The next thing Tony knew, he and his fiancé were being packed into the back of a small van. He put up a good fight against his captors, as did his fiancé, but it was not enough. They were outnumbered at least 6 to 2, and although between them they had managed to take out 2 they were still outnumbered and under the influence of too much celebratory alcohol to be able to fight hard enough to escape.
Their captors had also given their all and eventually they just knocked their two victims out and tied them up before throwing them savagely in to the back of the small black van.

"Where the hell is DiNozzo!?!" Gibbs said as he came down the stairs form MTAC.
"um…um…I don't know, he said he had to go early because he had something important to do."
"And what about Ziva? What's her excuse!?" Gibbs was getting steadily angrier and angrier.
"Um, she left soon after Tony. She said she had somewhere to be. She looked pretty emotional…for Ziva I mean."
"Women! After four wives I still don't understand them! What the hell is going on with her, she's been moping around all week!" Gibbs continued walking through the squad room towards the elevator.
"I don't know, but she has been avoiding Tony and won't make eye contact with him…hey! Do you think something happened between them?"
Gibbs stopped and turned around.
"Like what?"
"I don't know…but you know what Tony's like. Maybe they…you know…and he um…" McGee was beginning to regret bringing up the subject with his boss.
Gibbs noticed his junior field agents discomfort, turned around with an amused smile on his face, and continued walking in the direction of the elevator.

"Where the hell did you take her!?!" Tony yelled. Straining from the ropes that bound him to the ornate velvet covered wooden chair. He had woken up with a groggy moan of pain and discovered himself to be tied to a chair in what appeared to be the dining room of a Georgian mansion type building. He wasn't alone but as he scanned his surroundings he couldn't find the woman he had proposed to mere hours ago, all eh could see was a couple of heavy built goons drinking coffee and glaring at him with an immense hatred in their eyes.
"Take who…?" One of the goons said with a hollow laugh.
"I know your heads are filled with sawdust but surely even two imbeciles like you two can figure that one out!"
One of the goons looked at Tony like he wanted to put one of the bullets from the gun he was twirling in his left hand through Tony's skull. The other just stood up and walked over to Tony.
"If you ever want to see your little tart again you might want to treat us with a little more respect." The goon said, trying to sound intimidating, and just ending up sounding like he took his words straight from a cheesy mob movie.
Tony laughed.
The goon looked to his friend not knowing what to do. When his friend shrugged he turned back to Tony, who was still laughing.
"What the hell are you laughing it?!"
"First of all, she is not ‘my little tart', she is the love of my life. And second, you two cant be of any importance in this ‘operation' because you seem to have been spending a lot more time watching cheesy mob movies than making elaborate plans to kidnap me and my fiancé and keep us in this rather spectacular mansion." Tony said, ignoring the looks of rage on the goons.
"You seem to have a lot of attitude for a guy tied to a chair"
"Ah but it's a velvet covered chair and…I forgot to mention, third…"
"Spit it out!"
"Rule #9, always carry a knife"
Tony stood up quickly, discarding the ropes that had bound him to the chair. In one swift move he had knocked out the first goon (the one that had been twirling the gun in-between his fingers) and was holding the second one down on the red patterned Georgian rug by the throat.
Tony grabbed the gun from the first goon as held his knife to the others throat.
"I don't appreciate bondage from guys okay, now tell me where my fiancé is so that we can get out of here."
"sech-uhhnd d-hoor to thugh leghft" the goon croaked.
Tony reduced the force on the goon's throat a little.
"Second door on the left." He said.
Tony brought the handle of the gun down on the second goons head, rendering him unconscious. He then managed to tie both of the men together with the rope he had just cut himself free from.
He then slowly opened the ornate mahogany door a few inches and once he knew that the coast was clear he made his way out of the door and down the hall.

Tony made his way cautiously down the hall, following the goon's instructions. Finally he reached the second door on the left, it had probably only taken a matter of seconds but Tony's heart was pounding so hard in his ribcage that it felt like an eternity.

Tony listened intently at the mahogany (the owner of this place sure lied mahogany) door for any signs of life in the room. When he realized all he could hear was a woman struggling behind a gag and no sign that there was anybody else in the room he slowly pushed the heavy door open.

As he entered the room he saw a woman tied to a chair just like he had been mere minutes ago. He heard her breath a sigh of relief as she recognised him and he made his way over to her to untie her bindings.

"Tony..." The brunette breathed in relief as Tony removed her gag and held her to him. Her panicked breathing began to slow down as her head lay on Tony's shoulder.

As she began to relax she lifted her head from his shoulder.

"Tony..." she said quietly but urgently.

"Are you okay? What did they do to you?" Tony asked in concern, holding her head gently in his hands.

"They didn't do anything. Just tied me up and threatened me a bit." She said pushing his hands away. "But Tony..."

"You're bleeding!" Tony looked at his hands and then to where they had been just moments ago. There was a small cut on her left cheek.

"Tony its nothing." She wiped the blood from her cheek. "You have to listen to me!"

Suddenly a gardener's shovel came down violently on Tony's head.

"You weren't trying to warn him about me now were you Jeanne...?"

Tony awoke with a surge of pain in the back of his head. He was tied to one of the chairs again but in a slightly different room. He looked around to see Jeanne looking at him with concern. He looked around the rest of the room again and realized that they were alone.
"Who the hell needs two dining rooms on the same floor?" He asked jokingly.
"Tony…" Jeanne started urgently.
"I mean, sure, it's a mansion, but seriously. Who needs two dining rooms?" He continued, ignoring her.
"Tony!" She said a bit more forcefully this time.
"Damn it! The bastard took my knife!" Tony continued again as if he hadn't heard her.
"Tony!!" She screamed.
"What!?" He shouted back at her, finally realizing he would have to hear what she had to say and get the inevitable over with.
For a moment she was taken aback at him shouting at her but she soon got over it and sighed before she started speaking again.
"These men, the ones who are keeping us here are after me and my family. There's…um…something you have to know about me. Well…about my family." Jeanne scanned Tony's features for any kind of reaction, but sensing none, she continued talking. "Its my father. He's- He's- Well he's- um…" Jeanne was struggling to put what she wanted to say into words.
"A bastard…?" Tony suggested, knowing exactly what she was trying to tell him.
"Well," she laughed nervously, "yes…um…he's an illegal arms dealer."
Jeanne waited for a reaction from Tony but again getting none she became confused. "Tony, you heard what I said right?"
Tony's head was bowed and he was doing his best to keep his gaze on the floor but eventually he looked up.
"Yes. I heard you." He said solemnly.
"Well…um…" she laughed nervously again. "I was kind of expecting more of a reaction, I mean, you're a movie professor. Its not every day that someone tells you their father is a wanted man…unless you hear it in a movie."
"I'm not a movie professor…"
"Fine then, a cinematography professor!"
"I'm not that either Jeanne."
"Well then, what are you?" Jeanne's voice expressed an emotion somewhere between anger and confusion.
"I'm a federal agent with NCIS"
"NCI- what?"
"NCIS, Naval Criminal Investigative Service."
"Oh, well…what does that have to do with anything? I'm not trying to share honesty here! I am trying to explain why we're in this mess, I am trying to tell you about my father!!"
"I know about your father! In fact, I probably know more than you do about your father! I have been working undercover for NCIS trying to nail that bastard!"
"You- You- You've been working undercover?" Jeanne repeated what he had just said. She couldn't believe it.
"Yes, but-" Tony began, knowing what she was thinking about their relationship.
"So…was our relationship part of this- this mission?" She demanded angrily, interrupting Tony. She was clearly close to tears.
"No of course not! I love you!" He longed to hold her in his arms. He knew that was what she needed right now. "The fact that your father is part of my mission does not make that love any less pure!"
Jeanne could see the honesty in his eyes. Those expressive eyes of his. He must be one hell of a liar if his eyes hadn't given him away before now.
"So why didn't you tell me what your job was, Agent DiNardo." She put emphasis on ‘agent'
"Actually…" Tony cringed awkwardly, Jeanne wasn't sure if it was just the pain or if he had not been honest about something else, "It's DiNozzo. And I couldn't tell you my real name or job…well…I didn't know how close a watch your father kept on you and no matter how much I loved you I couldn't let our relationship get in the way of my mission. I couldn't let your father know who I really was."
"Oh…" Jeanne was beginning to accept and understand why Tony had had to lie to her, but there was still one thing she wasn't clear on. "If these men are after my father, and you are also after my father…why have the kidnapped you? I mean, you're practically on their side."
"Well, its like you said, they are after you and your family. I just happen to be your boyfriend…well fiancé now." Jeanne smiled "They probably had no idea I was after your father too."
"Well we do now…DiNozzo" The man who had hit Tony with the gardeners shovel pushed open one of the heavy mahogany doors and came into the room.
He was very well dressed and spoke with a slightly Americanised French accent.
"Then surely you can let us go now…after all, we both want the same thing." Tony tried.
"You are mistaken Mr. DiNozzo, we want very similar things, but certainly not the same thing." The Frenchman smiled.
"We both want her bastard of a father dead." Tony said indicating Jeanne.
"That may be so," He smiled again, bringing a 9mm out of his suit-jacket pocket and pointing it at Tony, "But that's not all I want, I don't just want him dead, I want his whole family dead."
He turned the gun to Jeanne. She looked anxiously from the gun to Tony and from Tony to the gun.
"P-plea-please don't k-kill me…" She pleaded. She wasn't crying, there were no tears for how scared she was.
"You don't have to do this, you only need her father dead. You can let us go and we can both get what we want."
"You don't get it do you! I want her dead!!" The man shouted, then quietened to almost a whisper. "I will let you out alive but her," he cocked his gun, "will never see another sunset."
"Please…" Jeanne pleaded, this time she knew for certain that her pleas were in vain.
But the Frenchman surprised them all, he lowered the gun and made his way to the doorway.
Tony noticed the shovel from earlier lying next to the open door, then the Frenchman picked it up and turned back around.
"Not the shovel again…" Tony thought, still recovering from the first time.
The next thing Tony knew, the Frenchman was behind him and hit him over the head with the shovel using his full strength.
It took a few seconds for Tony to feel the pain. In those seconds he heard a woman's scream, followed by a gunshot and he knew what had happened. Then the world went black.

Chapter 4

Tony woke with a start. He had no idea where he was but he had a headache that gave him the impression that his head had recently been cut clean in two. Tony began to wonder exactly how much alcohol he had knocked back the previous evening as he assessed his surroundings through blurry vision and fought to remember something more recent than his twelfth birthday party.

As his eyes regained focus he realized that he was behind his desk in the NCIS squad room and, as had become routine in the past few months, a steaming hot cup of coffee had mysteriously materialized beside his keyboard as he was sleeping.

Tony took his head off of his desk with a jolt that shook the entire surface, causing the coffee to spill over his keyboard and make the keyboard hiss and spit in protest as the hot liquid made its way towards the electrical circuits. Tony ignored it. It had been a dream. It had to have been. He had merely gotten exceptionally drunk the previous night and had been too inebriated to make it all the way back home There could be no other possible explanation as to why he had woken up at his desk with a throbbing headache, blurred vision and partial memory loss.

That had to be the answer. He had not been kidnapped and held in an overly mahogany filled mansion. The drink, not the repeated bringing down of a heavy gardeners shovel on his skull, caused the menace of a headache. He had not yet asked Jeanne to marry him. In fact, he couldn't even be sure that this Jeanne girl was not a figment of his imagination. Yes. She had to have been, because really, could a girl perfect enough to cause Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo to consider settling down truly exist?

Tony stood up with the intention of making his way to the head to splash some ice cold water on his face as a small solid something wriggled out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket and fell to the floor. Bending down to pick up the white velvet box, Tony's head exploded with possible explanations: ‘Okay, so she's not imaginary. But you still have the box so obviously you haven't asked her to marry you yet.' was the most convincing of the justifications. Tony's panic subsided as he opened the box and registered that, laying on the shiny azure silk, the white gold, diamond and sapphire ring rested securely inside.

Tony breathed a sigh of relief as he collapsed slowly back into the chair behind his desk and turned the engagement rings case over and allowed the ring to fall into the palm of his hand. At that moment all feelings of relief and security left Tony as he held the ring closer to his eye. He was sure he had seen it, only for a second as the ring had made the mere centimetres drop into his hand: a glimmer of deep browning red.