiled and nodded toward her, "just don't drink it all without me", he replied with a soft wink. As he ascended the staircase Brittany poured herself a brimming glass and chugged down almost a quarter of it, examining her surroundings. The TV seemed pretty nice, a 4k QLED, the furniture despite looking so plain was rather comfortable so she wagered it probably cost a lot. Looking around she couldn't find anything that looked like a safe or lockbox, though few were dumb enough to keep such a thing in the living room anyway. She gulped down more of her wine and stared intently throughout the house.

Upstairs Lance removed his jacket before gathering the documents he came up for, the moment was finally at hand. "Say" he yelled down the steps, "what was the name of that plastics company you work for again?" stalking his way toward the staircase. Brittany, finishing the last of her wine appeared a bit confused by the question as she was analyzing the room for security cameras

"McKelvic" she replied as a now t shirt clad Lance emerged from the top of the staircase, in his hand a stack of papers.

"Oh yeah, duh, you've told me that like a thousand times" he laughed shaking his head, Brittany smiled at the comment while filling her glass back up. "There's a thing though, see, I'm friends with Don McKelvic, their current CEO" Brittany paused in the middle of her sip and looked up in shock.

"Yeah" Lance replied, the blind siding nature of his comment fully apparent, "and see, I called him up and spoke to him for a while the other day and he has no idea who you are." Brittany's mind began to race, and a funny feeling was starting to brew inside of her gut, stammering to find the words for a rebuttal she pulled herself together.

"Well yeah, but you know, I've only been there for about 6 months. Not like the CEO is going to know who I am after such a short time, ya know" she responded.

"Yeah, you're probably right, after all who knows every employee at their company right?" Lance laughed while Brittany nodded in agreement, "Why didn't you tell me that sooner?" she shot back looking to go on the offensive "And why would you ask him about me?". The odd sensation in her stomach quickly spreading throughout her body was beginning to cause alarm, was it the wine? No way he was able to do anything to it, the bottle hadn't left her hand since they received it, she'd opened the damn thing herself. Lance without warning pressed on to a new statement as though Brittany had never asked anything.

"Of course, it's probably hard for him to know which of you to look for" a confused and worried Brittany began to start a response before Lance tossed a paper on the table that sent a shiver down Brittany's spine.

"Maybe instead of Trinity he was thinking you were her?" the picture in front of her was taken from an old social media page, one where she had went under the alias Megan. "Big difference between Trinity and Megan though huh?" Lance continued in a mocking tone, Brittany looked up at him jaw dropped, how the hell did he get these? She had deleted that page years ago! "I mean in name of course, from the looks of it you guys could be fucking twins huh?" he laughed realizing the girl had no response for him.

"I...um...look...I can..." before the slow moving words escaped her lips another photo was plopped onto the table, this time of her Stephanie alias, the comment he had made earlier about a salon now revealed it's origins to the horror of the frozen young woman.

"Or maybe he thought it was her, or didn't she leave to open her own salon in Michigan?" his tone more forceful than she had ever heard him before, Brittany knew she needed to get out of here immediately, but she had become terribly light headed

"Oh...okay look...I'm uh...I'm gonna go and we can talk about this lat.." as she went to ascend from the sofa he legs buckled underneath, the warm sensation enveloping her was now making her vision go blurry, she fell to the floor with a dramatic thud. Her wine glass falling to the ground next to her and shattering, it's red liquid content flowed across the rich wooden floors. Lance continued the interrogation as if anything she said or did wasn't a concern at this point, thrusting another picture onto the table in front of her, this time of her most recent identity as Jennifer.

"Never mind, we're all wrong!" he exclaimed in a monumentally mocking tone "It was Jenn the sweet little housewife he meant! Ugh!" he finished with an exaggerated slap on his own head as if chastising his lack of intelligence.

Brittany struggled to pull herself back up on the couch, she could no longer see straight and the room was spinning around her, weakly reaching over and grabbing her high heels she meekly tried to re-strap one of them to her feet. "I'm gonna...i'm gonna..." her struggle to remain conscious now evident.

"Great service at Bailey's huh?" Lance deviously smirked, Brittany barely had time to register the horrible reality that the words implied. He had in fact somehow drugged the bottle of wine. The last of her willpower faded as the spinning room turned to black and she slumped over onto the couch, a heel still dangling from the ends of her toes.

Lance could no longer contain himself, it all went so beautifully according to plan, he sat down on the recliner and stared at the unconscious women before him, until she had fallen so deep into sleep she was snoring. There was no time to waste, it was around 12:30 am and with the lower dose she received, it was expected that she would be out until no later than 9am. Lance stood up and walked over to Brittany, picking her up in his arms and carrying her off toward his basement, there were many preparations to be made for his new guest.