DISCLAIMER: I don't own Princess Mia and co. Woe is me, etc, etc

A/N: Here is the (hugely) overdue chapter ten. I am soooo sorry this has taken so long to update, but first I was ill, then I was on holiday, then I had no Internet access (just don't ask). . .you know how it is, one thing leads to another, things happen, yadda, yadda, yadda. . .I'm sorry! Thanks to Di-Pekka for beta-ing. (HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Lol!)

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They took her blindfold off, but they didn't untie her wrists. Her kidnapper- one of them, anyway- turned and looked at her. "It is unlikely that anyone will drive past whilst we are getting out of the car, but as a precaution, this is what is going to happen," he said. "I am going to untie your hands whilst Tim-" he indicated the driver "-keeps you covered."

'With the gun,' thought Mia.

The man indicated a slate-coloured men's trench coat. "This will be wrapped around both of us, which will make it easy for me to conceal the gun which will be pressed into your side and will also make it seem to any passers by- though I doubt there will be any- that we are good friends, trying to hurry in from the storm. Got it?"

Mia nodded. She doubted that he would shoot her- there was, no doubt, a 'higher authority' after her, or perhaps a ransom, but she wasn't willing to risk a bullet through the stomach- her eighth grade biology teacher had once told the class that: "Your stomach acid would kill you quicker than blood loss- and it's very painful. It would take around thirty seconds, but it would be the most painful thirty seconds of your life!" Her eighth grade biology teacher was only being melodramatic.

She hoped.

The man untied her wrists and wrapped the trench coat around her, whilst the other man- Tim, or Tom, or whatever he had said he was called- trained a gun on her. She wasn't willing to test her theory of them not shooting her.

They got out of the car and hurried into the set of apartments. Why, oh why, hadn't she had a bodyguard come on the trip with her? 'Because,' she told herself, 'You didn't want one. It's your own fault. Even Tina insisted you had one.'

Outside, the apartments were old and dilapidated- there were broken windows on the first few floors, and unreadable graffiti had been sprayed on in blue paint. Inside there was a disgusting smell- Mia decided that she wasn't even going to try and work out what it was-, the lift was broken so they had to climb up the stairs to the top floor (were they going to hurl her out of the window?) and the building was generally a cliché of the type of place badly made action movies happen.

Or at least, the part where the heroine is being held hostage and the hero has to fight the baddies to save her. And he always wins, and the hero and heroine end up getting married. Or going out, at least. But Mia didn't have a hero to save her. . . no doubt Michael now hated her, and there never had been anyone else after him.

When they finally reached the fifteenth floor, there was a change. The corridor they turned onto had been cleaned, and a rug had even been put down. The air had been sprayed with liberal amounts of air freshener, so that it smelt of peaches, instead of God only knew what, and the door handles had been polished clean.

The man inserted a key into the lock of the last but one door, and opened it. The room was obviously a sitting room-cum-dining room- to the right there was a sofa, TV, a couple of chairs and a bookshelf, and to the left there was a dining table with a vase of flowers on it. Mia caught a glimpse of a pristine kitchen through a half open door, and a neat bedroom through another. There were also two closed doors- one of which she presumed had a bathroom behind it.

All in all, it wasn't the best suite at the Plaza, but it was defiantly in better condition than the rest of the building. Her kidnapper re-tied her hands and pushed her into one of the hard-backed chairs. He walked over to one of the closed doors, and knocked, three times.

Slowly, it opened. Mia gasped.

The woman who stepped out of the door had long blonde hair and big blue eyes. The woman who stepped out of the door was tall and slim, and was wearing a pair of pale blue jeans and a white blouse. The woman who stepped out of the door had been the 'star' of an advert for toothpaste earlier in the year; she had bared her clinically whitened teeth and told people to 'buy our toothpaste, for a cleaner, brighter life!'

The woman who stepped out of the door was Lana Weinberger.

"Hello Mia," she said. "Nice to see you again. Shame it has to be right before I'm going to kill you, but, still. What can you do?"

"I . . . what . . . you. . ." Mia stammered, amazed. She hadn't known who the ring-leader of this whole kidnapping thing was, but she certainly hadn't expected it to be Lana Weinberger.

"Yes, it is me. Lana. But we'll come to me in a minute. I gather you're now Queen of Genovia, correct?" she continued, as if they were meeting up at a High School reunion.

"Yes, I am ruler of Genovia. Genovia is a principality, meaning I'm still Princess, and not Queen," Mia said, hardly able to believe that she was having this conversation with a person who wanted to kill her.

"Oh, yes. I'm sorry. A principality, of course. I must remember that. Anyway, I heard about the death of your grandmother and your father. I wasn't bothered, but manners matter, so I'll be polite and say that I am very sorry," she carried on.

"Now, about your death. It is going to be very unfortunate, but all of these 'tragic'-" she made air quotes around the word 'tragic'- "have been. As you can see, there's some really bad weather going on at the moment. As soon as- oh, Marcus!" Lana called, as the man who had instructed Mia on how to get into the building, came into view.

"Yes, Miss Weinberger?" he asked.

"Bring me a glass of water, would you? And, before I forget, search the princess for a cell phone, please?" she asked.

Marcus did as he was told, first roughly manhandling Mia and producing an iPod and a cell phone. As he was opening a bottle of water from the fridge, Lana picked up the iPod, and looked through it.

"Theme from Beauty and the Beast? Bootylicious? Dear God, Mia. I suppose the next track'll be the Genovian National Anthem!" She accepted the glass of water handed to her by Marcus, and scornfully threw the iPod onto the table, by the cell phone.

Mia said nothing, sitting, stupefied, hearing the constant flow of Lana's words around her, but not really taking in what she was saying. All her mind could come up with was "What the HELL?" Why was Lana here? Why did she want to kill her? Who was Marcus? What was going on?

"Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, your death. Now, like I said, this bad weather that we're having is set to continue through the next few days, so the sea will be very rough. So, of course, the Police will put two and two together, and figure your boat capsized and you drowned. Pity, but, well, that's life, isn't it?" Lana said.

Mia didn't reply.

"Anyway, we've got some catching up to do!" Lana exclaimed. "I haven't seen you for ages! How've you been? And Lilly, and Tina, all that lot, how're they? Are you still seeing Michael?"

"We're all fine," said Mia, surprised once again by the turn of events, and how easy it was to slip into simple conversation with someone who had just told her that she wanted her dead. "And I'm not seeing Michael." Which was technically true, if you took 'seeing Michael' to mean 'dating Michael', 'going out with Michael', 'having sex with Michael' or even 'being married to Michael'.

"Oh, I know, men are such losers. I haven't heard from Josh since he left for collage! My parents made me go to finishing school in England, so I could lose my American accent, and start talking all posh," Lana continued. Mia had noticed that Lana's voice was mostly unaccented, but occasionally it would have an American twinge.

There was a pause then Mia said, "Lana, why are you doing it? You're rich, popular, pretty. . . why?"

"I was wondering how long it would be before you asked me that. Well, you see, it started when I got engaged. There was three weeks to go before the wedding, and he came to tell me that he'd knocked up one of the bridesmaids, and he had to marry her instead! I was heart-broken, but I didn't want to kill him, so I killed the bridesmaid instead. Then he would know what it was like for me to be heart-broken," Lana replied.

"And then, after that, one of Dad's clients sued Dad for an accident which was so totally her own fault, and my Dad went bankrupt. So I had to get rid of her, as well. Then it just. . . I don't know, became like an addiction. I couldn't stop doing it. So I decided to get rid of all the women who had made my life- and the lives of my friends- hell over the years. And, no offence Mia, but you are totally one of them," she finished.

"Oh. . .my. . .God. . ." Mia said, faintly. This was much harder to grasp than the fact that Lana wanted her dead. She could understand that. How many times had there been when they had been in High School and she had come this close to causing Lana grievous bodily harm with a pair of compasses or her cheerleading pompoms? But that was stupid teenager stuff- it happened all over the world: popular girl picks on unpopular girl.

But killing? As in murder? And not just her- all those girls, all twenty-seven, or however many Tina had said it was? That was . . . unthinkable.

"You. . .you're. . .you're disgusting. You should be locked up. That's horrific. That's. . .I can't even. . . Their LIVES, Lana! People's LIVES! It's not just like a game, where they sit out for fifteen minutes. You're killing them. They won't come back. They're DEAD! DEAD! Can't you understand that!"

Lana smiled coldly. "I didn't kill any of them."

"You are just pure evil! You're sick. You're twisted! You should be locked up and never set- what? What do you mean, you didn't kill them?"

"Like I said, I didn't kill any of them. I told others to kill them. Others who I blackmailed into killing them- like Tina's precious Boris," Lana replied. "Also, I'd say that overall, we only managed to get about twelve of them. Not all twenty-seven. Some of them, I guess, died of, you know, natural causes, like they drowned, or the boat capsized. And, I don't know, maybe someone decided they liked what we were doing and thought that if they killed someone, the finger of suspicion would point at us, not them. Sorry, I'm not making much sense, am I?"

Mia opened her mouth to reply, though she had no idea what she was going to say, when there was a loud crash outside the door, a single gunshot, and Lana screamed.

She stood up, and pushed the chair which Mia was tied to over. She had only meant to get Mia out of the line of fire- she didn't want her killed by any other means than drowning, because otherwise the coroner might suspect something other than the usual death-by-drowning homicide-, but Mia hit her head on the table as she went down, and knocked herself out.

Her last conscious thought- OK, thoughts, were of Michael- she thought she heard his voice cry out "Mia!", though she reckoned she was mistaken-, and the fact that whatever it was they put in gunpowder- sulphur?- smelt like rotten eggs.

She hated eggs, rotten or otherwise.

A/N: Confused? Don't worry; you're not alone- it's my general state of mind ;) ! Seriously, though, it will all be explained in the next chapter, as well as why Lana is so OOC, and why Michael is/isn't there, and if Mia's OK. Speaking of the next chapter, it will be here soon- or at least, sooner than this one was. Thank you all for being patient. And I promise it won't take as long to update. Um. I think. . .