My hand twisted over the bracelet Cade had bought me, still clean and shiny on my wrist. Did he care for me enough to come? To look for me? I felt a desperation for him then that I hadn’t before. I wanted to see him one last time, tell him how I cared for him, how it wasn’t just fun. Life and death situations would do that to a person.
I wanted to be reckless even if I was afraid to be. Recklessness had got me in trouble before. It was how I got my first taste of drugs. And then, because with them, my mind didn’t worry, didn’t stray into feeling like I was doing anything wrong. Then Vincent found me and told me he loved me.
So, I found myself doing anything and everything for him. Therapy would show me later that I was young, easily coerced, easily preyed upon. So many young girls had suffered the same fate, but it didn’t mean we were to blame, it didn’t mean I had to let my relationship with Vincent define me.
Guilt and shame can envelope and suffocate a soul, but we don’t have to let it. Cade showed me that. He let me breathe, let me be who I truly was. I promised myself if I got out of here, I’d thank him for that.
I growled in frustration at my predicament and grabbed the water they’d given me with the food. I chugged half of it, and my body rejoiced at getting something.
Another man walked in and I scrambled up to face him. He’d been the one who’d stuck me with a needle. His dirty jeans and ripped shirt showed how well he took care of himself. He hadn’t even washed his face where I’d scratched him because the blood was still caked under it.
“My boss isn’t sure what to do with you.” His meaty hand dragged across my jawline as he got within a few feet of me. “I told him I could get answers out of you quick.”
“I’m not sure what answers you want.” I shrugged, not shrinking back at his touch.
“You intercepted data, and we need to know what you found, little girl. We need to make sure you don’t talk.”
Hate is ugly and unkind, boiling in a soul for years and years—like hell itself is heating it. It can be endless and toxic, but it can keep someone going. I hated this man for taking my sobriety, and I felt the hate bubble out of me when I spoke to him. “How do you intend to keep me from talking? I’m an Untouchable, after all.”
He narrowed his eyes and searched my hand for a ring. They were all confused. And I confused them more with my fake admission. Yet, if acting like I was tied to Cade kept me alive, I was going to do that.
“Living alone, without Armanelli? That doesn’t sound like an Untouchable to me.”
“Want to find out?” I lifted a brow, taunting him.
“You’re so brave, huh?” He didn’t like me testing him. I saw it in the way his neck flexed. Then he stomped over to the door and yelled out of it, “Alteo, bring in the bucket.”
His friend heaved in a white plastic bucket filled with water sloshing from it with each step he took. There was a look of anguish on his face. “Dion, I don’t think we should do anything to—”
“Tie her hands behind her back,” Dion commanded.
Fighting would do me no good. So, instead, I aided Alteo by placing my wrists behind me. If I worked with at least Alteo, I might get out of this alive.
“I say we wait for my dad to get here and—”
Dion shoved Alteo away from me and took his place behind me. He whispered in my ear, “Get on your knees.”
My stomach curdled at him this close, at how he said the words with a slimy innuendo. But I listened. I couldn’t do anything else but that at this point.
His hand grabbed my hair and dunked me fast, holding me under long enough for my body to have survival instinct kick in. I inhaled. I choked. I coughed. And I fought. I pulled my arms as far apart as I could, fighting the zip tie to no avail.
He pulled me up and whispered in my ear, “Want to talk now?”
I either embraced the rage or the helplessness or the defeat. All my emotions were there, though. Bright. Powerful. And vengeful.
“Talk to you, Dion? I’d rather die,” I murmured, and turned to look over my shoulder, catching his gaze.
He roared before he dunked me again.
I fought him again, and he held me under until I thought I might pass out, might die from drowning.
I crumbled to the floor, choking, as he let me go while he laughed. His laughter was enough to show me I could kill, that I would relish taking his life. A new hatred grew in me right then, and I embraced it. Embraced that my emotions could bring pain, could bring destruction, could ruin someone. A life-and-death situation that does that makes you accept who you are.
I pulled myself up from the ground. As his smile widened and he dragged his gaze up and down my body, I lifted my chin. He wouldn’t make me cower, even if his eyes hovered at the edge of my baggy T-shirt. I was so thankful I wore shorts, but I knew they wouldn’t hold anyone off for long if they wanted me.
“Are you really an Untouchable? What do you know?” he asked through clenched teeth.
“You won’t get any answers without letting me speak with your boss.”
He struck me hard across the face, and I tasted blood in my mouth as I fell to the cement floor.
“Man, we’re supposed to give her good accommodations,” Alteo grumbled.
“Sure. Sure.” Dion shrugged. “You both realize I get her after your dad meets her, though. I’m going to teach you some manners too.” He bent over me. “I will start by telling you I like a nice woman, one who doesn’t talk back. Until then, you don’t eat.”
He took the food off the ground, like he’d won.
“Wouldn’t have taken the food you offered anyway,” I grumbled. It was petty, dumb, and asking for a beating.
He didn’t disappoint. His boot hit me right in the stomach. The second kick I was ready for, but the wind had already been knocked out of me. I wheezed for air, for life, and scrambled on the floor as he tried to land a few more blows.
When he finally had me cowering in a corner, he chortled. “Good. I see the fear in you now. Next time”—he leaned close, and I smelled stale tobacco on his breath—“don’t make me work for that fear, and it’ll be a lot nicer in here.”
Before he left, he cut my zip ties, pulled a needle from his pocket and dropped it on the floor.
The clink of the metal door sounded like the metal of my own personal jail in hell closing.
“Maybe, she’s rethought that sobriety, huh, Alteo?” He waved at his friend in the corner who looked disgusted by what he had witnessed. “And look, I accidentally dropped this on the way out. That’ll help you make all our lives less miserable. Maybe just another hit. It’s even stronger than the dose I gave you. Then I’ll come check on you.”
He turned away, and Alteo walked out after him, eyebrows scrunched together like he felt some sort of guilt. I ran my hands along the dirt of the floor, avoiding that capsule of death.
Ending my life now would have been an easy out. Vincent had shown me that. Succumbing to any sort of anguish by wiping yourself out is less painful than having to live through it. I knew that. It was like going through the coldest winter in the hopes you’d see summer on the other side, drowning but still clawing to the surface in the hopes you’d make it to the sunlight, to air, to living.
I wanted to live. I wanted to unstrap the burden of my addiction and throw it out.
But I grabbed that needle after an hour of sitting there and finally faced it. I held it in my hands the way I used to; I held it to my arm the way I used to.
I teetered on the edge.
I lay down on that dirty cement floor and stared at it. I wondered if Lucas would have told me to fuck it and go for one last high or if he would have told me to fight.
I knew the answer. He believed in my fight.
Still, there in that room, I came to terms with death, I think. I let the dirt mix with my hair and my tears as I struggled with the fact that I wasn’t solving anything locked in a room. I wasn’t going to get to see Lucas.
I wasn’t going to get to tell Cade I loved him.
I wasn’t going to solve any election rigging and make my family proud.
And that’s how he found me.
27
Izzy
Cade Armanelli walked right into the room my kidnappers held me in like we weren’t in some undisclosed location, like he had the authority to, like he freaking owned the place.
I took in his stupid suit. It looked unruffled, as if he’d just come from work, and the only thing that showed anything different was his face. He came up to me but stopped abruptly and frowned when he saw what was in my hands.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, not hiding that I was fighting for my life down here-not just at the hands of the men that kidnapped me, but at my own hand. I was fighting against the need to end it all.
He gave me a look like I was a complete imbecile. “What the fuck do you mean what am I doing here? Give me that. Now.” He pointed to it.
“Are you saving me?” My voice shook, ignoring his command. “Are we safe? Because Dion—”
“We’re safe. Alteo gave me access to you after I leveraged his bank account and his father’s. His father is coming here now to have a word with me regarding this whole mix-up.”